Tavern on the Meta

Popular Demand

01:34

FYI for those of you who occasionally make multiple consecutive posts (I don't read the town hall transcripts myself, but I'm still looking at you, @TimStone):

@popular protip: I didn't say you had to type the whole thing, did I? Just maybe 1 or 2 characters. Hint hint. — Jeff Atwood 2 hours ago

Tim Stone

Hmm, that's interesting.

I actually never run into the captcha, except when I accidentally violate the rate-limiter.

It gets angry after that...

It's possible I was doing it subconsciously, or something. Thanks for the heads up!

ajax333221

01:47

@GregS, it used to be called using-various-and-sundries-coding-techniques-and-automatic-code-processing-tools‌-to-reduce-the-file-that-will-be-sent-to-the-client-to-the-smallest-reasonably-ac‌hievable-size. Then it was called uvasctaacpttrtftwbsttcttsras for short. The pronunciation of the acronym naturally morphed into the word minification. — jball May 19 '10 at 23:27

didn't want to send that, at least not that alone... Well, I will get used to the chat

Popular Demand

@ajax333221 You can edit your own chat messages for a couple minutes, or even delete them.

Can anyone repro that, or did I just get a cosmic ray display bug?

animuson

2

Q: Stack Apps "Welcome Back" banner text isn't centered

This appear to be specific to Stack Apps. The text is centered on every other site I've tried. See below: Compared to how it should appear:

Popular Demand

Thanks.

ajax333221

02:03

I have seen many avatars of MLP (my little pony), I wonder how many bronies are there without using an avatar... I was thinking of changing mine to a Rainbow Dash one, but I don't know... Took me much time to draw this suspicious cat. Is anyone here a brony?

R. Martinho Fernandes

Are you talking about the unicorns?

266

Q: My God—it's full of unicorns!

Based on this comment, I have started building a unicorn avatar maker. It's still quite ugly, and the results aren't different enough yet, but this is what it looks like so far: Question list / Joel's profile (removed the images from here to make this thing a little shorter). Is this just way t...

discussion gravatar unicorns april-fools

ajax333221

@R.MartinhoFernandes no, those aren't the ones I am talking about, but there a big chance that if they like unicorns they like MLP too

BoltClock's a Unicorn

I don't think balpha's unicorns have anything to do with MLP

Also

Rarity ♦, Fabulosity

2.1k 1 10 33

professionalism hiring-process colleagues contracts etiquette job-change resignation

Fluttershy, Ponyville, Equestria

8.7k 4 33 74

skyrim mass-effect-3 kingdoms-amalur-reckoning diablo-3 dayz league-of-legends dragonvale

ajax333221

@BoltClock'saUnicorn Rarity ♦ is Ben Brocka o_o I received this response couple mins ago meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/142771/…

BoltClock's a Unicorn

@ajax333221 Yep.

ajax333221

02:34

I failed to find a description for this chat room, what are we supposed to chat about? what is considered offtopic? what people normally talk about?

BoltClock's a Unicorn

I guess there isn't anything off topic

ajax333221

what is this? event: "Happy Hour"

R. Martinho Fernandes

02:56

1

Q: Should I break my DAO into one DAO class for each transfer object?

As a learn-by-doing project to learn java webapps I'm creating a website for registering and displaying happenings using JSP/Servlets, Apache Tomcat server, JDBC and a MySQL database. I use JSP for views, Servlets for controller functionality and business logic, and I've created ONE DBManager.ja...

untagged

Why is this untagged?

Seems like the migration lost the tags in the original.

BoltClock's a Unicorn

03:11

@R.MartinhoFernandes The OP didn't bother tagging it java I guess

@R.MartinhoFernandes Anyway... codereview.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/1291

R. Martinho Fernandes

Hm, yeah. I probably should have done that myself. whistles

Moshe

03:29

Dear client, don't store images as binary data. Ever.

Anonymous

04:05

@ajax333221 I was Twilight Sparkle (avy) for April. Unicorns, meta; it seemed fitting.

Shog9

Well, there it is - four years on SO.

Anonymous

@Shog9 *confetti and cheers*

animuson

You're cleaning that up...

ajax333221

04:21

it would be better to cheer and then throw the confetti... it reduces the risk of eating some by accident

Anonymous

@animuson Baaaah, fine. It'll be tidy in time for the four-year anniversary party.

Anonymous

That's still six to eight weeks away -- I have plenty of time.

jadarnel27

Four years? Just in time to find out that Shog9 is not Joel Spolsky. Damn, I thought there was going to be a twist ending.

Anonymous

@ajax333221 There were a couple others here, too.

ajax333221

@jeremybanks ^_^ /)

Anonymous

04:33

@ajax333221 (\ :P

Shog9

@jadarnel27 Oh, good. That alternate ending would've been really awkward.

jadarnel27

Yeah. Probably for the best =)

By the way, I did enjoy the blog post, @Shog9.

This topic is really bringing out the, "I used SO from the beginning, and now it's different than it was, and that makes me angry ragequit" folks for some reason.

Shog9

05:02

@jadarnel27 Ah, thanks

@jadarnel27 Well, this is somewhat natural. Sites grow, the community changes, and some people find they'd rather be elsewhere. Though if this is the tim I'm thinking of, he's been a bit of a malcontent in the past - "things suck now" rings a bit hollow when you've been complaining for years.

Also,

4

Q: Everything Should Be Different

I feel strongly that the current SO website would be much more effective if it was completely different than how it is now. Problems include: Closing eyes or adjusting monitor orientation causes site to disappear from view. No useful information about paint. Everything should be different. I...

discussion fun

2

jadarnel27

05:19

@Shog9 Those Tim's are always causing trouble. That's why I had to drop the "Tim" from my name. I'm just too nice.

@Shog9 This is beyond hilarious.

Though I rarely trust my sense of humor this late at night.

animuson

@Shog9 That question needs more diamonds in the close votes. feature-request List every Meta moderator as having voted to close that question. :)

Anonymous

@jadarnel27 I'll back that up. :P

Shog9

@animuson When ChrisF gets that meta-diamond, all will be right with the world.

jadarnel27

@jeremybanks Haha, good! The humor has been substantiated =)

animuson

06:21

My network is flagging kevinmontrose.com as a possible web threat :/

Anonymous

Woah, it's been almost a year since Facebook.SO launched...

Anonymous

It feels more recent. In this case: where's our emacs.SO‽‽

Tim Yi Jiang

vim FTW

Anonymous

www.sublimetext2.stackoverflow.com

animuson

07:44

PS The new blog makes me think of "What Stack Exchange is not"

Pekka

08:43

If you're suspended until May 13, is it normal to check in on SO at least once every two days for weeks?

Weird

Your Common Sense

1 4 26 53

php mysql html sql arrays security database

balpha

you know who he is, right?

Tim Yi Jiang

The good Kernel?

balpha

yep

Bart

09:34

Is there any reason why spam accounts are left active? There have been some spam posts over the last couple of days. And from my flagging history I noticed that they are repeat offenders who still have active profiles. Just curious really.

ThiefMaster

who for example?

animuson

@Bart: Apparently when their posts get auto-deleted, moderators never get any notification that they had a spam post.

ThiefMaster

correct

animuson

@ThiefMaster: meta.stackoverflow.com/users/192305/skdjfh

ThiefMaster

deleted

animuson

09:39

How will I get free flags on Meta now? :(

Pekka

@balpha yeah. That is... a bit obsessive :)

Bart

09:51

@animuson Ah, thanks for that. I didn't know. I was surprised to see the same accounts post spam again several days later.

@ThiefMaster Seems they are both gone now

user192305 and user192306 posted spam on multiple days if that is of any help. Anyway, I was just curious.

Tim Yi Jiang

12:09

So, I have this very weird problem with Firebug

The expanded console has been disabled ever since I updated it to Firefox 15 and Firebug 1.10.x

The normal, single line console works fine

Disabled, as in, there is no textarea at all - not just the textarea in the disabled state

Ha! Disabling every extension except Firebug made the problem disappear. Ho boy, this is going to be fun poking at every extension looking for the one that's conflicting

Found it. Well, that was annoying. Time to submit a bug...

Heh, maker of this extension got acquired by Facebook. That explains a lot, I suppose. Also, I'm an idiot :P

Ben Brocka

13:04

@BoltClock'saUnicorn Jeremy Banks used to be Twilight Sparkle and Ashley Nunn used to be Derpy Hooves (both with matching gravatars)

jadarnel27

@PopularDemand Also this MSO post: Stackapps Notification Bar is off-centered

jadarnel27

13:22

What does the "ModeratorReview" vote type mean in the Data Explorer?

"A site that requires you to learn how to ask good questions is broken." - Um. What?

Ernest Friedman-Hill

(Reading through those blog comments)

It's not actually SO that's changed; it's the world.

Seriously.

The percentage of people who "just want to get this done" is hella higher than it used to be

There are way too many people who just want to get their code to work and move on to the next thing, and literally don't care at all about learning.

They can't ask good questions because they don't want the answers to good questions.

They just want you to fix their code.

</soapbox>

jadarnel27

13:45

Well said.

I do kind that there have always been a large number of people like that (don't want to learn, just fix my problem so I can move on) - there have always been people in high schools and colleges that are okay with getting by via copying someone else's work (and thus not learning themselves).

It's just that Stack Overflow is so much larger and more popular now, that it's where those people go to exhibit that behavior.

Whereas, when it started out, it would have just been the hardcore, hobbiest / enthusiast / professional programmers using the site (the non-lazy ones).

</additionalSoapbox>

Ernest Friedman-Hill

I am a sheriff over at JavaRanch, which is a site with a totally different format. We don't close questions -- "no question is too simple" -- and it's a forum, so we hold extended discussions with people to guide them to a solution. That site has also changed a lot, over the same time period, although the site is quite a bit older than SO. Not to put too fine a point on it, but what happened was that all the "help vampires" moved in, and all the smart people left.

Too many people who can't (or won't) search

Too many people who can't (or won't) read compiler output

I will stop because I'm getting myself all worked up

Moshe

I think it's a combination. When StackOverflow started, it had a greater academic feel. Now that it's so well known, all those "get it done" people are attracted to it. That mentality didn't rise in 2007 or 2008 or any time since then. It's been around for a while. I think it just became attracted to StackOverflow later on, once Stack Exchange took off.

Also, I must be crazy. I'm more excited about an upvote on an insanely long question than the single answer.

jadarnel27

14:00

@ErnestFriedman-Hill Ugh. That sounds incredibly disheartening. Like watching a train derail in slow motion.

Ernest Friedman-Hill

Honest truth, that's why I spend all my time here instead these days, it's more fun.

jadarnel27

I worry, when I see some questions, that there are coders who don't know that they can place a breakpoint in their IDE.

nhahtdh

14:30

I needz moar flagz

jadarnel27

What on Earth is this guy talking about? sigh I think I'll just move along now.

Ernest Friedman-Hill

14:50

I so want to snark at this but I am going to be good.

jadarnel27

That's "not constructive" if I've ever seen it. How do you prove that yours is the "smallest possible" implementation? It's like a code golf question.

Ernest Friedman-Hill

@jadarnel27 -- He's saying that SO is like the Hunger Games now, didn't you get the memo?

Ooops, answered your post, and you answered mine we are in an infinite loop

jadarnel27

@ErnestFriedman-Hill Man, I really need to read that so I can start getting these references.

ajax333221

I didn't know this, an early edit forces an edit entry on the history stackoverflow.com/posts/11886138/revisions Good to know there is a way to annoy the post-small-answer-to-answer-fisrt-and-then-expand-it-on-the-grace-period guys

Popular Demand

15:10

Anyone here familiar with tags of the format <?oxygen foo="bar"?>?

jadarnel27

I can't say that I've seen tags like that outside of PHP code.

(Note: I don't know anything about PHP, I just know I've seen question marks at the beginning and end of tags)

Popular Demand

I'm seeing this in an XML document, after <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> but before the root element. I initially assumed it had something to do with Oxygen XML, but haven't found a connection. It could just be that "<?oxygen" is a terrible search term.

jadarnel27

Oh, right. XML. I'm going to get more coffee now.

facepalms at himself

Popular Demand

Ugh, I'm going to feel like (more of) a moron if I have to take this question to SO proper.

Tim Stone

@PopularDemand It's a processing instruction for Oxygen, yeah. For example, for specifying a schematron document Oxygen should attempt to validate the document with.

Ernest Friedman-Hill

15:26

@PopularDemand -- well, tags of that form are called "Processing instructions", and there's a special channel for processing them with SAX. They're not terribly widely used, but they're legal XML, and they're a way to send extra info along with a document. I don't know about Oxygen in particular, but it could be using them for parameters.

@TimStone damn you beat me

Tim Stone

blows smoke off gun and twirls it around

Popular Demand

Oh... great. Thanks to both of you.

@TimStone Wait... what are you doing in a public tavern with a gun, anyways? You're not on the list of marshals or deputies.

Tim Stone

Meta is a very lawless place, you can never be too careful.

jadarnel27

nods, then ducks a flying bar stool

jcolebrand

16:27

@TimStone I speak for Meta and nobody else! Meta is my land.

throws a bar stool

jadarnel27

Oh good grief ducks again

=)

jcolebrand

I was trying to make it seem like you ducked an hour ahead of time, but sure why not

jadarnel27

Oh haha. I see what you did there.

Almo

17:00

So many regex questions should be answered with "Don't use regex"

2

nhahtdh

This is my favorite problem that can be solved with regex: acm.uva.es/p/v100/10058.html

Moshe

18:02

What to do with 5 PCs which haven't been touched in literally years?

Donation to academia lends to damnation via bureaucratic process, so that's likely out.

Popular Demand

Who is upvoting this? Tim Post's comment all but explicitly says it's wrong (and answers the question itself).

jadarnel27

18:24

Weird.

jcolebrand

18:51

@Moshe take them to some place that can recycle them, or try a woman's shelter, or the like. Make sure they've got 2GB or more RAM, running the latest OS for their make, and that they have been freshly reformatted.

School's really only need like 30 computers at a time, and they need a support contract (for at least the hardware) to really be useful for them.

A university might could use them in a hardware lab, but usually not. They have a pretty good budget on turnover from students

Moshe

@jcolebrand Thanks.

Anonymous

19:11

> moderator messages taint the user's account with a big red "this user has been contacted by a moderator" icon

Anonymous

These are visible whenever a moderator visits the users' profile?

ThiefMaster

19:27

yes

in a way similar to the 10k-flags display in the top bar, but in the user's profile

nhahtdh

Will the post owner be notified if their post is deleted (voted, or mod delete)?

ajax333221

I got "Oops! Something Bad Happened!" while trying to open this meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/142855/a-deleted-question

Popular Demand

@nhahtdh Not automatically. Depending on the delete reason, a mod might choose to manually send a private message, but not a friendly one.

nhahtdh

@ajax333221: Me too

ajax333221

actually, I am getting that error on many other questions, sorted by newest at around the middle

Popular Demand

19:34

2

Q: Is it just me, or are all closed questions returning an error?

This is happening to me for any closed question on any SE site (including meta) I don't think it's me... you guys say so in the error message

support error-message

nhahtdh

How do you expand the question in chat?

jadarnel27

@nhahtdh You have to submit the link as a message by itself.

Popular Demand

@nhahtdh See the description of "onebox" in the chat FAQ.

nhahtdh

Thanks

jadarnel27

I just found a place where I had hardcoded someone's email address in this notification e-mail code o_O

Silly Josh. Silly, silly Josh.

mootinator

19:49

I love this question.

0

Q: How do i make a header like this? http://www.chacha.com

Right,I am looking to make a header like http://www.chacha.com (doesn't move, is about that wide and that height, and able to fit divs inside it. & also has to be an image) I am starting off with a blank html document and a blank css page so there i haven't currently written any code. Ive b...

html div header position fixed

jcolebrand

For everyone that hasn't done it, click the help link on the bottom right hand corner of this page.

jadarnel27

@mootinator How do you work on something for two days and end up with a "blank html document" and a "blank css page" (or, in other words, 2 text files).

mootinator

@jadarnel27 Someone should tell them about how browsers can tell you what styles are applied to an element.

ajax333221

@mootinator I told him about the magic of inspecting elements

jadarnel27

@mootinator It looks like @ajax333221 kindly took your advice.

Jinx!

ajax333221

19:58

@jadarnel27 I searched that, "the first one to then say "jinx" puts bad luck on the other." :(

jadarnel27

@ajax333221 Haha, that's not how I meant it. It's a thing that kids do with they say the same thing at the same time. See Jinx (children's game) =)

It may be a primarily American thing.

mootinator

The part that amused me actually was that they came to SO to ask how to reproduce the header of a different Q&A site.

Anonymous

I hate not being able to edit comments on the blog.

jadarnel27

Samesies. Also, that there is no preview. That's why I never comment, I don't have any clue how the formatting works (it appears only Jeff and Shog9 actually know how to use blockquotes correctly in the comments).

Anonymous

Haha, yeah, there doesn't seem to be any "help" for that.

ajax333221

20:09

Can someone go back to the question and tell me what was the first sentence?, I sent a suggested edit but I fear I introduced a weird wording at "I am looking to make a header"

or is that wording okey

Anonymous

> Right,I am looking to make a header like chacha.com (doesn't move, is about that wide and that height, and able to fit divs inside it. & also has to be an image)

Anonymous

> I am looking to make a header like chacha.com (doesn't move, is about that wide and that height, and able to fit divs inside it and also has to be an image)

ajax333221

I am not english native, but is that wording correct? "I am looking to make a header"

I might be able to fix within the grace period

Anonymous

It's unusual, at least, though I'm not sure if it's actually wrong. "I am trying" would sound more natural.

Popular Demand

What's wrong with a simple "I want to" or "How can I"?

mootinator

20:12

Not enough passive voice.

jadarnel27

@ajax333221 Also, in your title, you want the word "remains", not "remind" =)

ajax333221

done, I hope it is in time

jcolebrand

Who here has a lot of pain in software development?

Specifically VBA

jadarnel27

Unrelated: Do you guys agree that this question should be closed? I posted it in the "Posse comitatus" room, and it didn't get any close votes.

But that could just be because no one goes in there, not that people disagree.

mootinator

IE is literally Hitler.

2

ajax333221

20:19

I was going to make a pun that his enter key broke or something, but I wasn't sure how that key was called, so I googled and found this off-topic stackoverflow.com/questions/1582330/… at the first results o.o

mootinator

What I learned from that question is that Apple is trying to be different.

His carriage return button is broke.

@PopularDemand O_o.

ThiefMaster

@mootinator You are insulting hitler! ducks

Ernest Friedman-Hill

1582 answers and now a whopping 3 questions on SO. Let's see how it feels to get downvoted and closed myself for a change :)

mootinator

Delicious.

Hitler ducks?

Sounds like a canard to me.

ajax333221

I have this bad habit of refreshing pages even if they actualize themselves... Just out of curiosity: Does my avatar on 'who is online' moves around every time I do this?

jadarnel27

20:29

wants to know what @PopularDemand posted and deleted

mootinator

@jadarnel27 Nothing to do with ducks.

jadarnel27

Damn.

jcolebrand

Anybody here have a lead on classic VBA desktop development with a grid-control of some sort?

I can't use the Microsoft controls for various reasons. No VB6 dev env (and it's certainly not a redistributable runtime at the end of the day) etc.

jadarnel27

@PopularDemand Haha, back.

jcolebrand

@ajax333221 no

jadarnel27

20:33

@PopularDemand Hahaha. Awesome.

jcolebrand

suffice to say that I can't find anything for VBA for this. People seem to have quite developing for vba :p

just a gridview ocx of some sort, that doesn't have a tremendous amount of encumberment to it

mootinator

People quit developing for VBA?

Shocking.

jadarnel27

They talk about some weird stuff in that English chat room.

mootinator

Speaking of VBA development, this is an excellent product and you should definitely buy it.

waits for his previous post to get flagged.

jcolebrand

@mootinator that isn't much of a data-grid plugin

mootinator

20:43

@jcolebrand I was making a funny that nobody could conceivably get. Geez.

jcolebrand

@mootinator oh I laughed at it

vba development and prsi

mootinator

Must retrieve old code from the bowels of the internet.

Moshe

And apparently the dry cleaners does wonders for wrinkled Old Navy shirts that irons have long given up on.

animuson

hmmm someone added me on skype that made me think of minitech... I cant think of any reason he would add me lol so I have no idea who it is

Ernest Friedman-Hill

30 minutes, 4 views. The crickets hurt my ears.

My question is boring and hard, just as I suspected.

jadarnel27

20:55

@ErnestFriedman-Hill I don't know much (at all) about the domain, but why don't you have the Java tag on there?

Ernest Friedman-Hill

Well, because I obviously don't know how to ask questions, only answer them. Added.

2

jadarnel27

Haha, same here =)

Hopefully that will help get some more eyes on it.

Popular Demand

22:03

Does "Recommend Deletion" in /review automatically flag for mod attention?

animuson

@PopularDemand Right now it only bumps the post to the front of the queue for those who can delete it.

Shog9

22:53

@PopularDemand No. As animuson notes, it bumps it to the front of the queue. Enough recommendations, and the post will be deleted automatically (this is new).

Also (and I totally need to document this somewhere ASAP), the built-in auto comments will notify the author even after the post is deleted.

animuson

feature-request Rename the Community user to The Hammer

ajax333221

any one knows of a userscript to expand the X days ago? It stops at "2 days ago"

I want to be sure this wheel doesn't exist before reinventing it

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