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7:00 PM
@shog9 Okay, you're right. Troll.
 
@Popula, Read the inalienable rights stuff. It's pretty good :)
 
1 message moved to Chat feedback
 
@populardemand ya. Voting to close as S&A
 
-3
Q: Does participation here mean expropriation of author moral, i.e. unalienable, rights?

vgv8First, to @all-sending-me-to-FAQ, Where do FAQ tell that: that contributions are downvoted on the basis of their formatting merits (mostly because the author had not finalized his discussion, editing and because he is restricted from most functionalities) ? that others may insisting deny to t...

Specifically the first line of MarkM's answer:
4
A: Does participation here mean expropriation of author moral, i.e. unalienable, rights?

MarkMFrom the FAQ, which you seem to hate: Like Wikipedia, this site is collaboratively edited, and all edits are tracked. If you are not comfortable with the idea of your questions and answers being edited by other trusted users, this may not be the site for you. Perhaps you should read the la...

 
7:03 PM
Chat is smart enough to know not to show a deleted question?
status-what-a-shame
 
@PopularDemand - we ask the API. The API knows about deleted.
 
@devinb I skimmed it; wasn't worth my time to scan.
@MarcGravell but I wanted to see!
 
Just "From the FAQ, which you seem to hate:"
It is a brilliant intro to a post.
 
Sure thing; just another 6k, and you have it!
 
@Marc can we cajole, convince, cavort with, cahoot, or compromise the API?
 
7:05 PM
I think what devin is trying to say is "are bribes accepted."
 
I hear marc is fond of... pancakes
Offer him a pancake-wrapped ice cream bar (onna stick) and see if he budges
 
@shog9 I'm fond of alliteration myself. But to each his own I suppose.
 
@shog9 I've seconded you.
 
hmmmm; pancakes and ice-cream
 
summer time... and the livin' is eaasy...
 
7:09 PM
By the way, +1 for "onna stick" @Shog9
 
;-)
bah. Cut my hand last night washing up
sink full of knives, and I cut myself cleaning the stove
 
@devinb Thanks, I took someone's word for it from a few days ago and didn't even check when I had it up.
 
/me here rather than washing up
 
was doing both... possibly the source of my problems ;-)
 
Gah...my list of windows is growing uncontrollably again.
 
7:14 PM
.
Welcome to the new decade: Java is a restricted platform, Google is evil, Apple is a monopoly and Microsoft are the underdogs
Currently the best argument for switching to Microsoft products is the fact that they are less evil than Google and Apple lol
 
@chacha102 History is circular and all that...
 
Moral relativism vs absolutism in purchasing decisions?
Maybe it's IBM turn again?
 
@richard not as crazy as it sounds...
 
That's what's scary
IT depts like to centralise, so back to the "new" mainframe...
I hope not, but web apps are just another central service
 
Web applications is the mainframe applications of today
new languages, same technology
 
7:19 PM
As for MS being "less evil"... Pretty much the biggest thing holding MS back in areas where they're an "underdog" is their own corporate culture. Incompetence != benevolence
 
@Shog9 Ignorance = Bliss
err ... Compiler error
Ignorance == Bliss
"Ignorance" == "Bliss"
 
Blissful Balmer's Blasse Blather
 
there we go..
 
@shog9 "Blasse"?
 
bah, blase
 
7:22 PM
s/technology/controlling atitude/
 
@shog9 Okay. Normally I wouldn't ask, but in this case I thought it might be something MS- or Ballmer-specific I didn't know about.
 
@shog9 Microsoft is evil in the friendly giant sense. I mean sure, they'll crush people and wreak havoc in Toyko, but it's just what giants do. Google and Facebook are evil in a very pointed sense.
 
@devinb ok, "evil" is tricky when applied to something like a corporation
 
Facebook is mostly evil by incompetence
 
@lassevkarlsen Facebook has been very clearly attempting not only to remove privacy (by force) but also to encourage people to not care about it.
 
7:24 PM
Yeah, but they've also had their share of privacy bugs the last couple of years
 
Facebook is evil, because people don't know that posted on Facebook = PUBLIC to people you might not want to.
 
things posted online is out of your control, simple as that
it doesn't matter how private the information is supposed to be
 
Default parameters for everything is visible to friend of friend. Which is in most case, people you got no clue who they are.
 
@holyvier They are encouraging people to ignore the fact that their information is public. Also, things like "Would you like to tag your friend in this photo" is encouraging you to share information about others.
@lassevkarlsen As a leader in the field of social-web-apps, facebook gets to set the standard. If they encouraged prudence, then the rest of the web would follow.
 
Ok, that's it, last time I've tried ReSharper
 
7:27 PM
But they encouraged voyeurism and exhibitionism to feed it.
 
ya, I find this to be useless, I don't care about what the friend of my friend are doing of their weekend
 
Facebook is "evil" in the sense that they're in complete control of your information - you're playing in their garden, and so they're responsible for your safety - they're responsible for properly communicating / mitigating the danger of the game.
 
@shog9 Google too.
 
> This weekend The Wall St. Journal ran an interview with Schmidt that offered tidbits like that on a wide range of topics. One statement in particular, that Schmidt thinks teenagers should be entitled to change their names upon reaching adulthood in order to separate themselves from the Google record of their youthful indiscretions, is something worth stopping to take note of.
 
7:30 PM
So I hitched myself to that scrappy start-up: Bing.
 
@Chacha102 O.O
 
@chacha102 it's interesting that the concept of teaching your kids NOT to be stupid hasn't come up.
 
@devinb Google is "evil" in the sense that they now wield a huge amount of influence - either directly (in the sense that they're a large, wide-ranging corporation with many spheres of influence) and indirectly (in the sense that they're the gatekeeper for massive amounts of information) and so when they fail to take responsibility for the collateral damage it has potential to hurt a lot of people
 
@devinb +1, +1, a thousand times +1
 
@Chacha102 tells you much of what you need to know about corporations: "you change so we don't have to".
 
7:31 PM
@chacha102 another reason I dislike Facebook: the whole "use your real name" push...
 
Well as long as you personnaly know the one you are talking to, I don't mind using my real name.
 
> He predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends' social media sites.
 
@shog9 Actually, I think the most insidious thing was that if you stay logged in to gmail, all of your google searches will be linked to your account.
 
There are already mechanism like that
 
MS is evil in much the same way as Google, but with their gates residing on the desktop vs. the 'Net: the fact that viruses / malware are still a very real problem in the Windows world cannot be ignored. Then of course, there's the whole software patent saber-rattling, SCO-funding thing...
@devinb that in itself isn't necessarily a problem: there's no "google wall" where your searches are laid bare by default. Yet...
(Having the capability to do evil is not the same as actually doing it)
Buzz was a big issue there: they took information that was private and made it public
That's Facebook-style Evil
 
7:35 PM
@Shog, In providing a service that they had nearly a complete monopoly over, they decided that they then owned it. The day that google switched from *search*-targeted ads to *user*-targeted ads is when I was itching to get the out of there.
 
Well, but you could get out of there. There has never been a time when Google hasn't had viable competitors when it comes to search, email, or anything else...
...with the possible exception of ad-sales / SEO crap
speaking of evil...
> Robert Scoble (Scobleizer) is now following your tweets on Twitter.
 
@Shog9: "viable competitors" is the main problem. I personally have found Bing to be find/better. (When I search for something on either one, I find what i'm looking for in the same number of pages), and when I tell people that I'm using bing, they think I'm joking, and then that I'm an idiot.
@shog9 Not strictly relevant: theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=2215
Apparently Wi-Fi is evil.
It hates children.
 
ah, yes. Makes them not want to be in school. Devil Waves!
@devinb Meh. Folks can think whatever they want, if it works for you then there's no problem.
 
The parents helpfully ruled out all other possible causes.
 
If I want to give up Windows, that still means giving up my job, learning new interfaces, buying new hardware...
 
7:42 PM
I've been going through the deleted question list (trying to find the Pollyanna cataclysm question) and am blown away at how many were deleted in the last month. I knew I shouldn't have gone on vacation, something always goes wrong on the internet!
 
@shog9 My point there was that Google is so dominant that even valid competitors are considered strange and ridiculed. Like anything other than the iPod, or anything other than Windows (up until a couple of years ago)
 
@devinb And my point is, it doesn't actually matter
 
@lanceroberts You're much more of an anti-deletionist that I. I think most of those things didn't have much meat to them.
@shog9 Oh. Then you win.
 
@devinb isn't that just human nature: most people want to be in the popular crowd.
 
like the iPod, if you're trend-sensitive then yeah, maybe you'll feel bad about it, but unlike the iPod all your accessories still work if you search via something other than Google
 
7:44 PM
@devinb you should see how many I'm not bothering with!
 
I suspect folks would switch away from Google Search very, very quickly if there was any real pain to it. The problem is, you're switching on principle, a principle that most folks aren't even conscious of!
 
I just wish they'd fix Google search so that it'd search on punctuation (on demand).
I can see why someone said recently that a lot of the deletions aren't being put on the list, there's hundreds not on the list. I wonder what their algorithm is for that.
 
eh?
what list?
 
The 'recently deleted' list in the deleted tab.
 
oh.
 
7:52 PM
I'm going though all deleted posts using the link in the link tab, but it's really slow going.
 
well, first off, it doesn't include posts that are deleted by their authors
also, i don't think it includes answers attached to a deleted question
and obviously, it's only the most recent
 
I don't think we should be archiving posts that were deleted by the author.
Then we'd be engaging in the exact activity we were yelling at Facebook about.
 
@shog yeah. I caved.
He won.
It's my weakness, I believe people can be helped.
But don't tell anyone who works for me, they'll lose their fear.
 
You can lead a horse to water, but if it just stands there kicking you instead of drinking...
 
8:01 PM
Yes, but I successfully led it to water!
 
...which it proceeded to shit in while kicking you...
 
Meh, it's not my water. I'm not that stipid.
 
;-)
btw: don't think that I'm in favor of rushing to ban people I think are trolling
 
Oh, I know, we've had this discussion before.
You're one of the more patient ones.
 
Well, it's easy to make mistakes... and there are plenty of people who go in for a bit of trolling without being complete wastes.
I just don't think it's worth feeding into: if someone's being a baby or just playing one, let them throw their tantrum alone.
giving them more attention doesn't help either way.
 
8:06 PM
I can't really get a bead on this guy. He's done the troll thing, that is, he's stopped the negative behaviour, (updating with @so and so) but he's actively refused to make any good behaviour.
@shog9 Agreed. Unless (and this is the hard part) they really are just an abrasive person who needs help.
 
eh... You can help them without playing into it, I think.
right now, the guy's on his soapbox. He's convinced that he was wronged, and doesn't want to talk about anything else.
@jsbangs He may be a thirsty unicorn, stabbing angrily because you put a rope around his neck, or he may just enjoy kicking.
 
enough with the horse metaphors already
 
@shog YEARGH!!I want to talk him down! Meh, instead I'll just go back to fixing these IE6 bugs.
 
Fixing bug in IE6 ... that sounds as painful as finding how functionality work in a poorly documented API.
 
@devinb close the door on your way out...
 
8:11 PM
2
 
@holyvier oh, if only it was possible to actually fix bugs in IE6...
 
@Shog9, that's acceptable. you can never have enough unicorn metaphors.
 
Well, it's not any better in my case, I need to use feature that aren't documented at all.
The only way to figure it out, is by looking in the jar file
 
heheheh... jar file...
 
@Joel Can that pop up any time someone comments on a single question more than 5 times?
 
8:14 PM
speaking of documentation, anyone else notice how the WinAPI docs have improved in the past couple of years?
 
I have to guess how things works from the package, class and methods.
 
@joelspolsky experiencing this right now... but I guess I can let it slide, this once
 
Gah, my cat is complaining, the fish I cooked for him is still too hot, I guess "you have to wait" doesn't really register with him
 
U62
Linking XKCD - what is that, a shot of whisky?
 
Finally found it, enough deleted stuff for today (p.98)
 
8:23 PM
any flash devs here?
 
U62
We burnt all those at the stake last week
 
8:39 PM
pre-register for the next FogBugz World Tour (now including Kiln and DVCS tutorial) http://worldtour.fogcreek.com
"World" as in "World Series" it appears
 
U62
I think it's an example of Joel's unique sense of humour :)
 
But that would require irony, and the world knows American's don't get irony. :-)
 
U62
9:04 PM
I've discovered a major flaw in Visual Studio 2010: Mahjong Titans launches faster.
 
 
2 hours later…
10:46 PM
can anyone decipher the pricing terms of the Amazon EC2? I'm trying to figure out if it's worth buying for a webapp that will start very very small (possibly for a long time)
 
U62
EC2 is a terrible deal if you just want one web server running 24/7
most dedicated hosting is cheaper than just the CPU time on EC2, plus most hosts will give you something like 2000Gb transfer per month.
 
Ok. I couldn't quite figure that out based on their crazy pricing scheme
 
U62
Virtual private servers from most providers are much cheaper still. Depends how small small is for you really.
 
well I can always upgrade later. I just want to be able to host some asp.net (mvc?) sites
I already have a linux host
 
11:29 PM
@devinb just replied to this :)
0
A: Meta in a Nutshell

wafflesWell well ... I think it may be time to close this puppy as no longer relevant ... Looking through the top voted feature requests ... Bounty for other people's questions (done) Unsung hero (done) Tag Synonyms (done) Consecutive day count (done) Find out which questions / answer awarded you...

 
@waffles, left a comment for you
 
@Lance looks to me like you are complaining about unrelated stuff, did you actually look at the top 20 feature requests sorted by votes ?
the vast majority are actually completed, not theoretically completed
 
11:45 PM
@waffles, I said I wasn't complaining, just pointing it out.
 
whoa never looked at one of the blatant ripoff sites before:
0
Q: Is http://www.dyndnscommunity.com/ part of the SO community?

NinjaCatTheir site looks like a copy of SO, but when I signed up for an account, there's no way to associate my SO ID with their site.

 
Isn't that just an SE1.0 site?
Or, one of the sites from the early days of stack exchange? (W/e the proper term may be.)
 
@Lance Is there any request in the top 20 requests you think we dropped the ball on ?
@Nick yeah it must be an SE 1.0 site
 
How come that onebox isn't linking to the question?
 
@waffles - Wasn't on my list of SE 1.0's from before, my fault
 
11:51 PM
OK, 12 out of the first 20 were really completed.
 
wonder how many SE 1.0s were added after I saved this
 
In reverse order by votes:
 
Damn...I so want a starbucks, but I really shouldn't...grrr
 
79
Q: Show all of my question/answers to me even if they are deleted

vavaI would really like to see all of my questions and answers on the profile page, even if some of them were deleted, and I don't have enough rep to see them on the site.

78
Q: Monthly Summary of What's New

jjnguyThere have been a few requests for a change log or release notes which I think would be great. I understand that things are constantly changing, and if the team had to update us with every change, it would be a full time job. That is why I propose a Monthly Summary of Changes. The team could t...

out-of-order
95
Q: How about a "Vote not to close" option to counter the "Vote to close"?

BFreeI'm not a frequent visitor of user voice, so this could very well have already been suggested there, and I apologize in advance if it has. My request is simple: Many times, there will be a question where some people feel like it should be closed. At the same time, I'll feel like it's a perfectly...

 
@Lance 12 / 20 isn't bad at all in my books :)
 
11:54 PM
109
Q: Tab for interesting questions

Lance RobertsWhy don't we have a Tab that shows only questions for our interesting tags, showing recent first? I keep having to scroll down the page to find the questions I'm interested in. It'd be like the Unanswered Questions -> My Tags tab, but for all questions with my interesting tags.

 
re: Q: Tab for interesting questions the request is really vague, we want to improve stuff there but we need something more concrete
 
Hmmm, Since I wrote that question I can be as specific as you'd like.
I'm not hung up on it being a tab.
 
a sort option would be more appropriate there IMO
 
And I wasn't saying 12/20 was bad, your answer just seemed a little optimistic for me, but hey I'm a pessimist.
 
I'd love to see some more query options, they don't have to be in the UI, for example:
 
11:57 PM
@Lance , we were far from 12/20 8 months ago ... very far from that
 
2
Q: User Summary/Recent Page - Date Range Options

Nick CraverWhen you go to your recent page, example for me: http://stackoverflow.com/users/recent/13249 You get a date range for the past few hours, like this: ?startdate=2010-05-19%2000:00:00z&enddate=2010-05-19%2023:59:59z&tab=summary However, refreshing this page later or the next day, etc ...

 
127
Q: Can we have the ability to rescind a close vote before it closes?

cletusSometimes you vote to close something and the OP then changes it to fix the issue or issues. You can't take a close vote back though. It would be nice if you could. Jeff, any chance you changed your mind?

I'm happy with the progress made in the last few months, even if I'm unhappy with some other things.
 

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