Delphi programming and more

It answered one of the most compelling of those questions in , when experiments first detected the formerly hypothetical Higgs boson and buttressed the Standard Model of particle physics. Before this machine went operational, there were fringe fears that it would be so powerful it would create a black hole that would suck in all of the earth. Visits are limited to specially designated Open Days, the last of which was in , and the next of which has yet to be scheduled. But stay alert, bucketeers: If you end up getting to boast that you were there when scientists did something like isolate 38 atoms of antihydrogen, as they did in , you can be sure nobody will show you videos of themselves water-skiing at the lodge ever again.

Before the moon landing in , earthlings had a vision of space travel, and boy, was it banal. Sadly, both Kubrick and Pan Am expired without even the hope of commercial space travel flickering on the horizon. That could change soon, perhaps by the end of Taking off from Spaceport America in New Mexico, the craft would rise to about , feet, where you can see past the curved horizons and into the black edge of outer space.

Then it would come straight down, offering a moment of weightlessness. Phileas Fogg would love it. They are not the majestic animals made famous by the intrepid zoologist Dian Fossey, the mountain gorillas that weigh nearly pounds. To see them—and you might want to move it, since only or so remain, and they are critically endangered by habitat loss—you have to go to the verdant heights of the Bwindi area of Uganda or the Virunga Mountains, which spread over parts of Uganda, Rwanda and Congo. And thanks to Gorillas in the Mist , the Fossey biopic, and the Oscar-nominated documentary Virunga , gorilla tracking or trekking has become increasingly popular.

But it is expensive and highly regulated. Beyond those precepts, the rules combine common sense and good manners: Speak quietly; stay at least 20 feet from the animals; if one charges, crouch down slowly, avoid eye contact and wait for the animal to pass. In other words, act as if you were taking your tween daughter to a One Direction concert. Perched atop the Chajnantor Plateau at 16, feet above sea level, the observatory is one of the highest instruments on earth.

That is, of course, a far better use of this equipment than investigating any of the half-dozen or so UFO sightings that have been reported in Chile since ALMA opened its control room and laboratories but not the array itself, for safety reasons to tourists this past March. So far, only earthlings have shown up. Or so they say. Just 12 miles from downtown Juneau, in the Tongass National Forest, is the mile-long Mendenhall Glacier, which began forming about 3, years ago and stopped growing in the mids.

The glacier is partially hollow; melting reveals astonishing ice caves where blue water runs over blue rocks, creating surreal lava-lampish images. To see them, however, a visitor must kayak or otherwise boat through icy water to the glacier or clamber across the dangerous peninsula that protrudes into Mendenhall Lake. The roof of a popular cave partially collapsed in summer ; what remains is unstable. Park authorities strongly suggest hiring a guide; two companies lead expeditions to the glacier.

It uses a hydraulic launch system similar to the catapults used on aircraft carriers, and it goes from 0 to 60 miles per hour in two seconds and to its top speed of mph in five. In keeping with the Formula One theme, passengers are required to wear goggles. The owner and operator of RIDE, Karl Stanley, has been in business since , but in the early s he designed and built a small submarine called the Idabel , capable of deep dives. This trip can last up to nine hours.

Voyages on the Idabel are designed for two people and a pilot, but any combination of humanity that weighs less than pounds can be accommodated. The record, says Captain Stanley, is six. Pei after his immersive study of the life of Muhammad and the architecture of Islamic nations, the museum was described as his last major cultural building. He was 91 when it opened, in Assembled over 20 years from sources in Spain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, India and Central Asia, it covers religious and secular concerns, including geometry, science and calligraphy.

Dinner comprises perhaps 20 small courses, each based on ingredients foraged from nearby forests, fields and seacoasts. Past dishes include fried reindeer moss and mushrooms; blue mussels and celery; caramelized milk and cod liver; pickled quail eggs; radish, grass and—no kidding—simulated soil; preserved fish pancakes; sea urchin with dill and cucumber; and a dessert of carrot and sea buckthorn. If the dishes seem extraordinary, the way they appear on the plate is so out of this world that set designers for future Star Wars movies should study them for inspiration.

Go, baby, for the love of God go! The long-barricaded door to American commerce has at last sprung open, meaning that perhaps only minutes remain before the Pearl of the Antilles turns into a vast shopping mall. For centuries it was believed that his body had been chucked into a river and never recovered. But stellar research published in raised the reasonably good chance that the king had been buried at Greyfriars, a long-vanished Franciscan friary then thought to be under a municipal parking lot. After another battle—this one involving bureaucracy and fundraising—archaeologists began digging at the site in They were delighted to find evidence of the friary's church, then ecstatic to find a skeleton, one with battle wounds and a curved spine.

After DNA and other evidence proved that those bones were royal, they were reinterred at Leicester Cathedral this past March. The whole saga—king, battle, historical and scientific quest—can be marked by visiting a trio of proximately placed locations: At the end of the 19th century, the followers of Baha'i, an offshoot of Shia Islam, were exiled from Iran and began seeking a home.

After several brief, inhospitable stops, they settled near Haifa, where the believers built a shrine that now serves as a center of the sect. The shrine—reopened after restoration in —has walls of Italian marble, granite pillars and a foot-high dome covered with 14, gold-coated bricks, but its most remarkable feature is its astonishing gardens.

Extending from the summit of Mount Carmel in nine concentric circles surrounding the shrine, the gardens extend over 19 terraces, from the Persian Gardens, with its topiary sculpted into eight-pointed stars, at the top, to the Hanging Gardens below, with its breathtaking combinations of trees, bushes, flower beds and neatly manicured lawns adorned with balustrades, fountains, iron gates and stone eagles.

Crowning it all is a panoramic view of Haifa Bay and the Mediterranean beyond. Or you could mix things up a bit and take two or three planes to Tierra del Fuego, then two or three ships to the U. As it happens, the festival takes place at the height of the austral summer, when the sun never sets and temperatures break into the 30s. With nine domes, pillars and 20, statues all hand-carved from red sandstone or marble, Swaminarayan Akshardham Temple is both the largest Hindu temple in the world and an amazing amalgam of the ancient and the modern.

Built with traditional engineering techniques, the temple rests not on a steel superstructure but on giant interlocking chunks of stone, atop a base decorated with stone elephants, each carved from a single block. But the temple is more than a testament to traditional methods; it has an IMAX screen, a spectacular musical fountain show and a Hall of Values, which features 15 3-D dioramas employing robotics, fiber optics and animatronic technology to present the messages of compassion, endeavor, prayer, morality, vegetarianism and family harmony.

Also state of the art is the security operation, after a terrorist attack on another temple in Visitors aren't allowed to bring cameras or electronic devices into the building you can have your picture taken by a volunteer at a designated spot , nor can you wear a belt. But Muir was born in Scotland, and it is the Scots who have honored the trailblazer with, appropriately, a hiking trail , one that runs miles from his hometown of Dunbar, on the North Sea, west to Helensburgh, on Gare Loch, a coast-to-coast trip that offers views of farms and fields, castles and canals, small towns and cosmopolitan Edinburgh.

The route can be walked or cycled and is in parts amenable to travel by horseback. The locals say the trip should take seven to ten days, depending how often you feel like stopping to sample a single malt whisky and proclaiming O my Luve's like a red, red rose in your impressive Robert Burns accent. Evidently, they underestimated the size of the gas reserve, because the hole has been on fire ever since. Nicknamed the Door to Hell by locals, the crater is a glowing red-hot though clean-burning , sulfur-reeking pit on the flat brown desert.

On the other hand, the T-shirt concession seems available. Not tempted to test the Door of Hell? Built in , the Gates of Heaven is a three-foot-wide, foot-long skywalk that has been attached to the sheer vertical face of Tianmen Mountain, 4, feet above the lush canyon floor below.

Yes, glass, of the see-through variety, the kind that allows you to look through and imagine that you are floating—or plummeting to your death, as the case may be. If you can stand it, the mountain also offers a spectacular natural arch, a lovely temple and a cave that can be reached only by climbing steps that were hewn out of the mountain rock. Evidently everything about the experience is breathtaking.

What was birthed in travail now lives in luxury. When the grandly appointed Ellis Island hospital began treating patients in , the immigration facility had already for ten years been a place of unusually raw emotion—hope, desperation, anticipation, confusion and, for some, heartbreaking rejection. In the buildings were handed over to the Coast Guard, which in abandoned the facility as it stood, with objects left in place, as though the occupants were fleeing an onrushing disaster.

The hospital buildings reopened to tourists in October and endowed with a stunning enhancement: The ghostly images restore to the barren rooms the humanity that once waited there, so hopefully, to be loosed upon a new land. Editors' Note, August 26, Subscribe or Give a Gift. I agree as well. The only way around it is to thoroughly read the good question section, think on what wording your answer has, and make sure your answer is specific. Also, make sure you do your research. SO moderators ego trip philosophy could easily be resumed to: I found there were a lot of other ways to get accurate information, starting by adding a minus - sign in front of StackOverflow when doing Google search.

This saves me a lot of time. For Delphi programmers, SO is a better knowledge base and has a better reactivity than the official Embarcadero forums. SO is not perfect, moderation can be to blame sometimes, but it is. I did a similar observation earlier this year in the PS on this post: I have reduced my StackOverflow presence. It looks like the success of StackOverflow made them instantiate many moderators.

Links are the foundation of the web. Alas, devoting real attention to the quality of StackOverflow requires putting real energy in it, which for some of the moderators seems to be too much to ask. I asked about 20 good questions and answered about questions successfully with no problems and only ever had about 10 downvotes and no closed questions or deleted questions or answers, then I post one question that I thought was fine and was answered by many people who thought it was fine and ONE mod got me banned, blocked, and more. The list of rants goes on and on, but what you said pretty much sums it up….

It seems stackoverflow is really meant for moderators and they are more focused to improve there site rather then helping people.


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Yes, I always feel in posting on SO that I must be on my knees, in a supplicant posture, cap in hand, avoiding directly looking at the great and good, grateful for only mild admonishment. That said, if you are deemed worthy of constructive replies the quality is usually very good. Just remember to thank the commenter profusely!

Indeed … Most arguments given to back up SO moderators reasons of being are highly debatable and unfounded. I mean come on, this is not moderation. You know, the funny thing is that it is not even allowed to be thankful. Then Jeff Atwood wrote code to automatically remove any greetings from the beginning of questions. Upvoting is the way of being thankful.

I think the Nazi police do this in the hopes that it transfers to the bar. In other words — they can approach girls without saying hi, get their rocks off probably in two minutes of business time and can leave swiftly without saying thanks. Saying that thank you posts are annoying is a very weird geek thing to say. Anyone who thinks people should be forced to have lunch together is just not very in tune with how people work. Similar issue exists in portions of wikipedia, and I suppose in any large-enough self-moderated communities. I personally would like to see rules that moderators have to use their real names, and be validated in some way or another as being who they claim they are.

There are two ways to solve this problem and neither of them is without their own problems: Is question bloat really a problem? There is a voting system, and there are modern search engines. Good question will bubble up one way or another. I do not think that using real names can change the situation. I had experiance with ruth watters in physicsforums. He had real name but no competence in the basic calculus and you see in the proof http: I have got to understand that his only purpose there was to be a good citizen: Bill of piece Lizard is of the same filthy kind.

He bans you for for the false reasons. Twisting and looking for false reasons is a sign of being wrong. About the problem you submited: It is very interesting. I think it is a kind of integer linear programming problem. Your solution is effective but it is brute force. It works fast for few boxes and brothers.

Try to increase the numbers. Stackoverflow will turn into a HR sourcing portal, I think it was never something different. The ones every consulting agency loves, because they can charge for them and they quietly sit in their office trying not to notify anyone of their presence. Keep the meter running! Sometimes the moderation, which is community moderation remember, can be a little over zealous.

But plenty of time moderation is applied well. Have a little forgiveness. Most topics have enough experts with enough reputation to handle the moderation. I think the opposite. Stack Overflow needs far more moderation to get rid of too many useless questions. But most became so lazy they ask and wait for someone else to find them the answer see for example this today one: Or maybe they should start a super-duper Stack Overflow, just for you and your illustrious peers. And you can go there! You can choose not to open it or post a reply that redirects to a previous question.

The fact is stack overflow is full of rude people, I agree with the posted below that maybe you can create a super stack overflow where no duplicate or similar questions are ever asked and life is perfect. So, if you created a second SSO Super Stack Overflow then we would have two places where if a question never asked before would get canned immediately once they realize you are not part of the inner circle.

And, consequently, this thread would evolve into: Why Super Stack Overflow Sucks. This is just wrong headed. Programming should be for everyone interested, anyone else ever wondered why the strange names i. The fingers are easier! It happened in newsgroups, it happened in forums, it happened in SO. Users can edit questions of others, but sometimes they cannot edit or delete their own question — because a moderating nazi considered editing as vandalizing, and a moderator locked the question.

Please note that not everyone is savvy in searching for answers, be it on google, SO or other services and applications. Stack Overflow is collaboratively built and maintained by your fellow programmers. But StackOverflow is not a forum. It should be a repository of good questions and answers. Some even post a question and work hard on their own to solve it while waiting for an answer.

The fact is the internet is not perfect, and honestly people that lack patience or have to read questions and downvote them or leave rude responses should accept the fact that the site will become garbage that is known for its pretentious users. Kent Morwath, you are wrong! It was related to code I found in a book written by University professor. And there was some error which rendered code non-compilable. So, I sent him e-mail. I sent and email to publisher. I asked on OpenCV forum as well. Then, I asked on StackOverflow. Within 30 minutes I was downvoted 4 times.

I updated my question and I wrote what was on my mind in a harsh way. Should I been smarter than the guy who wrote a book on this subject and holds PhD?. Should I been ashamed that I ask question? Also, I posted a link to a question that I just answered to some other poster just to show that I am not lazy.

Then, one person helped me with problem. Then they even started to argue in between them what is right answer. Then it lasted for several hours , I received response from OpenCV forum where it was treated like a normal question. They pointed to me that since recent versions of OpenCV there is a bug which prevents conversion of one type of vector into other type of vector.

They hope it will be resolved soon. If the bug was older, probably it would show in google search. So the question was not superfluous, but actually required very good knowledge of OpenCV framework, especially the last updates. When I came back to Stack Overflow to say what I just found out, downvotes on my question disappeared, and after whole situation, my reputation even increased a little bit.

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So, what is a point? And Kent, one more thing: I am 44 years old. Being there when Apple IIe was considered a great machine. Being there when internet started. Being there when some of the Content Management Systems and Forums were created and even took active role into creating some of them.

And after all of that, on some online community I have been bashed probably by some frustrated kids? Is that a reason to receive numerous downvotes? But the thing I am sick and disgusted the most are people like you — you just assume that other people are lazy and that they want other people to solve their problems. I wa banned from asking because some jerky mod kept using lousy reasons to close my qustions. The bitches actually wrote that! If you want a site that allows any Question just drop by the cesspools called Yahoo Answers.

Poor questions attract poor answers. SO stills sucks not because of what they are trying to do but because of the narcissists that control the site. I accept all that down voting on poor answers and questions but sometimes even a good question gets banned because it is overtly broad. How can a broad question be of poor quality? And what is more depressing is that you move forward towards an automatic ban which is handled by some guys who are just a human being like us and can do this thing just out of immaturity.

Can you prove that? Why do people like you and Kent assume that people are being lazy because they post a question for which the answer might be obvious to you and Kent. In this day and age of rushed, unrealistic deadlines, newbies are trying to get to the point, i. That was a rhetorical question. The answer is there is nothing wrong to ask. To make matters worse often there is another solution that is a better fit for what you want so you have wade through dozens of these posts to find what you are looking for.

The folks at SO clearly do. Or just start Stuck Undertow for newbies. Since they have such derision for them. When a newbie answers a question, another newbie of yesterday gets a chance to answer it. When she speaks up, the assumptions she had been making come to fore. Somebody then points out how the assumptions are wrong.

This helps everybody including those who have not thought through the nuances. The question asked can sometimes spawn a dozen other questions, especially in the way a newbie puts it. PC already exists and there is a linux desktop. Nobody would want a tablet. You are right Darin, but you have a lot of IT professionals usually guys who need to prove themselves.

Since when are manners a bad thing?? A good manner is to upvote those answers that were helpful to your problem. That includes searching for similar questions an upvoting similar answers that are partially helpful for your question. Most of this is outlined on meta pretty well. What the hell else am I supposed to do, tap dance on a table? They want you to go elsewhere, like EE, Yahoo or Google answers. You better be an expert programmer, with a unique, thoughtful and well researched question. I check SO everyday but it will be a cold day before I will ask a Q there every again as I was made to feel like an idiot after my last question!

My point was that nobody forces you to use SO. It is a free world, but if we want to add value for our clients we need to use the best services possible ourselves. SO is the best service. The problem is the SO zealots, those people who are less concerned with helping people find answers and more concerned with making sure that others ask questions correctly. People are angry herein because they have been burned by zealots for asking otherwise perfectly valid questions the wrong way.

I have long asked Stack Exchange to provide an exchange on how to use Stack Overflow. I was joking, but my sentiment is true. I have no problem with Stack Exchange or Stack Overflow, but asking questions therein is way to complicated a task and I have work to do. So yes, I do often go else where.

One of the main things that bugs me is that people are getting shy asking questions. StackOverflow used to be a place with a positive vibe, where comments, edits and guidance would make their users become better users. That vibe is fading very quickly. I encountered people who when pointed at the relevant documentation to solve their issue with minimal effort, wanted ready to use code. Such people will never learn.

If they go to another site, the better. Kent I totally agree what SO is not a rent-a-something. But SO needs to be interesting for the experts too, not only for answering questions, but also asking questions that only a few might encounter but when they do, are tough to solve. The combination of depth and breadth is the actual gold of SO. If it is only aimed breadth, than SO is just an advertising company and the people answerin g just repuation collectors. Who cares if someone wants to use your precious code?

We are NOT curing cancer, or abolishing hunger. Most of us are not doing anything new that someone, somewhere has not already done. There is no harm in providing help, even in the form of code to others. Reply should be relevant to more people than just you. The moderators of stack overflow are interested in several things. Not just whether 1 out of 4 billion humans who asks a question gets a helpful answer right away. Also, they care whether the other 4 billion people who might in future search for an answer can find it.

This in the end is the reason for the close votes, the downvotes, and the deletion of the question that you felt you personally owned, and felt upset about seeing deleted. Meanwhile, we have this problem online where the noise always threatens to drown the signal. Or that every blog you ever comment on will eventually be deleted? If you want something to stay around forever, and you want to own it, host it yourself.

The deletion of ALL slightly subjective questions still has me upset. There is still a lot of good there. Can you mail me a few links of the questions you really loved, but have been deleted? I might eventually blog a bit about that. At the same time, crap that comes from users with high reputation , and has no practical use, is kept up:. The first time I had a question closed and deleted I was similarly angry and upset. I pointed out that regardless of how they work, the way it works sucks. There was no solution, I just had to decide that knowing this is what StackOverflow is a hive mind system I can leave it be, or participate inside their rules.

So far, I continue to participate inside their rules. I guess Serge feels otherwise. No need to support the bad users of SO. I am using SO since 4 years. I must say that It sucks because the users with highest points always dis encourage new users with Bad words. Now, with my latest question I get flamed and a repu of -3! The money is on SO.

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They did build a great knowledge base, an impressive interface and now they only thing that matters is that companies keep looking for skill workforce there. Big recruiters have HR who will just go and check the reputation; and they will be happy with the results; that will keep them there. Why will they be happy with the results? The debuggers are good material for companies, while this lizard guy is just part of the elite which cannot be contested: That's the reality of power it's not just SO. Your example was a question that 'an expert' won't like. Because it is a 'do my homework for me' ; and I actually agree with those who downvote.

Closing the question however is they key there. What I see as the real machine behind SO demise is that all those moderators and expert downvote very, very quick in a matter of seconds making a question virtually unreachable because the system will show it last to any reader. I agree — downvote system is heavily abused. So should introduce a rule that for each downvote explanation must be provided altogether with username who downvoted. That has been proposed and rejected — http: And I think stack overflow is overly commercialized and in many cases too well rewarded by search engines like Google.

Once people stop caring about their meaningless reputation, SO will stop doing so well. Moderators earn only points and reputations, no money, so welcome to the brotherhood and ask the perfect question that can help the whole world, not only you, or else we are gonna punish you, you dumb. If I had put my real name on it with my personal information I would have felt completely depressed and humiliating.

I miss the real world on the internet. The real world where you work, make money and pay for good services. In that case, pay. Stack Overflow is not a helpdesk. Stack Overflow is a repository of knowledge. And if I, as a 60k rep user deem your post bad, then I will edit it. I gave up SO long ago and rather go to newsgroups. Your attitude shows exactly why SO is the most obnoxious place on the internet. A place for people with next to no social skills and huge egos hang out to compare the lengths of their digital phalluses.

Why did you even reach for this post? Is the urge of bashing those who have different opinion is that much insatiable for you? It means the world to you? Do you use racing cars to travel on bumpy roads? So maybe you need to ask a similar question, you do it because you know that it will not get closed, but you get down voted and closed. All the 3 points that I posted above are somehow related to luck. These pathetic tools will go to great extend to protect their e-penis, and SO is a broken mess that needs to be replaced. That happened to me today. It said to do lots of work on the problem first I did.

I wrote a very detailed question. I told people I was a newbie so might need help rephrasing my question. All I got was downvotes… zero feedback or support. Another similar question got loads of upvotes and answers. Is it some kind of bigotry towards certain usernames? Or maybe that the SO guidelines are wooly and highly subjective so impossible to follow.

These people only allow black and white questions with an exact answer. Black and white questions are mostly pointless… they are easier to find answers for. Any question with any shade of grey gets shot down by SO users with small dicks. I made the HORRIBLE mistake recently of accidentally posting a question more appropriate to cross validating than SO fine line though since it involved both stats and programming, as most R questions will and my question got downvoted then closed. But luckily someone actually helped me before it was closed. It seemed mean spirited. A few days ago I asked this question in SO: As you can see, Eric Lippert make fun of my formulation saying that it is ambiguous and not a question at all: Eric Lippert fans are familiar with his ability: Eric is so important in SO, that he is allowed to comment a personal issue that has nothing to do with my stupid question without question:.

The guy did not think to, you know, ask me first if that was OK, which it most certainly was not. In short, I got more answers to my stupid question without question, and it was well received with several upvotes. As you can see, the response of Eric Lippert is documented and explanatory, There is no doubt that Eric Lippert is an authority on C and computing. I agreed with the latter, and marked his response as the answer. Then I received two anonymous downvotes, and Eric Lippert; Michael Edenfield, and others voted my question for close… and the question without question was closed.

I am pretty sure Eric Lippert is not the problem. The problem is that people like Eric Lippert attracts hundreds of suck-ups in SO. These people rally around the figureheads, and bully newcomers unless they form another layer of suck-ups. Surrounded by pyramids of suck-ups, there is no way for people like Eric Lippert to keep their perspectives. I agree that the moderators have become over zealous in the past year or so, to the point of scaring users away instead of encouraging them to stay, learn and do tribute. I had a question closed, reopened, upvoted, downvoted, and eventually answered by tbe chief architect of C for Microsoft.

Part of the purpose of the site is to be a reliable archive and source for answers to programming questions. To that end, its important to keep the archive as clean of incorrect or misleading answers. The question you mention is almost certainly homework. Your solution works great for small numbers of items, but for, say, 10, items, it becomes intractable as the number of possible combinations is a factorial.

We use this to teach students to develop heuristics algorithms that are sufficient, when the perfect solution of trying every combination is untenable.


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You sound like a smart guy — just the kind of person we need contributing to these communities. I am a beginner and I was banned on StackOverflow as I was obviously asking stupid questions… a beginner asks. Can you suggest me an alternative? Where I can get answers to my questions and quick responses.

Daniel While I was studying at university our professors usually encouraged us to ask. They had a habit of saying that no one question is stupid. I see three big problems with the StackExchange sites. I see the same problem you see in the Android site. The other issue, I see with StackOverflow, is that there are simply too many questions. I ask a question, and it may get a comment or an answer within the first two hours, then it disappears into the ether. The other issue is with the StackExchange network in general.

Do I go to superuser. I have a choice between the specialized knowledge but less traffic site of the ubuntu site, or I can go to the higher traffic superuser. Do these people actually work? Votes are limited — http: Also, SO is a good example of a democracy ruled by teenage idiots, too many hasty decisions and very little far sighted thought. Later, a responsible moderator had to undo his ban. I will now be reluctant to answer. I tried to ask a question this evening, first use of the system, followed their instructions for spacing to format the code, still got formatting errors.

Deleted and attempted to submit the question over again, and was told that my new question was a duplicate of my first deleted question. It is worthless system run by control freaks who make progress impossible. How did the people who run it avoid becoming TSA screeners? What if they are TSA screeners on their off time? My god, the community is absolutely crap. It is full of rude, egomaniacs who feels the need to control everything. Your legitimate question WILL be closed if they feel like the question is not up to their standards. Oh, Have I mentioned how rude they are. Sure these people know plenty about programming, but I wonder how many people have been turned off from the site.

If you are a new programmer, it is guaranteed that your post will be closed and downvoted to oblivion. They will find a reason to criticize the most irrelevant things in your post. There is no sense of community at stack overflow. Try something like the above and soon you will never consider SO again while resolving all of your programming issues. Thanks, I like it, even better than just ignoring the link. I did however expertise several technical points using this web site, as I experienced to reload the web site lots of times previous to I could get it to load properly.

I had been wondering if your hosting is OK? Not that I am complaining, but sluggish loading instances times will sometimes affect your placement in google and could damage your quality score if advertising and marketing with Adwords. Make sure you update this again soon. I agree, I hate SO. Mind checking it out? I never delete ANY post unless it outright states it needs help hacking someone. I close the thread and say that the only hack allowed is modifying systems and rooting phones, not what ruins privacy. I love the idea of Stack, but I feel like I captured an intelligent yer very friendly community.

And of course, then you have 20 minutes to vent about it before you can post again with that little line added in there -. Done venting now lol. I Agreed, i am not allowed to ask Questions anymore because i made a mistake in one of the Answers i give. I have since Answered many more questions. But i am not allowed to ask questions. SO is a site for code monkeys they will get angry if you ask why it works that way, and they set up robots to tell them what to do.

I think this article is influential in the philosophy of how Stack Overflow works: Again, this begs the question: For instance, take this question I posted yesterday: One person did provide an answer which was precisely what I was after it turns out and interestingly I assume he was a newbie to the site based on his reputation unlike the others. Ironically, maybe the newbies are the best to go for for answers on SO. I like to help people on SO.

SO is just like those web software projects that get very denormalized over time because a few Alpha types get control of the project and the management is over a barrel. To keep the competition down after the Alphas run-off the better programmers the aim then becomes to hire the marginally competent programmer that stands no chance to reveal what they are doing with the project. Kid you need to grow up. Stop acting like angry boy when someone is trying to help. Yes someone may not think like you and may even disagree with your idea but try not to be nazi questioner okay?

Last year 15 year old kid was a candidate for moderator. Ok, thats not so bad. But, what made me angry was when I took a look at his profile and found out he put programming languages he hates which I personally consider as quite immature and dissrespective. For me its equivalent to: Makes you wonder what kind of people sit in SO HQs when they call very immature kid to be a candidate for a moderator. I also saw cases when people were insulted because of their questions. I remember one of them very well: I have a decent reputation, but I start to hate it more and more.

The main purpose of SO, in my opinion, is to build a comprehensive knowledge center that future programmers can reference when facing similar issues. Highly specific questions are unlikely to help future programmers. I disagree with you on that. Finding an answer on highly specific question can save hours and sometimes a days. This mindset is like only seeking cures that will cure millions of people, or only putting out fires that risk burning more than 20 people. Typically, general questions are easy to research. Specialized questions are much harder to research, and putting the information in an quick, easy-to-find place is far more helpful than say, copy-pasting documentation.

Ha, this question is now gone: While there are users that come and ask horrendously formulated questions, people still bear with them and provide answers. And while there are snide remarks, the people who make them are admonished by myself and other similarly-minded posters. How is it possible to post anything when you get banned?

Anyway, this thread must be working…. But those questions where the aim is building a comphresensive list of something should stay. I once asked a question like: What optimization techniques GCC employ? I just wanted to learn how does the most popular compiler suite works at the lowest level. It is just to say that it is not fit for SO.

The only solution to this is… make a parser for it and use that. Not worth to deal with idiots like David Heffernan. Infact due to growing disgust towards SO. I may opensource it! It is basically a pyramid scheme of egos. Also, SO is a good example of a democracy ruled by teenage idiots. When searching, I consider SO results spam. Reading rules of site helps. Normally people act first, read later. When mods come, they get angry. I was searching about the difference of printf and cout, unfortunately browsing stackoverflow 10mins ago and some one answered by doing a speed benchmark!

Definitely imagine that which you stated. Your favourite justification seemed to be at the internet the simplest thing to take note of. You controlled to hit the nail upon the top and also outlined out the entire thing with no need side-effects , people could take a signal. Will probably be back to get more.

Exactly, I just got banned today, even before that I hated how the whole system works at StackOverflow. I think that Serg is overreacting a bit. But the thing is that stack overflow is a great resource for many things. For me — checking out the most voted question with the PHP tag was a great way to see how other people approach certain problems, and to learn best practices or PHP functionalities I never knew about.

And then there are moderators. Neither for users or moderators. If you think otherwise, shame on you for exploiting others. Just got banned myself from SO. I always dreamed about the fact that programmers were there to help each other out. And there are many of those willing to help IF you can find them through all the other drivel floating around on SO.

I answered a couple of questions just to be down voted so quickly that I eventually deleted my answer. I know for a fact that my answer was point on to what the question was asking, but the comments even range on the absurd, addressing issues outside the scope of the question. SO is still a nice system, but it is being ruined by the rep and badge hunters!!! You shouldnt use stack overflow like chat service.

I just requested that SO delete my profile yesterday. Got sick of being disparaged by Robert Harvey and Bunni and the like who just live to crush new users out of existence on SO. They can go fuck themselves. Then show your efforts. Noobs are so full of themselves and uneager to learn that they just can stand anyone telling them to show their research.

Just learn to improve yourself and admit your failings. SO is the best thing ever happened to internet. According to my profile on stack overflow, I have asked 0 questions. Yet I have been banned for asking too many low quality questions. Asking low quality questions can get you the ban but you can get the ban removed by improving the quality of the questions those which have negative rating. The right way to go about is to check the rules of the community and mould your question in the way expects — i.

Nobody is getting paid to answer so you have to show your efforts first. The moderators are programmer Nazis. My two biggest pet peeves with the site:. Unresolved duplicates is a problem with multiple feature-requests pending. I just want to leave my own brief opinion on StackOverflow. My English is not ideal, so my apologies. I am very new to StackOverflow and my first impression is very bad. I realized some of the SO veterans especially those who have pretty big reputation can behave very irresponsibly and many posts are disqualified just because of their likings.

I am very disappointed with the SO assessment system. Thus from now on StackOverflow is not on objective source of knowledge for me. Some of the comments here are really funny. It feels sometimes the forum is becoming closed discussion group for high nose peoples, any begienner lurking there would be hounded badly.

I guess thats what happens when you create voting system, everyone ranging from poster, answerer and moderator wants to increase their count. I feel your pain. And I got downvoted and put off topic. I later seen a question on the game section about playing MineCraft in school, and they gave the guy a batch file. I asked a question about playing a game like AQW or another online game coded with java with the batch file. And it got downvoted and out off topic. I agree that all questions are strictly legit because when you wonder about something, you just do.

The site has a threshold and if your question does not pass it, just deal with it. Post it in a forum where there ARE people willing to answer. In my opinion this threshold on SO is definitely not too high. I like how SO wants to profile itself as a site with a certain level. To close questions then, is absurd in all but the most extreme cases. I too said goodbye to stackoverflow. So If i am asked to go and do research for few days; then think i can find the answer by myself.

SO can help, but the way it actually gains such a lead ahead of alternatives is too intransparent, makes me feel that it is somehow unfair in the end. The unfair thing is actually to force good questions, because the question goes into the intelectual property of SO. One time I asked on SO, it was downvoted -4 immediately, since I probably hurt some python purists with a complicated problem. Heck, they are probably just figuring out what to even begin to ask! A lot of them complain about wasting time, yet they spend just as much time belittling the person asking or others answering questions without actually answering the question themselves.

Is SO some sort of strange programmer version of high school? Some of the behavior is rather…feminine. Obviously by asking a question you are there for a purpose and by posting a mistake you are attempting to learn. To think, I could be working with these people someday…. Stackoverflow is all about male dominance and ego-fighting. Feminine is not a negative attribute. I agree with you in everthing else you said.

Stackexchange sites are built in a way that usually attracts narcissistic people without real knowledge. There is a saying: It seems that what should be a helpful environment for those who have questions about programming has instead devolved into a haphazard hive of self-entitlement and ego-stroking for those who seem incapable of remembering that when they were starting out, they, too, probably had questions such as this once upon a time. I can understand wanting folks to be capable of answering their own questions, but throwing folks into the fire because they dared to ask it is unjustifiable and just an exercise in being a jerk, IMO.

Hate that place, they really think a lot of themselves and are rude, treat their visitors like crap, especially if you are a newbie. I refuse to go there anymore for questions. I read some of the previous comments regarding quality questions. Can you generalize from that?? Then they have their suggestions for questions that are supposed matches to what you are asking. Anonymity does not grant the right to be rude.

I am becoming increasingly disenchanted with online resources. I have been helping out on SO for a while now, but I am getting more and more annoyed by the way things are going. Even if you give an answer that worked for you, you will get downvoted to such an extent that you loose more than what you gain. One is better of researching on your own than making use of SO. I just wanted to lament my experience with them. I posted the seemingly innocuous question: I mean, is this sort of thing even possible? Where am I supposed to ask a question like that? Is it that unreasonable of a question?

I posted simple questions, that would be easy to answer, i made it really easy to answer, and narrowly focused. Gee, there are a million html and css and whatnot questions up there — but its just for programmers, I see. It used to be an open forum to discuss programming, ask questions, and get feedback.

I was simply wanting to know if that kind of thing is possible. Apparently asking questions offends people. In addition, it could help a lot of other folks who might run into a similar issue. The almighty moderators, who did not understand what the question was, had to take it upon themselves to put it on hold. Another thing that really upsets me is that as soon as I attempt to search on a topic, SO results get on top of the first page. And the majority are not relevant or very narrowed to other problem. Yes, there are times a very specific problem should be answered in such fashion.

But being a developer means that you need to read many chapters and articles to get your rolling. SO results are far from being comprehensive, yet they constantly beat other search results that could, very well, make the developers far more well rounded in the long term. There are some nice people who DO help but there are some anti-social super geeks who do NOT know how to interact with other humans. Thin skinned ass wipes. For example, go to Wikipedia, and you will find an army of Nazi moderator retards just like on SO.

Why on earth would someone do this. These moderators probably do not have an outlet to get their power fix in real life so they go to these virtual worlds. I have long stopped asking questions on SO, or on any online forum for that matter. Wow, where were all you guys when I needed you: And also posted officially on Meta Stack Overflow in my hopes of having a meaningful discussion about the issues:.

Could have used the support. Luckily for me, I can take a hit. But for some, downgrades and harsh criticisms are very discouraging to people newbs who are taking up an interest in coding. The worse is, you get downgraded and left with no response. I could say as a newb, I do learn a lot from SO. The other half is really really bad! It could be a valid question to my own sense but my coding dictionary is still thin that might make me look stupid or not make any sense. Well, I also had the joy of getting moderated by Bill The Lizard today. My crime was, linking to a solution on my own blog, which had the answer.

Many a times we face broken links and this is why SO discourages copy-pasta of links. I try to be the good helpful guy in SO, but sometimes the swarm of SONazis downvoting, criticizing and moderating everything is overwhelming. Yes, a bug report!

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I found a bug and I reported it. No one upvoted me thankfully no one downvoted me either. Immediately a comment arose criticizing a phrase I used just a phrase, in a sentence from the sentences in the bug report and in a matter of minutes, the comment got two upvotes. Oh and the feature request, I had pretty much no support except two upvotes, against 12 downvotes and a flurry of critical comments and answers.

All I did was to make a suggestion to improve the quality of the content posted by new users. And by that, HELP the community have less shit to moderate. When I responded to the criticism, no one had anything to say. I watch everyday, newbies being scared away when they innocently come to SO to learn. Sometimes I stumble upon questions from back in the s and admire how welcoming the community was back then. The concept of the site is great, and I admire how driven it is. It has helped me in many situations to find many answers to the programming problems I faced.

However, I find that the community is heartless and unwelcoming. What we end up with is a serious denial of the problem even existing. Like I said, this is all moot and a vicious cycle of never having a meaningful discussion with both sides , trying to do so in Meta as many of you mentioned, just results in being attacked.

Bottom line, the elitists like their club and they love being able to flex their intellect to show superiority over beginners and then there are enough experts that really are there to help with grace and politeness that want to share their knowledge with others, not impose it, that makes it just good enough to come back and use when we really need some help… but, very very sparingly. About two hours into exploring SO and discovering that the time was wasted; I gladly deleted my account! I have better things to do, such as answer real life questions. I am holding a middle finger up to SO.

I agree with you. SO is not even an Open Source Community. My experience with SO is quite negative. I even had one moderator stalking my answers and being impartial. Not even trying to help other people counts, what counts is that you generate visits mainly with your questions not your answers. The SO moderators have a very bossy, smart-ass, me-genius-you-dumb-fuck arrogant attitude a bunch of social lepers with no life. The sad thing is some enterprises are beginning to accept SO and its shitty medals and points record as a credible way to determine whether you are a good programmer or not.

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I hope some other alternatives come up soon. And here is recent evidence that supports the arguments and point set forth by commenters and the author. I am not saying that SO in useless or fails as a general concept at all. It is a wonderful collaborative tool, but i think the requirements to be a moderator should be far more strict.

For example in the CS site that i posted, proof of expertise — such as a M. This could be an avenue for SO to begin to hook into the edu market and improve the accuracy of E-Learning. I have asked 4 questions. I am a student, I tend to do research from that research questions and doubts arise. How the heck should I clarify them? Well, by asking… right? There should be someone with the answer and the knowledge. They should show that knowledge and help other people. This question goes against their policy — http: