The Right Glue

(2009-06-21 09:15:18)

Some things I have seen in the last couple of weeks have made me want to talk to you about my views regarding anonymity in general and this blog's comment system specifically.

Let's get this out of the way first: no, I am not just talking about 4chan. I'm talking about account-creation, moderation, commenting and other general stuff like that. Yes, I have advocated anonymity before and will certainly do so again today.

It all started when someone on Stack Overflow brought up the question How can I moderate trolls algorithmically? My answer was, of course, you can't. There is no way to detect a benevolent human from a malevolent human, at least with today's technology. The best we can do is detect non-human spammers based on their predictable behaviour. Malevolent humans will pass any Turing test by definition.

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A yey for low Barriers of Entry! by Baronen (2009-06-21 14:09:46)

Would not purchase again by Everyone's favorite Ohioan (2009-06-23 11:39:34)

XML is not regular

By Dean

(2009-06-04 18:49:07)

Invariably, people on Stack Overflow ask questions about how to parse XML, HTML and their ugly daughter XHTML. Ignoring the most obvious solution to their problem (which would be to use a pre-existing XML parser), they think they should use regular expressions (regex for short). Now they have two problems, to quote the famous anti-regex saying.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like regular expressions. Parsing, formal languages, finite automata; these are among my favourite things. Regular expressions course through my veins. That's why it hurts me so when people try to misapply them and then emit quotes like the one in the previous paragraph.

Regular expressions were not designed to apply in every situation. They are not even remotely close to a universal parser (that would be a Turing machine). For some reason, inexperienced programmers equate the concept of parsing things with using regular expressions. Not only is that just plain misinformed, it's often more work to bend an algorithm to use regular expressions in the wrong situation than it is to do something more directly.

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Terminology by Specification Lad (2009-06-07 20:21:49)

Terminology? More like pedantry. by Dean (2009-06-07 20:43:29)

In defense of pseudocode

By Dean

(2009-05-26 22:48:41)

Me, I love pseudocode. It's useful in so many situations, like duct tape. Or dogs. Or dogs covered in duct tape.

But recently the world's computerscience-est Nosferatu (and I swear both of those are words) wrote an article which can be paraphrased down to "pseudocode is overrated". Paraphrasing an article down to a string smaller than its Kolmogorov complexity is a feat only possible by a mathemagician like me. That's how I can defeat this creature of the night: lossy compression.

Alright, now I'm going to start making sense. Insofar as I normally do. Yeah.

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Comment by pstorer (2009-05-27 10:26:34)

Smart ass by CodingHorror (2009-05-27 11:20:17)

Time and space

By Dean

(2009-05-09 11:14:18)

Recently I had the opportunity to meet someone online who hates programmers.

Seriously, he hates programmers. I had trouble understanding why at first. It seemed to me like he was taking the common "Microsoft sucks" attitude one step farther than normal. He extended all of the little issues he has with software to programmers in general. This isn't completely unjustified. Programmers are the root cause of his issues, after all.

After I spent a few minutes arguing with him, trying to understand his point of view, he mentioned in passing a complaint that Vista was an example of poor programming because of how much space it takes up on his hard drive. His reasoning was that smaller programs are faster, because to him this was obvious. As he stated this I realized that this argument, though completely incorrect, seems obvious to people who don't have a background in computer science.

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BTK WITH THE RESPONSE by Mike (2009-05-10 17:21:42)

Because you referenced it, I have to comment on it. by Josh (2009-06-04 17:47:10)

Why do I even dignify that with a response? by Dean (2009-06-04 17:52:54)

More layout than you can handle

By Dean

(2009-04-15 20:01:23)

I've made some changes to the site since the last big update. Mostly little things here and there, but once again I want to bring them into the spotlight in the interest of full disclosure, sharing ideas and to elaborate on why I do these crazy things that I do.

The first thing is I've changed the way URLs are constructed on this site. I got the idea from Stack Overflow to use URLs that are a bit more descriptive and friendly than simply view.php?postid=50. In reality, the title portion of the URL isn't used by any part of the site, it's just there to give people an idea of what the page is about if it's posted bare on a forum or IRC channel. It's also something that should help my site's ranking in search engines (a process called search engine optimization). Not that I haven't already gotten lots of weird hits from Google before...

Another thing I've done that you may have seen is the year and month drop-down lists next to the search text box. It used to have one entry for every month/year combination. At the time I changed it, there were 19 fields in that drop-down list.

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Comment by Dupe (2009-04-20 20:15:53)

Re; Comment by Dean (2009-04-21 07:45:25)

Comment by Dupe (2009-05-14 18:32:40)

Donutomology

By Doug

(2009-04-01 00:26:12)

To celebrate my new layout I wanted to talk to you about donutomological biology. You see, I am the world's foremost donutomologist and wanted to cover with you some details regarding donut taxonomy.

(If you can't read this post due to the colours, please refresh your browser for a new set of colours. If you can't read this post, then how do you know you should refresh your browser to get a new set of colours? This kind of mystery is better left to a mysterographer. I'm just a donutomologist. Leave me alone.)

It all started when I was but a boy of five. I got to see Tim Horton, the world famous donut hunter, for my birthday. I was thrilled. The man was seven feet tall, covered from head to toe in donut skeletons. I had always idolized him for bringing the delicious donut from the plains of Saskatchewan to my plate at his store. I'll never forget what he told me that day: "Donuts never sleep." I dedicated my life to studying this elusive animal from that day forth.

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Donutae cioccolata mintus by Doug (2009-04-01 07:31:42)

Donutae Blanca blossomi by Tex (2009-04-02 03:18:35)

About time! by Dean (2009-04-02 06:35:51)

My new favourite MMORPG

By Dean

(2009-03-18 20:17:36)

From the world's nerdiest vampire and some guy who writes an awful lot comes my favourite massively multiplayer online role-playing game Stack Overflow. I was introduced to Stack Overflow by the world's best-paid Internet troll Rich B (who, like bstorer before him, is stealing my face for his avatar) a few months ago as a place to post some anonymous WTF code for a good laugh.

At first glance, I thought that Stack Overflow was a very bad idea. I wanted to post about it here almost immediately, but then reason struck me in the head and told me it would be better if I use it for a while before forming an opinion about it. Instead of just relying on my first impressions of the site, I decided to hang around, gain some levels and gank some noobs before coming to a conclusion.

So now, after two months, I can tell you that Stack Overflow is a very bad idea. But it's a damned entertaining bad idea.

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You're an Ass Hat by SO User (2009-04-03 15:49:22)

The post in which I explain my hatred of Firefox

By Dean

(2009-03-09 18:38:21)

I had a number of things I wanted to write about that are pretty interesting to me, but I am currently in that state of mind in which I can't write what I want to write and have been for almost a month now.

One theme you may have noticed on The Right Glue is my general dislike of the Mozilla Firefox browser. It's there in the footnote on every page, and a few comments some have made on related subjects.

Firefox is a fine browser. It's got plenty of nice features, it's got a good rendering engine. It eats RAM like a bloodthirsty vampire, but I don't really hold that against it. What I can't stand is its users.

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My email... by Stackoverflow question... (2009-03-18 15:43:21)

Reinventing the wheel by Jess (2009-03-20 20:51:28)

Comment by Dean (2009-03-21 07:46:38)

This is some kind of footnote. This webpage is awesome and can be viewed in any browser. Even ones that suck ass like Safari and Firefox. Isn't that awesome? This site is best viewed with browsers that aren't maximized on large-resolution displays (> 1024 pixels in width). But then again, if you are running a large resolution and browsing maximized, then you're a terrible person so you don't really deserve to see this site at its finest. Jerk. I mean, seriously. I spend all this time making a nice site and your silly browsing habits ruin its look. That's really cold, man. If you're using IE6, then in order to see the cool avatar effects you need to enable JavaScript. No rights reserved by Dean Whelton (who is awesome) of any of the content, images, design, backend or electrons used in this site. Steal at your convenience. None of it is worth stealing anyway, so there. I have even made an RSS feed for more efficient theft of my intellectual property: CLICK IT NOW!!! Now, don't say I'm not generous. I guess if you want to know more about me, you can visit the about page. It's not really an about page, though. It's just one of the first posts. I don't feel like making a real about page. You can contact me, too. If you feel like it. Are you really wasting time reading this? Go outside or something.