Courtesy of PP...

Am I the only one that is utterly bored with Hacker News?

It was great when I first signed up a year ago, but now I check it more out of habit. The article and discussion quality has went down tremendously from even 6 months ago.

This is vbulletin 3.8x isn't it?

at the bottom of the page it says 3.6.0, in the html source 3.8.7 - who knows what it actually is

I don't know much about vbulletin, but I'm thinking vBSEO is a different component than the vbulletin software maybe.

I'm asking in reference to the recent vbulletin zero day that effects versions 4 and 5.

I actually tried looking in the html source, but I'm still just learning html. Where did you find that in there?

oops yeah I can't read, VBSEO is 3.6.0

in the source very near the top, there is:
also a little further down:
At this point (post the famous 2p2 hacking that took the site down for a month or however long it was), I am fairly certain it's running something not exactly standard issue whatever the versioning numbers say - and I think it already was somewhat non-standard just to cope with the size of the site (big reason we're not on a newer version afaik).

thx

Those were English words and my average has since dropped to the low 90s. Guess I ran hot with a sample of one try
WPM is fixed to n-characters but I'm curious now if I'd type faster if it was a German text, an English text or a block of code due to a shorter cycle from comprehension to finger

Would be genuinely interesting to see someone do an extended typing test of English prose vs code.

It's not just on the database side these days though. Something, something, ORM, something, select n+1 :P
But as you pointed out the database side tends to be a pain when it comes to actually changing it.

Sorry if this is the wrong place for this question, any information is appreciated. If this is enough for it's own thread let me know and I'll create one.

Does anyone know what type of languages (and any other info you have) are typically used in industrial automation and/or control systems? I'm thinking things like power plant systems that monitor temperatures and make adjustments, possibly integrated with touch panels etc etc.

Basically I've been learning and implementing (for my current job) a proprietary language similar to C++ that is used for automation/control in the AV industry and runs off designated processors and touch panels. I'm looking to start learning more complex languages so I can be a viable candidate for jobs in that field.

edit: the language is Netlinx if that means anything

I just wait for http://www.hackernewsletter.com/ in my email every friday for the top articles, although now that you mention it, I'm not reading as many of those articles either.

friend of mine just posted this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...idae:_rorquals

check out the second column from the right.

when you see it...

No idea what I am supposed to be seeing.

Very nice.

oh ha, nice.. I was looking at the pictures like a moran for a penis or something.

There's an open source language called Clockwork which has an episode on FLOSS weekly: http://twit.tv/show/floss-weekly/263

They also mention the common proprietary languages and the like in it iirc.

Otherwise it tends to be plain old C/embedded ASM

um stupid question probably but can you actually shell into github or otherwise use git commands on the repos you have on there? yeah.

Why would you want to do stuff on the actual repo instead of your local machine?

yes. there's instructions on their fine website, but basically you use a git@github.comath/to/repo url.

PLCs with IEC 61131-3

yeah couldn't find anything on their site because I have the hardest time there, maybe I'm a tard. Wanted to delete a branch on the remote but then googled it and came up with git push origin --delete <branchName> anyways so thats fine etc.

Has anyone here used a program so bad that it mystifies you to the point that you can't help trying to reverse engineer it in your head, and every single assumption is based on the idea that the program was built with zero effort, care, or intelligence?

The initial problem is that this program is deadly slow. I can't quite figure it out. We don't have that many products. Yes, we have more than 100k, but that isn't enough to cause the latency of this program. The only thing that sounds somewhat logical here is that the company is holding every single product from every single customer in one database table. I think that, at that point, we can be looking at 2 million SKUs and that would probably cause some latency.

I've managed to figure out that the database is purely transactional. I have to do a few operations often. The first is to move products from one folder to another. The second is to delete products that are no longer needed. Ideally, I'd like to select all the products returned by one query and run the needed operation on all of them. I can't do this for two reasons. First, the action is sent to a background process, which means that the products "disappear," and there is no way to see the products during this time. This is further compounded by the fact that I am not able to confirm a pass for at least a few hours, and honestly, it generally takes a few days before I can "see" the products again. Second, if one operation fails, the whole operation fails. Basically, the whole operation rolls back and doesn't even throw an error. All of this means that I can only move or delete about 100 products at a time. Of course, any of these operations can take several minutes. I've seen it take over 5 minutes at times. Unfortunately, this is not enough time to do anything else, so I, and everyone else at work, spend a ton of time staring at our computer screens dozing off.

Sometimes we have to create a new folder to place our items in for organization. This is another operation that appears transaction-based and is deadly slow. I ponder if they aren't doing "CREATE TABLE <foo> ...." Sometimes we have to rename folders. Even with an empty folder, this can take over five minutes. This sort of proves that it can't be "CREATE TABLE <foo>..." because that operation should theoretically only take a few seconds.

Maybe the slow program is a result of a massive attempt (and fail) at async? I don't know. I did a find on the source and there are over 50 JavaScript tags on one page. Many are inline, at the top of the page, at the bottom of the page, and others are external. I once turned off the javascript thinking it may go a little faster, but every single thing on the page broke. I couldn't even use the navigation buttons. The only thing I could do was enter something into the search box. Of course, the Submit button didn't do anything.

The program can't count down. It can sort of count towards zero, but it can't quite figure out how to count down dependably. We have a few hacks to work around this problem, but of course, they are hacks, and certainly not pretty.

This morning, there was a problem. I was told that they did an update to the database and that broke a bunch of the functionality of the program. I guess this means they don't test or consider rolling back.

I could write an entire book on how strange and convoluted this program is. While it is slightly faster than using an Excel sheet, I can't imagine how this program really helps out. Of course, I am tasked with dealing with most of the issues, so I get days like today where I waste my entire day dealing with all the trash that piles up from this thing.

I'm pretty sure that this is the single worst program in existence that is paid for by end-users. It is proof that you don't need a viable product to make a good nickle. It seriously makes me wonder how any startup can fail.

Thanks for the info guys

I just downloaded the latest version of shockwave/flash addon for firefox, the file for which is now somewhere on my computer (prob in users->appdata->etc), but not in a file format that i could easily right-click->open with notepad and read. And im just wondering, is it in any way possible to take this file and open it such that I can view/read the lines of code that Adobe wrote in order to make this latest version of the flash addon for firefox? (and of course, if this is possible, I would very much like to know how I can do it).

Dave, did the company you're working for buy it from someone else or do you offer that product to end users but with less features?

It sounds like something no one would buy from your description.