Emerald Ize: King of the Pirates

It's Silent In These Halls. In Any Ordinary Life. Raiders of the High Seas. Three Father Christmas Letters for Beast Quest Early Reader: Ravira, Ruler of the Underworld. Daughters of the Sea King. They Marvel at the Star. Kidnapped for the King. The Man Who Drew Triangles. Talk Like a Pirate! The Wind in the Willows. Thorfinn and the Gruesome Games. The Hand of the Viking Warrior. For Such a Time as This. The Eye of the Viking God. Zaddik and the Seafarers. 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.

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.

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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. 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.

Delphi programming and more

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.

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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??

Emerald Ize: King of the Pirates

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.

Smashwords – Emerald Ize: King of the Pirates - A book by Richie Neville - page 2

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! 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. 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: Which is why Stack has long considered removing it, since folks like you always point this question out as the reason why you should be able to ask your book recommendation questions.

You are simply jealous of the success that it has in helping people like me to tackle programming problems. I am sick and tired of this crab in a barrel mentality you people seem to have. This is why we stagnate in productivity and innovation because you people are so obsessed with status recognition that you will hold back millions of people from learning something that can benefit not just themselves but the entire world at large. Ours or anyone at Stack Overlord.

My experiences with SO is summed up by your post, which reminded me of this post on SO: To figure out why compatibility mode is being switched to automatically when on the SE network of sites? Yes I too ran into Bill the Lizard and can see I am not alone in thinking he uses his delete finger far too often so add me to the list that named and shamed him. A is much better actually. I would say stackoverflow is full of asshole. I would never go there again. Can I reserve Navarra? Last edited by Greater Mobile on Fri Jun 26, 4: The Confederated Republics of Greater Mobile.

Member of The Western Isles Svalbardian international policy summarized: Do they exist in CE? I thought they did, but no, they don't. I was really wanting to play a Basque character, but I think an independent Basque kingdom would be too much of a divergence from reality. Scratch that reservation, I'll take Lithuania. Please reserve the vandal kingdom. This is going to be fun.

Neoliberal Civil Libertarian I Enjoy: Blues, Paradox Games and Sci-fi. Bad relations with the Italians, good relations with the Byzantines Character history: Thrasamund is the grandson of the legendary king Geiseric, and he is the fourth Vandal king of Carthage. From birth he was raised as an elite member of Vandal society, and he was trained in the ways of governance and war.

Thrasamund also ended decades of religious persecution in his kingdom, but if this was out of the kindness of his heart or a play at increasing relations with Rome remains to be seen. He has only led his nation for four years, but he is determined that his people will stand strong under his vigilant watch.

The Kingdom of the Vandals and the Alans Rank: The Vandal sack of Rome in began a renaissance for the Vandal people. For four decades, the vandals raided the Western Roman empire, growing rich off of Roman loot, until the death of Attila the Hun. When the realm of the Huns fell, Rome could focus her attention back to the Vandals, and this was the end of the pirating era.

The vandal king Geiseric led his people to cross the Mediterranean sea into North Africa. There, they settled, and their kingdom grew exponentially. They conquered the city of Carthage, and their they made their stronghold. Today, the Vandal kingdom is still growing, but they are struggeling. The elite are Vandalic Arians, while the laypeople of the kingdom are Nicene Chrisitans. This causes minor divides between the Vandal rulers and their people, but the real threat lies abroad.

The historic sack of Rome and perecution of Catholics by the Vandals has left a sour taste in the mouth of the resurging Italian people, and the Berber tribes grow evermore restless for the return of what they deem their homelands. In order to survive, Thrasamund of Carthage must hold off a potential Berber invasion of his lands, and he must prevent a bloody war with the revived Italian republic.