User talk:Scs/Archive/2007

This is an archive of past discussions. Please do not edit.
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Escalation

Steve, I was so impressed with your description of a typical skirmish between an inexperienced (arent we all in some ways ) user and the general community including the admins. I think it summarises the problems exactly. I would encourage you to publish this as an essay or something so that everyone can read it. It may be useful also to refer some people to it in future prevention of such escalation.8-)--Light current 13:51, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. That was a first draft of something I've been meaning to write for a while. I will be doing something more with it. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:58, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Re Paris Metro

Agreed! It is looking in excellent shape. Wish I could say that was more down to me! Polocrunch 14:12, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Good observation!

This is exactly true, no matter how well-meaning we all may be. When ever you notice this, please do speak up- any good editor will appreciate someone leaving them a note (or even email) saying "Pssst! Your intentions are good, but you're causing needless strife when you do things like >whatever<". I have greatly valued your input as a sensible voice of moderation in this whole unfortunate debacle, so I hope you keep it up. Friday (talk) 03:59, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

RFA?

You seem to be a sensible, experienced editor, but I see no admin actions in your log. If you've not been given admin access yet, what would you say to an adminship nomination? Friday (talk) 04:06, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I must decline for now, but I'm flattered by and do appreciate the suggestion. Thank you. —Steve Summit (talk) 13:57, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

By all means...

...lift whatever you find useful from my comments. Feel free to smooth any rough edges, too; I was working in a bit of a hurry when I drafted them. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:05, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

WT:RD

Nah, I'll leave it since you tagged it so well! I was just feeling so damn discouraged that I thought my comment would just add fuel. Thanks for restoring, I think that it should be there.  :-) --hydnjo talk 22:46, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Absinthe ...

{snicker, chortle)  :) JackofOz 23:10, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

WP:RD/M#Death

Per your comment on my comment: When I was 3, a grandfather I did not know well died. I said to the grandfather I did know well that maybe distant relatives died, but my local family that I knew and loved wouldn't would they? He told me clearly that all of us would die in time, including me, and that it was just part of life. That eliminated a lot of doubt and denial. Edison 19:04, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

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OS security (Windows and otherwise)

[continued from a discussion Consumed Crustacean and I have been having at the Computing Reference Desk]

...And some of [the argument you made in the "and then there's the security issue" thread] is just rubbish. There are plenty of exploits, technological and social, to root or otherwise compromise the security of a multitude of OSs if you have local access. Many viruses and worms spread through social engineering, convincing people to open email extensions or files in instant messengers, which obviously grants that access. And if a program in Linux opens up a sudo window, and the user has no idea if it's malevolent, it's very possible that they'll enter in their password without thought. Of course it is less secure, but a technologically incompetent user will be as insecure with any OS which provides any measure of freedom. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 01:39, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Don't say, "some of that is just rubbish". Please be specific.

• "There are plenty of exploits... to root or otherwise compromise the security of a multitude of OSs"

There are a very few. By comparison to the number of exploits for Windows systems, there are practically zero.

• "...if you have local access"

If you grant an attacker local access to your system, you are very stupid, and the problem of protecting your machine becomes exponentially harder. Yet well-designed systems give you some protection even here, by ensuring that a user-mode compromise can't escalate privileges to root.

• "Many viruses and worms spread through social engineering... which obviously grants that access."

This is not only not obvious, it is quite false, and it is at the heart of the PC virus epidemic.

Even if you convince a user to open an attachment, where is it written that the attachment, if executable, must be run? If there simply wasn't a way to easily run an executable from an untrustworthy source (from an attachment in an email, or from a random web page) the PC security landscape would be vastly, vastly different.

• "...if a program in Linux opens up a sudo window... it's very possible that..."

But this never happens.

It's all well and good to claim that these or similar exploits are "possible" on other systems. So why don't they ever happen? Because the evil nasty hackers all love the Unix and Mac and Linux and Solaris users so much that they decline to even try? Or because the task isn't actually so possible after all?

• "a technologically incompetent user will be as insecure with any OS which provides any measure of freedom"

Simply false. (Fortunately.)

Most users are technologically incompetent, so if we had to rely on them to keep our computers and networks secure, we'd have a huge problem. Fortunately, it's possible to engineer in lots of protections. (Unfortunately, in the Windows world, these protections haven't been engineered in, and most of the responsibility is left to the users, which is why we do have a huge problem.)

—Steve Summit (talk) 03:16, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I was specific. You're the one stating uniquivocably that Windows is far less secure without actually giving any reasoning besides "OS X and Unix are more secure".

Okay, I did make that bald assertion, so fair enough, although I did allude to some specific reasons also (e.g., the relative dearth on platforms other than Windows of mechanisms which make it trivially easy to execute wantonly untrustworthy programs).

On your points:

• Bullshit. Have you read any security websites?

Whose bullshit? One figure I've heard is that there are 114,000 viruses for Windows. (Now, granted, I got that figure from one of Apple's Mac-vs-PC ads, so it might be biased.) Now, how many actually, circulating-in-the-wild viruses are there for Mac or Linux? (Proofs of concept don't count.)

And even without root access a program can wreak havoc.

Sure, but with root access it can wreak even more havoc! Are you implying that separation of privilege is an unimportant or useless concept? (If yes, then so are seat belts and balcony railings.)

• How do you think email attachment viruses spread? There's one right now that's going around by claiming to be an antivirus program. User runs it, it has local access.

Sure. It was mind-bogglingly, criminally stupid for anyone to have ever rigged up an e-mail program that made it 1-click easy to run an executable attachment as a program, because in a world where spam email and malicious web pages exist, this is tantamount to giving everyone on the planet local access to your computer. Not a good idea.

(Yes, I know, some especially gullible people will carefully save the attachment, set executable bits as necessary, and run it anyway. But in the same epidemic-inducing numbers?)

(Actually, we're probably talking past each other here. You wrote, "plenty of exploits... compromise the security... if you have local access. Many viruses and worms spread through social engineering, convincing people to open email extensions... which obviously grants that access." Now, yes, obviously this does happen, all the time. What I was objecting to, and calling dangerously false, is the notion that it has to be this way. Again, why is it obvious, where is it written that the default action for an attachment of type .exe has to be to hand it to, not some helper app as if it were an image or other data file, but rather, to the unfettered CPU for arbitrary execution?)

• So, umm, you want to make it hard to run executables?

I want to make it nearly impossible to run blatantly untrustworthy executables, and utterly impossible to do so carelessly or accidentally, i.e. with a single mouse click.

Just removing the executable attribute won't work;

Won't work at all? Won't help even a teeny bit?

if you can convince users to run an executable because their computer is at risk if they don't, you can convince them to flag it and then run it

And if you can con them into a game of three card monte you can rob them blind. Does that mean we should (a) all play, or (b) go out of our way to design email systems which are bolted onto our accounting systems such that random strangers can send us emails saying "I would like to transfer $1000 from your account to mine. Click 'Yes' to confirm your denial of this transaction. Click 'No' to disagree that this is a bad idea."

• It's all well and good to claim that something never happens based on a lack of evidence, but to simply disregard it as ever possibly happening because it disturbs your personal view is foolish.

I didn't disregard it as ever possibly happening because it disturbs my personal view. Read what I wrote. I noted that it never happened either because (a) the evil nasty hackers all love the Unix and Mac and Linux and Solaris users so much that they decline to even try, or (b) the task (or writing a viable Mac or Unix virus) isn't actually so easily possible after all. Now, which possibility do you think I think actually applies? (Hint: it ain't (a).)

And then, to claim UAC has problems when they basically consist of convincing the user to do the same thing [1] (and yes, I realize the point that article is making)...

UAC has lots of problems. They're not the ones which that article is muddlingly trying to get to; that article was actually pretty unfair towards Microsoft and UAC.

The two biggest problems with UAC are (1) that it exists at all (because it has to, to coddle all the installers that haven't been rewritten for Vista yet, that assume they have Administrator privilege and can do anything), and (2) that, depending on how many such programs you try to run, the UAC prompts rapidly become staggeringly annoying such that you either ignore them or disable them, in either case defeating their purpose and leaving you just about as insecure as earlier versions of Windows were.

• Again, bullshit.

Which bit?

I use Windows without an issue.

But that's not saying anything! Obviously an expert user who likes Windows can use it safely and effectively. The problem -- the huge, gaping, epidemic problem -- is the hundreds of millions of nonexpert users who Microsoft has oh-so-successfully sold their Swiss-cheese-for-security systems to, users who will click "yes" on anything.

I know some users who have actually intentionally installed Gator, though. The only reason they're saved right now on "alternate OSs" is because the number of people targeting those platforms is minimal.

And, again, that is not the only reason, but we're obviously not going to convince each other on this point.

I'm not saying that Windows is secure. It's not, and there are a plethora of issues. I'm just saying that most of the insecurity will always come from the user, and such things would affect most any OS. -- Consumed Crustacean (talk) 13:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I answered this last part in the thread. —Steve Summit (talk) 04:22, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

ref desk

cheers stevePerry-mankster 13:58, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Semi-protected

I got bored with the IP's blanking you talk page so I've semi-protected it for two weeks. Just find an admin if you want it unprotected. Cheers. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 22:57, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Muscovy Duck

There is an agreed convention on Wikipedia that bird species names are fully capitalise. I have therefore moved this article back and restored the upper case. Thanks, Jimfbleak.talk. 15:46, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. (I should have checked the guidelines more closely.) —Steve Summit (talk) 00:28, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Troll

It wasn't a very credible question was it: fags are driving me to suicide? It had the smell of troll about it. And so it proved to be. --Tagishsimon (talk)

Godwin's Law

What is the problem with too-facile analogies to Nazism, and the point of Godwin's law? A.Z. 19:51, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, first, have you read our article on Godwin's law? —Steve Summit (talk) 01:01, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

"Still running after three whole days"

I'd have to say your "poetry," coming from a programmer, is as bad as the computer error I (a former English professor) made. :P --Halcatalyst 22:13, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Soybean

Just a note, but someone has removed your POV tag on the article soybean that you were discussing on that articles talk page. I've re-added it once, however it has since been removed. Please review the article and subsequent re-writes and ensure your points have been addressed. Note the users making the edits Renpol (talk · contribs) and LenesisZ (talk · contribs) are both recently created accounts whose only edits have been to that particular article. --Quartet 19:35, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

NPA poll

They don't participate in straw polls, but I'll concede. Last time someone tried this, DC was the only one to step up.[2]—AL ^FOCUS! 22:30, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I see. Thanks for that link. —Steve Summit (talk) 22:37, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Of light standards and charlatans

Hi Steve Summit:

I noticed your kind defense of me and the reply. I think it's very nice of you to stick up for me, but possibly fruitless. I removed my responses when I realised that my original goal to convince SteveBaker that my contribution was in good faith had abysmally failed, and that in fact his responses were trolling and I'd just been sucked in. His rationale and his approach are both unreasonable and untenable, and the whole video thing is a complete red herring. I think it's just best to let that part of the thread die, because it's polarising the board. I think it's kind of too bad that he didn't take the hint and delete his comments too, since they are off topic and add nothing to the thread, but with his attacking stance right now it's not a surprise. Anyways, thanks very much again, and bump into you somewhere else on the pedia hopefully. Cheers! Anchoress 08:03, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Troll on the science desk. 6/20/07

Are you sure that was a troll? I checked the user's IP history and it's only edit is to the ref desk. The question was basically asking if the ethanol content in gin and vodka are at a high enough concentration to effectively sterilize one's hands with. It seems fairly legit. Or am I missing something about the user... Sifaka ^talk 03:02, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• Nevermind. Another user seems to have identified him as a banned user. Sorry for bugging you. Sifaka ^talk 03:04, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Pain

Not sure if you'll be pleased with this or not...

I noticed your table alignment edit at the refdesk. I should point out that this could have been achieved with style="text-align: center;" placed after the class=wikitable (but still on the same line). I don't know if you used some manner of text replace tool to do it or if you did it manually, but the knowledge would have saved you some bother.  slυмgυм [ ←→ ] 20:47, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh! Thanks. I thought something like that ought to be possible, but m:Help:Table suggests that "it seems to be necessary to apply this individually to every single row", and I didn't feel like experimenting.

(And don't worry, yes, I used a text replace tool!) —Steve Summit (talk) 20:52, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Speedy

Well anyway, congratulations on being first - it was a toughie, and I didn't think anyone else would get it, certainly not as quickly as you did! --Richardrj ^{talk email} 22:24, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Energizer bunny

Those little alkaline batteries really produce a shocking amount of current. Edison 14:29, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Just a heads up

88.110.189.168 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) has it in for you, or something -- he's been systematically removing all of your reference desk comments in some kind of vendetta. I warned him but, you know. --Haemo 21:37, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I know. Thanks. —Steve Summit (talk) 21:47, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Recent edits to your talk page

See this. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 21:44, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Yup. "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance", and all that. —Steve Summit (talk) 21:47, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for guarding the Ref Desk, Steve Mhicaoidh 00:37, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. Currently I'm keeping a loose eye on this through User:Luna Santin/Sockwatch/Refdesk. If you see anything you'd like to add to the page, especially common targets that aren't listed, feel free. Other than that, if you'd like me to semi-protect anything in your userspace, let me know. – Luna Santin (talk) 23:53, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Steve, I've now watchlisted your page also - one more pair of eyes looking for vandalism. Great chatting with you today! Johntex\^talk 22:21, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Your take on the reference desk

Hello, Steve. I took the liberty of creating my own subpage containing your take on the reference desk. I wanted to add an unarchivable link to the collection of RD-relevant links on my user page. I hope you don't mind, and if you ever do essayify it, I will gladly redirect there. ---Sluzzelin talk 23:51, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Simón Bolívar

Image: Simón_Bolívar.jpg
See? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.185.130.165 (talk • contribs) 22:25, 24 July 2007

Maybe. Could be an artifact.

Since you (a) didn't say what you were talking about, (b) didn't sign your post, and (c) had never posted before from this IP address, naturally I was suspicious. If you want to post the question again, providing the link to the picture this time, I won't complain. --Steve Summit (talk) 22:39, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Airplane!

Just a note that I appreciated your sense of humor on the Reference desk.

"Roger, Roger", Baccyak4H (Yak!) 03:06, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

User:TwatFace

Can this not be handled on the basis of an undesirable user name? I can't seem to find any edits or contributions that this user has made to date. Ideas? Best regards, Hamster Sandwich 21:25, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

There is no such user. See here, here, and here. --Steve Summit (talk) 21:28, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Scsbot

Please stop running Scsbot - all bots (including semi-automated accounts or ones not requiring a bot flag) are required to be approved via the WP:BRFA policy. Bots not approved will be blocked, and if you continue using the account I will have it blocked.

If you need assistance with the BRFA process, I will happily assist.

Thanks! Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 01:11, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I will comply; however, please note that if you were to block the bot account I could always run the same code under my own account and no one would ever know.

The bot is safe and is desired by the users of the Reference Desks. I am reviewing all of its edits by hand. Please take a moment and consider whether your actions are primarily motivated by the improvement of the project, or the enforcement of rules. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:20, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Im enforcing the rules, as we cannot make exceptions. If you put in a BRFA, I will immediately approve for trial, then approve, but it still has to go through officially. Also note I cannot block the bot, I am not an administrator. I believe its safe and useful, but rules are rules, and they are necessary. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 01:42, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

BRFA already in.

I'm not trying to give you a hard time, just as I know that you are not trying to give me a hard time. Cf. WP:IAR. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:45, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I have approved for a trial, let it run for 3 days then I will officially approve. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 01:46, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!

Note that the three days may take longer than three days (i.e. may not be contiguous), because I can be busy or forget to invoke it some nights. (But the archiving code is designed to allow for this possibility.) —Steve Summit (talk) 01:49, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if its three days of work, just that it's been running for 3 days. I'll approve it either way. Sorry for bothering you with this, its just that bots can be very dangerious and unapproved bots can cause big problems. Hopefully it wasn't too much hassle. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 02:43, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

It was a tiny bit of hassle, but no, not too much. :-) Thanks for caring. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:01, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok, since the edits are fine, I realised the trial is unnecessary, and your bot has been speedily approved. Continue as normal, as if this never happened. Due to regulations, the bot will be flagged, but this makes no difference and makes it easier for RC patrollers etc to work. Thanks! Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 03:42, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Note that bot-approval is just a courtesy (enforced with the ban cudgel as usual) and some people who want to codify everything need to back off. --froth^t 04:23, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

re that shortcut box

sigh.. you or whoever added that box didn't know what they were doing. In my browser (firefox 2) the shortcuts box appears off to the right of the table of contents... and creates a nasty white space between the header and the table of contents. It's a total mess. --froth^t 04:15, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

"Didn't know what I was doing", eh? Given that (a) I didn't design the template or the HTML/CSS behind it, (b) the same template is used in the same way on all the other desks without (seeming) complaint, and (3) it renders okay in my browser, I wonder how I was supposed to know it wasn't going to work for you?

How much of a mess is a "total mess"? How does it look on the other desks?

Let's bring this up at Wikipedia talk:Reference desk, where the people who might have designed that template, and also {{Wikipedia:Reference_desk/headercfg}} which which it needs to interact, sometimes hang out. —Steve Summit (talk) 11:23, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

TripleBatteryLife's home page.

Hey! Go to TripleBatteryLife's user page and follow the [1] link to the patented battery life extender! It's pretty hilarious. He has no clue about why batteries still exhibit a voltage (under no load) when they are exhausted! Or why batteries "recharge" a bit when allowed to rest for a while. He's built an entire free energy thing out of it! This guy really doesn't like to read actual factual data...this explains a lot! When the current debate is over, we must ask him to try using his technology to recharge batteries and watch him fall into a trap of the "1st Law of thermodynamics"-kind! No - perhaps he's just an easy target. SteveBaker 21:39, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh, dear. (It didn't occur to me that his username might be literal.) —Steve Summit (talk) 23:51, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Just for grins, I looked up his patent for extending battery life. Get this: It's basically a set of switches on a flashlight that lets you switch on or off individual batteries in order to let some of them rest and "naturally recharge". I suspect that the phenomenon that makes him believe this happens is that the build up of reaction products around the electrode of a battery will sometimes make it seem dead when it still has a tiny amount of life left in it. Letting the battery rest for a while will allow those byproducts to float off away from the electrode and get you back (typically) a few seconds more usage before it dies for good. Quite how he parlays this phenomena into tripling battery life is strange! I suspect that his observation that even a totally dead battery still retains 2/3rds of it's original voltage (as measured by a meter stuck across the terminals no doubt). Hence, he reasons, if you've "used up" one third of the voltage when the battery dies, you "ought" to be able to run it three times as long before it hits zero. Sadly, he's looking a the zero-load voltage - the moment you try to draw any current, that voltage goes to zero. But I strongly suspect that's why he claims to be able to triple the life. This is a very sad story! The guy won't listen to any explanations on any topic whatever - which means he's never discovered these very basic battery facts - which is causing him to try to build up a huge business on the basis of his invention. Sadly, it's not going to work. If he'd asked first - we could have helped him out! Now he's resorting to conspiracy theories to explain why nobody will get excited about his invention. SteveBaker 19:52, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Winmodems

Dear Steve:

Thanks for the response to my winmodem question. It cleared up many conceptual misunderstandings I have about winmodems.

So basically the "brain" of the modem was moved from a chip on the modem to a software residing on the hard drive. And from my college courses in DSP signal processing I would hazard a guess as to the nature of that "brain" being all the code that's needed to perform actual modulation/demodulation and all associated error-correction/timing/etc. All of which would, of course, be extremely difficult to extract out of a binary image of a compiled driver without prior specs.

But what I don't understand is: what does USR have to lose by publishing the specs so that the open-source community can write drivers for free? It's almost like a free publicity stunt! Lucent is doing it. And by not opening the specs USR will lose some customers (it has already lost me, I have decided to not have anything to do with USR from this point forward).

And I could really appreciate why the Linmodem project lost momentum: you could pull all kinds of heroic efforts to reconstruct 1 or maybe 2 winmodem drivers from scratch, but anymore than that and the process starts to get tiresome, and people lose interest and cop-out.

So I accept that a straightward reverse-engineering of each individual winmodem driver is a futile waste of time. Now, I've been thinking about another intriguing alternative for quite sometime and wants your opinion on it: if I were to try, instead, to understand how Windows interfaces with its device drivers, and to port that interface to Linux, then wouldn't Linux also be able to take advantage directly of whatever future (and past) winmodem drivers that have ever come out?

It seems that this idea has already been implemented in Ndiswrapper, as pointed out by Kainaw who also responded to my message. Do you know if it works with winmodem?

Thanks.

129.97.225.195 16:53, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I've never used ndiswrapper (so I don't know if it would work with winmodems), but it's a very interesting and useful idea.

I see, thanks for the encouragement, I will try to find out more about the part of the Windows HAL that deals specifically with modem devices, and see if there's anything I can try to hack at. 129.97.225.195 17:49, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

As to why US Robotics doesn't just "publish the specs" -- I suspect there are no useful, publishable specs. I suspect that 5-10 people from USR and 5-10 people from Microsoft spent 1-2 years working together (often in the same room) to get the thing to work. I suspect that all of their early, preliminary specification documents are now outdated and wrong, superseded by changes they had to make to their protocols along the way during implementation to get them to work, but which were never folded back in to the documentation. So USR doesn't have anything it can publish, and it isn't interested in expending resources to update the documentation, and if it were to publish the outdated documentation it does have, it would only open itself up to all sorts of questions ("Wait a minute, this doesn't make sense, and I tried it and it doesn't work, so how does it really work?") that it isn't interested in expending resources answering, for what it views as a niche market. —Steve Summit (talk) 17:10, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

[Sigh] Despite all the fame Linux has garnered in these past 16 years, it is still viewed as "niche market" by a non-descript company. My heart is now broken... :-( 129.97.225.195 17:49, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, not (I hope) to break your heart any further -- because I love open-source OSes at least as much as you do, and loathe Microsoft at least as much as you do -- but the simple (sad) fact is that Linux is a niche market in many areas. If you're selling commodity peripherals for commodity PCs, and if the market for your product among Windoze users is 100 or 1000 times greater than the market for your product among Linux, FreeBSD, or Mac users, then you really might decide that the incremental costs of supporting those additional markets are greater than the incremental revenues you'd get from them. —Steve Summit (talk) 18:09, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Bad BOT archive

Hiya Steve!
Just an FYI: Your BOT, Scsbot, made a bad 31 July archive to Reference desk/Mathematics. I don't know if it was just a fluke glitch or if you need to give your BOT a spanking! P=) In either case, as you can see I fixed it. ~Kaimbridge~20:14, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh, dear. Thanks much. Evidently I haven't been double-checking that little puppy as carefully as I had to... —Steve Summit (talk) 21:02, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay, bug found & fixed. (The code for detecting level-0 date headers was too liberal.)

Also, I've now implemented something I'd meant to have in there since day 1, namely an internal consistency double-check which would have caught this if you hadn't. —Steve Summit (talk) 22:34, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, if he does it again, you'll just have to withhold his Scooby snacks for a couple of days! P=) ~Kaimbridge~09:49, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

reference desk

i am interested in the anons question being answered. its a perfectly legitimate question, and rather than me posting a similar one, could i revert it please? thanks--fellow wikipedian User2222 00:47, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

by the way could i ask you an unrelated question?--User2222 00:58, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Please find something better to do. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:06, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Image:Malefemalepipe.jpg

Please upload this immage into commons --212.202.113.214 14:21, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Done. —Steve Summit (talk) 04:52, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Re: mystery text on Template:Wider attention list

First off, never edit the wider-attention list template directly, because the bot will invariably steamroll over any and all edits. In any case, the point is that you can add the optional reason yet not have a section name by doing this: {{wider attention|reason=your face}}. But I don't even see why the bot still updates the wider-attention list. I'm going to get my bot to stop managing the list. MessedRocker (talk) 10:12, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

WEIRDO

WEIRDO —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Corvettegrandsport (talk • contribs) 01:22:44, August 19, 2007 (UTC).

Thanks for noticing. HAND. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:31, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Sed and such

Thank you very much for taking the time to create this. Unfortunately, it's still a little over my head. Luckily, I've found a work around for the issue I was describing. Cheers. --MZMcBride 01:15, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Image source problem with Image:RuthGordon.jpg

Image Copyright problem

Thanks for uploading Image:RuthGordon.jpg. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, then a link to the website from which it was taken, together with a restatement of that website's terms of use of its content, is usually sufficient information. However, if the copyright holder is different from the website's publisher, their copyright should also be acknowledged.

As well as adding the source, please add a proper copyright licensing tag if the file doesn't have one already. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then the {{GFDL-self}} tag can be used to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Non-free content, use a tag such as {{non-free fair use in|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the image is copyrighted under a non-free license (per Wikipedia:Fair use) then the image will be deleted 48 hours after 22:22, 13 September 2007 (UTC). If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. —Angr 22:22, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:RuthGordon.jpg

Thanks for uploading or contributing to Image:RuthGordon.jpg. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is not a suitable explanation or rationale as to why each specific use in Wikipedia constitutes fair use. Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale.

If you have uploaded other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on those pages too. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free media lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. —Angr 22:22, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Discussion on TIME issues and covers

Hi there. As someone who contributed an external view to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Ta bu shi da yu 2, I thought you might be interested in the discussion taking place at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content#First copyright renewal of TIME issues are for 1934. I've also invited the other editors who contributed external views to that RfC. Would you be interested in contributing your views at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content#Inviting more opinion on this? Thanks. Carcharoth 02:52, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

RD date header problem

Hope I didn't make things worse with my date header edits at /Math. I've gotten the wrongly located Sept 9 in its proper place but can't delete the duplicate Sept 8 header without screwing up the Sept 10 section - help! :-( - hydnjo talk 14:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Not to worry; I was planning on fixing that tonight. --Steve Summit (talk) 03:14, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

OK thanks. What about future edits on those infrequent null days? Some of us just can't resist. - hydnjo talk 14:12, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Good question. The bot ended up screwing up spectacularly badly. It wasn't hard to clean up after, but it was a failure mode the likes of which I hadn't imagined. (I mean, I knew things were going to go a little wrong if there was a null day, but I didn't realize they could go that wrong.)

But that's my problem to fix. Or not fix; it may be easier just to patch up the odd exception by hand. But at any rate, I wouldn't want to constrain what people can/can't post.

Actually, as long as the people who "can't resist" succumb to their temptation during the 3-day window before the null day gets archived, there's no problem at all, because in that case the day when archived isn't null and so everything works normally. The problem in this case was just that content got added after the day was archived, and since there was no daily archive page to add it to, it got added to the main page, posthumously. —Steve Summit (talk) 14:56, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

OK good! I'll keep my eyes peeled for null days and will not resist the temptation so long as it's within the pre-archiving window. - hydnjo talk 18:22, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Multiplication of negatives

Thanks very much for your kind words.—PaulTanenbaum 21:28, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Scsbot

Excuse me, but Scsbot just blanked two of the reference desks. Thought you should know. Someguy1221 00:30, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Ack. Thanks. And I've fixed three or four more.

I'm running the bot on a different machine tonight, and I thought I had all the bugs worked out when I tried it here last night, but evidently not... —Steve Summit (talk) 00:47, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

bot again

Your bot has grossly malfunctioned and removed a source on the Misc. Ref. Desk. The said source is about a book about meteorites. 65.163.112.225 06:17, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Can you give me any more detail? I can't see anything about meteorites on the desk as the bot archived it. —Steve Summit (talk) 06:45, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Its BACK on the Ref. Desk, Misc. It disappeared while I was placing 1/2 of the source. Appreciate your assisstance. 65.163.112.225 06:53, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Looks like you and the bot had a couple of edit conflicts. Is everything okay now? —Steve Summit (talk) 07:16, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Sure is. Thanks. 65.163.112.225 09:20, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Scsbot & headercfg ?

Would changing the link to the header have any affect on the way Scsbot operates?--VectorPotential^Talk 00:33, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Nope! None. (It tries to make as few assumptions as possible.) —Steve Summit (talk) 01:28, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

reference desk speed

Does it suddenly work for you? I'm inexplicably getting perfect performance again, even when bypassing my browser cache. Maybe the server problems are over? --ffroth 02:35, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

No, still slow. See the footnote I just added at the RD talk page. —Steve Summit (talk) 02:56, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

See my reponse to your footnote. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reference%20desk/Science&action=purge. Anyway, the slowness is back now. --ffroth 03:41, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

I temporarily switched to fully-static flat code. No reason for RD volunteers to suffer through performance problems. We'll see if the server slowness resolves itself --ffroth 04:01, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Scsbot logged out?

Was this Scsbot? WODUP 01:36, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes. How strange. (WTF?) I'll look into it. Thanks. —Steve Summit (talk) 01:38, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Question about ScsBot

Hi Steve. I have a question about your bot. When it archives questions into the appropriate day, what time zone does it use to distinguish one day from the next? Rockpocket 04:53, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

It's supposed to be UTC, but that's mostly based on the fact that ~~~~ timestamps all tend to be UTC. —Steve Summit (talk) 16:13, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Reverted Vandalisim

I hope you don't mind, but I reverted the vandalism our troll friend did to your talk page here. Basically he erased part of your first section and replaced it with some harsh words. I reverted it back and left a warning on his talk page. Thanks! Josborne2382 01:58, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

It was a fine rant. You're right; police officers are unsung heroes who don't deserve the scorn they sometimes get.

Thanks for the help with the vandalism reversion. —Steve Summit (talk) 02:12, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

No worries! Isn't that what Wikipedia is all about? Helping each other out? Josborne2382 02:27, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Ref desk thing

Hi, Sorry hadn't realised. Was just absent mindedly removing the silly bit. Hope it didn't cause any problems - I rarely venture outside of the reference desk! ny156uk (talk) 18:35, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Help desk archiving

After discussion in several sections at Wikipedia talk:Help desk, I have removed [3] the transclusion of 3 archived days from the long help desk page. Will you adapt Scsbot to not transclude archived dates more than 3 days old? PrimeHunter (talk) 16:21, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Be civil, don't post flame bait

You wrote, "Don't be preposterous." on the reference desk. That comment didn't advance the topic, and wasn't very helpful. All it serves is to ridicule and to insult. Don't continue this behavior. 64.236.121.129 (talk) 14:40, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Point duly taken. Next time I'll advance the discussion by posting comments about goobers in their underwear instead. —Steve Summit (talk) 14:57, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with saying "don't be preposterous". Friday (talk) 20:29, 21 December 2007 (UTC)