skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Using your argument:
Mcdonalds, Starbucks, Walmart, Coke and many other companies are O(N^2) solutions and therefore failures. They repackaged an existing idea, made slight modifications, and sold it for lots of money.

I hate seeing wasted money and stupid solutions succeed like the next guy and maybe we're talking about different things. But whether things got done should be decided by the customer not your TDD fanatic coworker.
One Simple Goal: A Daily Goal to Get Things Done
The Fifth Underhanded C Contest is Now Open
Eric Mazur is a very thoughtful researcher on effective physics education. See his writings online

http://mazur-www.harvard.edu/publications.php?function=searc...

for articles on physics education from his paradigm-challenging perspective.
Reminds me of one day, when a Squeak Smalltalk newbie showed up on the mailing list, not understanding why his music-related program won't compile. He has his whole program in one method, and needs several hundred temporary variables to store all of his note objects. When informed of the 255 temp variable limit, he starts getting outraged.
Pretty cool. Question though - the definition of a blue moon is for there to be 4 full moons in a season.

(Learned on HN):

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1008761

which cites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_moon

If that is the case then this is not a blue moon as the first 3 happened in the fall and the 4th is after the solstice. Right?
I've downloaded a local copy of that (using ShoveBox on OSX) that I use for random reference.
In terms of physical servers, we're actually 50-50 Windows / Linux. Starting on Windows did not blind us to Kannel, Rails, PostGIS, Apache, Samba, Erlang, etc. We use tons of open source software where it makes sense.

Sometimes price isn't the only factor when deciding which tools are best for the job. After using C#, switching back to Java or a non-compiled language would be very painful. I'd lose a lot and miss it.
I wasn't replying to that article -- at best, I was going off on a tangent prompted by a comment to that article.
What’s strategic for Google?
"Soda can be super-sweet without tasting bad, apparently."

It's the carbonation. Flat soda is undrinkably super-sweet.
I just tried. Looks like a bunch of straw-man nonsense to me.

I like Ebert and have watched him for a long time on S&E (and later E&R). But I've always thought he was a bit too mushy-headed for me and for that reason have never been a fan of his blog. He was always the one to get caught up in the "feel" of a movie, even when the production values, acting, and directing stunk. In fact, Ebert is the person that turned me off to movie reviews in general. When I want reviews, I use an aggregation service like RottenTomatoes.

Like I said, no-win discussion. I'm certainly not a creationist, but calling them liars doesn't seem very productive. Make fun of them all you want, but calling a very religious person a liar seems completely counter-productive.
I think the biggest problem here is time. VC firms are generally not manpower heavy, and sorting through unfiltered business plans is very time consuming, if not painful. That's why they prefer the referral chain method.

A GP I spoke with recently (on Sand Hill Road, potentially even one of the firms Cringely sent his plan to) put it like this: If you aren't smart enough or dedicated enough to work all possible network connections to get referred to our firm, you probably aren't smart enough or dedicated enough for us to fund you.

This comes down to the idea that most VC's (not all), invest in people\teams, not ideas.

A submission from Cringely followed by an article on his blog definitely qualifies as a filtered referral, so any results from his 'test' wont be very representative. At least he realizes this.
Here is the roger ebert article: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/12/win_ben_steins_mind....

One quote: This film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks quotations, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes outrageous juxtapositions (Soviet marching troops representing opponents of ID), pussy-foots around religion (not a single identified believer among the ID people), segues between quotes that are not about the same thing, tells bald-faced lies, and makes a completely baseless association between freedom of speech and freedom to teach religion in a university class that is not about religion.
I use I-GO in Chicago.

http://www.igocars.org/

I originally chose I-GO because of the insurance issue. I had read that Zipcar's included coverage was minimal and I-GO's coverage was more comprehensive. I generally don't have any of the problems that were mentioned in the article other than people returning a couple minutes late sometimes.
I don't know about that. I've had good responses to being a programmer. "Oh you're so smart!" It's just how you sell it. Also, a club isn't exactly the best place to let the coolness of being a programmer show through.
Few people are turned on by low intelligence. What the construction worker has on the programmer is masculinity; it's perceived as a more "manly" line of work.

However, both men and women tend to be more androgynous as intelligence increases, which is a problem for both genders, but especially for men, when it comes to attracting mates.
This looks really fun.
My idea on creating a twidl from a tweet is that is you type in your tweet in mind, then an image search button can be clicked that will instantly search for images based on the tweet you just typed. you click on an image and you get taken to the editor with the tweet already typed out and you just have to position the twidlBox and submit.

making a twidl from past tweets is a good extension of that. Thanks for that suggestion.
No, because what language and environment you choose impacts your ability / likelihood of actually doing that.
Its because its so simple that it causes the surprising behavior. But it is only surprising the first time. After that you realize that everything between two underscores means highlight that section of text. If you actually wanted the underscores you have to do it manually, whats wrong with that?
I cancelled my zipcar account - its very inconvenient in Jersey City as the cars are booked atleast a month in advance on the dates you need it.
All is fine so long as one does not assume 'great programmer' = 'competent'. This matrix really only differentiates 'well-educated' programmers.

There are many well-educated failures, and as many (some might say more) un-/under-educated successes.
There used to be a HN thread of domains people were willing to giveaway/sell to interested parties. Perhaps it's time for another?

edit: spelling
Promo codes are gone. For those of you received one enjoy.
A primary use case is you can better promote products that need visual aid. like this one.

http://twidl.it/8ms62

I am anticipating tons of other use cases once we got some new features put in.
America has immigration, France has refugees.

US sucks up all the skilled workers of the third world while Europe is easier to reach from Africa and Asia. The important thing to realise here is that there is a very big difference between the Iraqi businessman taking a flight to New York and the illiterate Somali being chartered over to Spain.
None of this has to do with globals -- the key issue is accessibility of shared mutable state from within imperative functions. That is an inescapable constant outside of FP environments.
Secret language
Thanks for the info on UL, I forgot about the in-wall parts of things, and was focusing on toasters and such.

Basically, I'm saying that the government should stay out of it, unless it's actual fraud. It bothers me that it's a monopoly on the specific form of speech saying "this is a good school" and "this is a diploma".

I'm really coming from the stance of a wanna-be libertarian, I understand that the government must do things, but where possible, I think social and private-sector answers are more flexible, and less agressive towards various rights.

It just bothers me that I can't setup a legit-but-not-accredited school and issue diplomas without somebody potentially trying to come and get me, or prosecute me for wire fraud.
The flip side of this is when overenthusiastic minimalism makes something useless, like in The Onion's ad for the revolutionary (hah!) Apple laptop with no keyboard, the "MacBook Wheel" (http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revol...).
However if you were watching closely, as we are, you'd discover that most of the numbers you site are fake.

For example, they invented "users" who aren't real people. You can tell because there are 100 users with the same IP address.

Another example: Startups.com has 1247 unanswered questions -- 30%. Answers.onstartups.com has only 29 -- a mere 3%. Which one of these communities appears to be REAL?

As a final example, if you look at the actual questions on the two sites, you'll see for yourself that one seems to be coming from real entrepreneurs with real issues, and the other doesn't.

Although I don't begrudge you creating fake questions, I'd like to point out that we didn't have to do that. It's all real.

So in the end, are you really comfortable saying that OnStartups is "getting creamed?" Is having a high-quality, beloved site worse than having a site with "stats" and "users" which are completely fake?

If so, you must also think that those spammy websites created for Google Juice by plagerizing real websites are also "creaming" those real sites, because by every metric they're winning -- search rank, compete.com, whatever.

At the end of the day, which site do you think will last? Which one will generate the most profit?

I say "profit" because also keep in mind they bought the "startups.com" domain for 6 figures. Have to make up that money (plus whatever else they've spent) before the site is profitable.
You need to read the post again. What you thought I was writing, were quotes from others.
Interesting. My guess is that it's the same with learning a foreign language. i.e. if you really want to learn the language, it's probably orders of magnitude faster and cheaper with better result if you move to where it is natively spoken, as opposed to taking a class. Never tried it though.
Am I the only one irked by the use of the non-word 'minimalistic', when the shorter 'minimal' or 'minimalist' is what is really meant?

It seems like a serious blow to one's minimalist cred. :)
I think the smartest people are those who discovered condoms and birth control at 15.
How to Use an Ovulation Calendar to Get Pregnant Fast
Are you wanting to learn how to become pregnant faster? Becoming pregnant is the vision of most newly married couples especially people who have established themselves financially and are quite stable.
Bad example. I gave Expelled a 1 on IMDB for the sole reason I thought it was very badly made (for a documentary). Some votes might be because the movie is "being punished" but I seriously doubt all are. There certainly are enough ID advocates to cancel out the negative votes.
A nightclub is not a good place to meet women who will value intelligence, period.
The author suggests the same interpretations in more general terms:

"Another idea is that smarter people are more risk averse, and delaying these activities is a byproduct of enhanced concerns about unwanted pregnancy and disease. While not avoiding sexual behaviors, per se, they are just less likely to seek it out or consent to it for fear of the potential consequences.

...

Another idea, consistent with popular media portrayals of geeks and nerds (males at least), is that intelligent people actually want to have sex, but are simply less likely or unable to obtain willing partners because they are disproportionately viewed as unattractive or undesirable as partners."

edit: this comment is not meant to support your claims, only to suggest your claims are redundant to HNers who read the article.
There will always be someone with a better job.

If you want a girl like you; make her smile.
30 Days to Success
Do you really think pregnancy is the only reason why 15-year-olds shouldn't be having sex?
That's under the assertion that moving instructions through the processor is the main source of heat generation in computers.

Is this not the case?
Mark Pincus on Charlie Rose
Nagios Monitoring for Erlang
The headline reminds me of Feynman's account of teaching physics in Rio. Every student could stand and deliver a verbatim retelling of all the definitions in the textbook. They had just covered polarized light. The classroom had a beautiful view of the bay, with sunlight glinting off the water.

Feynman asks for and gets a recitation about polarized light, which includes a bit about reflected light being polarized. He then turns towards the window and asks the class for an example of polarized light. The whole class is flummoxed. Everyone could recite, but none of them could apply.

EDIT: I remember the day, being a TA for a Comp Sci 101 class, when I realized that a lot of the most vocal and active members of the class were more interested in the mechanics of lectures and tests than the material. It was all a game. I put stuff on the blackboard and in the handouts, and they spit it out on the test sheet. We have become a society of appearances and bureaucratic mechanism. Most college students go through the motions and get their paper, then go home thinking science is just more made up bullshit like politics. These folks laugh when you talk about evolution as reality, and can only reason abstractly at the level of a grade schooler. Many of them graduate, vote, and get promoted to positions of authority.
sounds like Charlie Rose is an LP of sorts. Wonder which fund.
Well, then it's a strawman. ;-) Nobody decent actually writes imperative programs where every function depends upon the global state of the whole program.
It actually got worse and ended with a DCMA violoation

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2009/02/03/bizzard-wins-anti-bo...
DONT tilt your head watching that video
If you want a girl like you; make her smile.

Yes, and if you want to win a race, simply go faster.

If you want to get a home run, simply hit the ball harder.

If you want to be a better programmer, just write better code.

If you want to make your startup succeed, just get more users.

If you want to make your dog start behaving, just train it.

and on and on and on.
As jacquesm rightfully pointed out, I was wrong to ever advocate stealing software. It was and is never the right thing to do, and now that Microsoft actively targets startups it's straight up stupid.

Learn more at http://www.microsoftstartupzone.com/BizSpark/Pages/At_a_Glan...

Microsoft has been a great partner and deserves better from me. If I could still edit my original post I would. For the record, Loopt was and is always compliant with all commercial and OSS licensing.
"How should one put the balance right?" - recent Nigerian terrorist

I think this is the key point - the conflict muslims feel between the western lifestyle and the islamic lifestyle. This conflict is not just between cultures. Even in muslim lands, some muslims feel a conflict between the earthly life and the life after death. I suppose most muslims deal with this conflict in a healthy way. But my experience as a muslim in the west, is that there are many more who struggle with this. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Islam does not provide a central theological authority (like the pope) to address these issues.

Muslims are left to their own soul-searching/research or the local imams. The local imams are either not trained to address such issues or offer solutions that dont work in real life.

One institution that is trying to address this problem is Zaytuna College (http://www.zaytunacollege.org/). It is the first American Muslim college. They are trying to create Muslim imams that are trained in both the islamic laws but also in the broader western philosophies and ideas. Presumably, this training will enable them to address such spiritual conflicts.
Direct link to the presentation: http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/pdfs...

It's worth having a look at it -- there are numerous goodies inside not mentioned in the article! :)

PS: Interesting detail on Slide 93: "Morgan Stanley is currently acting as exclusive financial advisor to AdMob, Inc ("AdMob") in relation to their acquisition by Google Inc, as announced on November 9, 2009. The proposed transaction is subject to customary closing conditions. AdMob has agreed to pay fees to Morgan Stanley for its services that are subject to the consummation of the proposed transaction."
I thought this headline was about some esoteric higher order function
The whole point in my mind is that Apple goes just so far to make minimalism useful, but not so far that it is irritating. That is what I like about Apple products, that they are usefully minimalist.

The "MacBook wheel" is not a product Apple would make because it is unbalanced to far in the opposite direction.
My favorite entry is the first runner-up from the encryption challenge in 2007: http://underhanded.xcott.com/?page_id=16

Basically a subtly buggy SWAP() implementation causes the RC4 cipher to output more and more plaintext as time goes on.
If you had read the Wikipedia article for yourself and you'll find multiple definitions of a blue moon.

To save you the effort, The Farmer's Almanac used the definition you just cited, but "2 full moons in a month* is the more commonly used definition.
That's not completely true. Atwood misrepresented Gruber. Read this part of the email thread:
http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2008-Marc...

Gruber states that he doesn't have time update Markdown and forks should be clearly marked as such.
agreed. I've found the only trick is there are no tricks. It takes me more than 5-10 minutes to get into it, but within an hour or less usually, I find myself in the zone and can go for 12 hours.
If 0.001% of the world's population uses it, I think that comes out to something like 60,000 people.

You can see here that I've already solved the problem of sharing SHPAML output using HTML:

http://shpaml.webfactional.com/

You are right about it adding a step to my workflow. If only there was some kind of machine that could automate things for me...
Sometimes I like to have more fine-tuned control of what is going on in my code without having to rely on a wrapper between me and the code.

I feel that if everyone uses markdown it will lead over time to less understanding of what goes on behind the scenes. You have to understand the low level access before you can properly use a high level library.
Cloud Games-on-Demand:Brilliant example of Cloud UI without Delays
Don't be pedantic.
DH0 + weak DH4

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

QT has techniques for accomplishing all those little details like icons. But it also has the defaults already built in. So it is not necessary to set them up for a simple Hello World application. Later if he wants to change them he can add the extra code.
Graphical data flow languages like Max/MSP, Puredata, LabVIEW, and even Quartz Composer make a lot more sense for functional programing.

Every time I see someone "explaining" what is going on in a functional language, it looks just like a Max patch! There are multiple inputs attached to multiple outputs. Of course, if you're well familiar with whatever textual based language you're working with, you are visualizing this process, but still, why aren't all functional languages moving in this direction?

The great thing is you can still drop text-based code in to one of these graphical dataflow languages.

I write a LOT of code in Max/MSP and Quartz Composer. Thankfully, both support Javascript, because some things are just plain easier if you can drop back in to a procedural, text-based language.

Even writing your own compiled plugins/externals is pretty straightforward. Quartz uses Obj-C and Max/MSP uses C++, although I think you can mix in or use pure Obj-C as well. I haven't had to write any functionality in to Max that wasn't already available with the core package or from CNMAT, UBC Toolbox, etc. (yet!)

Anyways, what I'm getting at is that there is a huge advantage in laying things out in a graphical way, especially for concurrent programming.

What I find interesting is that there is very little support for these languages. There are no patterns, best-practices, etc... I've had to bring over the basic concepts from other text-based languages when I'm writing a larger project... and often when I'm looking at other people's patches I'm astonished at the lack of maintainability, the amount of code repetition, etc... it can easily turn in to a spidery mess if you're not used to what you're doing!
No! This is what makes you a good entrepreneur. It's in no way a reasonable definition of a good programmer.

There are already dozens of dimensions that you could use to measure programmer greatness: being able to solve very difficult problems, writing very maintainable code, writing working code very fast, writing very rigorous mathematically correct code, debugging very fast, having good intuition about how the project will evolve over its life, working well in a particular team, working well with other disciplines, being able to deal with corporate politics and still get shit done etc.

Tying product design and marketing to this plethora is a wholly unwarranted conflation. Even if it's just two software developers in a garage.
If it seems that you can't get some task done and you aren't making any progress this means that either (a) it lies beyond your present abilities, and/or (b) your heart isn't in it.

>I can work for 10 straight hours if I'm at school

This is part of the problem IMO. Schools are inherently coercive and this messes up one's approach to instrinsically motivated learning.

It is the task itself that provides the reward. If the work is noble and interesting and if it lies within your abilities then you will find sufficient vitality is available to perform it.

OTOH, forcing yourself to do stuff (as if you were still at school) causes the mind to slowly shut down (starting with loss of creativity).

>I find it very hard to work at least 1h

If you weren't doing the 'work', what would you be doing instead during that hour? Start with that, and do it better.
The point is that with the named_table option, you don't need the tid of the table to access it, you can just use the name. Which makes it a global entry point. It doesn't matter if it requires messages to make it happen, it is still an implicit dependency. The same applies to named processes, etc.

Because of that you can write this code (to piggyback on the example you are responding to):

foo(Key) ->
ets:member(global_state, Key).

Instead of:

foo(Tid, Key) ->
ets:member(Tid, Key).

In the second case, all dependencies are explicit, in the first case, there is a dependency on the atom global_state being the name of the table you are accessing.
The Billy Mays method for picking startups
Without knowing how common these problems are, it's really hard to say how much this sort of stuff affects the average user. Reading through the list of problems, I had a momentary freaked out feeling that made me think I'd never use the service, but the author still loves zipcar, which makes me think these problems aren't all that common. Or, not common enough to outweigh the benefits of using the service.

Still, it's nice to hear a fan of a service talking about problems with it. It's very considerate to mention the problems with something whenever you recommend it.
"...if a Zipster before you didn’t report their scratch and dent (and the Zipster after you does), that you’ll end up on the hook for the $500 damage deductible for something you didn’t do since you didn’t do the walkaround and report the damage"

It seems like the author is really stretching for things to complain about. If you neglect to inspect the vehicle for damage prior to driving it, what do you expect?
Hey, didn't you noticed that the O(1) column was missing?