skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You're trying to make an argument against his throw-away rhetoric. He doesn't care about innovation - he's got trade policy on his mind.

It's not a great argument, either. If so many billions had been spent at DARPA without creating anything, that would be truly astonishing. However, compare that with what's accomplished with rather less money in the private sector - which developed crucial things, like the transistor and integrated circuit, that made GPS and ARPANet possible in the first place.

Sure, if we frame the tossed-off line as an absolutist point, it's wrong - decades after their development, a relative few of these military technologies turned out to be really useful to the private sector and consumers. However, it's hard to argue that those huge resources (both monetary and human - a lot of great engineers and scientists were recruited into DARPA during the Cold War) would have accomplished any less outside of the military. Would the Internet have been an academic curiosity for as long as it was if it hadn't started out as a government project?

Mind you, Shapiro doesn't care. He's simply complaining about government money he's not getting.
What'd I mess up?
I just tested.

I loaded a web page I'd bookmarked on my home screen. The top part of the screen shows the loading bar. The bookmark button is still a bookmark.

When I click a link, it doesn't change into a stop button until the actual page has started loading.

But it looks like loading the bottom menu shows me stop consistently.

The "you're just not used to it" argument constantly rears its head when people criticize usability. That's why I was careful in pointing out the deficiencies.

I can understand that the keyboard takes adjustment. Notice I didn't criticize the android "word menu" auto-complete.

The poor scrolling is a technical failure. Nobody wants jerky scrolling.

And the lack of pinch-and-zoom has repeatedly been covered as a patent issue, not a UI choice.

"You're just not used to it" is extremely dangerous reasoning.
Paypal is evil
Equality isn't transitive in PHP :/. Of course, IMO, the real coding horror here is that in an error circumstance no exception is raised.
This reminds me universe of Culture novels. I fully agree with you on everything you said here.
The Coming Tornado: Cloud in the Enterprise
My eeePC 701 from january 2008 has been dropped quite a few times (it has been used as a jukebok among bottles and glasses outdoor and fell on the floor, been used by children, and I regularly throw it away to my bed or couch when I'm done with it) and has no problem. It is rock solid, as written on the box. I actually spend more time on it than my powerful 17" laptop.
openoffice + instant messaging + firefox + media player = ~80% of my needs.
(posted from my netbook)
> able to make forward movements rather than two steps forward one step back.

The result of such an approach would be a repeated one step back (as with the above process I described).

> It's entirely for selfish reasons

There is nothing wrong with rational self-interest. Whether you like it or not, you act in your own self-interest repeatedly. Nothing prevents you from moving to 3rd world countries (instead of moving a third world country to you).

> Pieces of paper to hold people out of places that they wish to go to ought to be a thing of the past.

Why? People only come into my home when I invite them inside. Why should it be different with countries?

> there is no way that 4 million illegal immigrants would converge on any place in the world because they would be bringing their homes with them, literally.

You would be surprised.

> The only people scared of that are those that are afraid to compete, and with the headstart that we've got competition should be the least of our worries.

Competition is the least of your problems. The first and biggest problem is crime – crime levels (including organised crime and violent crime) that increases extremely rapidly.

The second problem is any public services that will simply get flooded – a good example in my country is health care. You will simply end up without access to decent health care.

The third problem is private property. Immigrants will squat on your land depriving you of its use (without compensation). If you own land near the land where they squatted, it will be virtually worthless because of the associated theft and crime (see point one).

And fourthly, if immigrants vote, they will most likely vote for a kleptocratic socialist-lair which will increase your taxes and thoroughly destroy what is left of the country.
I think you're completely right re usability depending on what platform you started on. It reminds me of the kind of complaints people have when switching from Windows to OSX or from Outlook to GMail, etc.
What OS?
For one, there is no "ergo, we are doomed" - quite the opposite:

"So this is why I conclude that the silence of the night sky is golden, and why, in the search for extraterrestrial life, no news is good news. It promises a potentially great future for humanity."
Right and they want us to open up our information so everyone can be friends with each other and there will be world peace. (sarcasm)
If you are put off by C++ but not by Java, there's the Processing framework which is similar: http://processing.org/
Damn. I thought this was going to be an article about programmers.
Thank you both for following up. I like this, because its something actionable that I can do to have an impact on an unfair system.

I am having trouble locating SAT test prep centers in Raleigh, NC who provide free training (via Google). I will try to contact the school system directly this week.
If you hate how I write, why comment like me?
No offense, but did Ruby get all the dev's who can think of a great name? ;)
Contrarian reads such as this lead me to believe that we've already made the turn.
I certainly think so, but that's outside the central point of this argument.
Ask HN: If i'm meeting someone at a cafe, what should I order
-_-
a great filter in the future could also mean a movement to a new kind of existence, not necessarily an extinction. like an exodus to a virtual world.
Release of version pi?
Can you elaborate on what exactly you mean by "art?" We can't have a useful discussion about a concept (and especially a duscussion about one concept being in the equivalence class of another) without knowing what our terms mean. In what ways are art and craft different? What are examples of art? Are you equating "art" with "fine art," or do you mean something else?
Ask HN: Review my new learning website: Crunch Course
I've created a website to help people who want to take advantage of the free educational content already online (like OCW).

You can join a class or create a new one. Each class has publicly viewable homework submissions with comments so you can give and receive feedback.

The site is brand new so there isn't much content on it yet, but I'm starting an SICP class here:
http://www.crunchcourse.com/class/structure-and-interpretation-of-comp/2010/jan/

Your feedback on the concept and on the website are appreciated. Thanks in advance!

http://www.crunchcourse.com/
Clickable: http://www.crunchcourse.com/

http://www.crunchcourse.com/class/structure-and-interpretati...
Mostly agree. If you don't have capable designers and marketers on your team, you are severely handicapping yourself.

Also, while I might take money from an investor who doesn't have experience in these things, I wouldn't take money from one who doesn't have experience, yet insists on being involved in design and marketing decisions. It's amazing how many people feel the need to put their design/marketing stamp on a project, despite their complete ineptitude in those areas. I've seen it kill more than a few good ideas.
I would recommend neither of the three phones mentioned, but HTC HD2...in my subjective opinion, having the 4.3" screen, with other things being similar, could make it a best option. If you are from USA, I suggest you wait for it.
I think that if you believe coding is an art form, you are deluding yourself. You probably wish that your chosen field of expertise would get more respect from society rather than being considered a boring occupation of geeks. I can understand that, but wishes don't make beggars ride, and neither will they make coding fashionable and cool.

Code is not art, and never will be. Art is something created purely for its aesthetic appeal and to evoke emotions. Code written to be executed by a computer. It may have some aesthetic aspects but these are secondary to its executability. It also requires far too much prior knowledge to be appreciated by most people.

At best, code can incorporate aspects of industrial design: an aesthetically pleasing symbiosis of elegance and functionality, but with the latter always being the dominant goal.

The article also assumes a false contradiction between art and science that makes me suspect the author understands neither.
+1.

It should thrown an exception and abort the script with an ugly error traceback.

If the documentation says "float" and you can hand it a numerical string, then either the function or its documentation have a bug that needs correcting.
Stealing is easy: being original is hard
Yeah... I think that's the biggest problem. There aren't a ton of apps out for the device. Like dropbox, and kindle, to name a few. I still think it's because of Google's choice on Java, or at least the way the apps are built. XML files are the first bad sign.

People complain that the $99 fee and approval process of Apple is so bad, that the $25 and no approval process of Google is the way to go. Problem is... many of the apps you see on the iPhone are quality apps. They look great, they function great, and they make developers a lot of cash. While you still see similar things on Android, it's far far less common.

The Facebook app is a prime example. Comparing Facebook on iPhone to Facebook on Android is like comparing a Bugatti Veyron to a 1989 Taurus SHO.
Original here: http://stuffthathappens.com/blog/2008/03/05/simplicity/
i've had a pretty easy time integrating www.sphinxsearch.com w/ a few cakephp applications
What about commercial art and design? Would you consider those as having been "reduced to a craft" as well? One could look at this from the same perspective.

It all depends on your definition of art. For me, that's taking raw materials and making them into something beautiful, whether it's to solve a problem or elicit some sort of emotional/social/intellectual response, or make a statement is entirely irrelevant. Commercial art is every bit as much of an art. It's just art with a different purpose.

There is no reason code cannot be beautiful. Of course I don't mean that in a visual sense. It's letters and numbers and symbols that need to be structured in specific ways in order to function. But in an intellectual/functional sense, code can certainly be beautiful and creative and elegant.

I don't think the author's comparing a bit of C code to a Rembrandt painting in the visual sense, but saying that programmers should embrace those same ideals of creativity, innovation, and fluidity of thought that many artists do.

It's more about opening your mind to new ideas and learning to find and appreciate the beauty in the function of the code.
Google's Nexus One phone: trouble in paradise?
We have an eeePC at our house. It is one of the seashell models and only 3-4 months old. About two weeks ago, the power supply blew. Once we got a replacement power supply and were able to turn the eeePC back on, the screen had a large, wave-shaped swath of dead pixels at the bottom edge, so bad that the taskbar needed to be moved to the top, in order for Windows to still be usable. I've never had a laptop fail so hard, so soon.
No, that we may be looking for the wrong things. The ants could search every floor tile on Earth, but they wouldn't find pheromone trail messages from us. The modest scale of SETI is just a secondary point.

On the other hand, how exactly do you find things without looking for them - wait to get stepped on? :)
First it is always hard to loose a good friend and father, so my condolences go out to Slim's family and his friends.

I'm not a hardware hacker, but are there any commercial digital systems that support this kind of breadboarding?
You know what's more depressing?

This clueless guy is one of the (wild guess) 5% of PHP users who can file a bug report and follow it...
A couple of cents off individually might not matter.
A couple of cents off cumulatively across a few hundred thousand individuals over a few years does matter.
http://djangogigs.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=50788
I've heard these arguments time and again while the European borders were dissolved, NONE of it came true.

The only thing that changed is that the element in society that had it easy to parasite on the rest found that they suddenly had a harder time of it.

For the rest of us it is business as usual, with a whole bunch of advantages thrown in for free.

People that don't like a level playing field can't be much of a player.
'We could do better,'- Google open-source boss comes clean on Android
Do whatever you want with it. I hope you enjoy Clojure - I certainly have.
The Paleo diet is actually quite well known amongst people with an interest in nutrition.
An Awesome Introduction to Program Verification with Coq
Quantum computer calculates exact energy of molecular hydrogen
100 most influential works in cognitive science of the 20th century
Leonardo Maugeri (cited in the article) wrote an article in Scientific American last year on this:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=squeezing-m...

I'm skeptical of his plan at the end (tax oil globally at just the right amount to blunt climate change and encourage alternatives without making unsubsidized food-crop biofuels viable) for many obvious reasons, but I see nothing wrong with his points about oil itself.
As the article says, every hospital has these. Without them, I have no idea how we would ever get medications to inpatient floors in a timely fashion.

The tubes are also quite "smart"; all products (including blood products) are barcoded and scanned prior to being put into the tubes for routing to the appropriate destination.
Wow, that was really boring. Replace everything with "Microsoft", and this could have been written 15 years ago. Use "IBM", and it would have been 25 years ago. There are many great techno-dystopian stories, but this is a rank amateur attempt. The print version would have red pen in the margins: character development? story arc? unnecessary detail!

If you liked this story, you are required to have read Snow Crash.
Is anyone else a little disturbed that this has 121 points and is at the top of the HN frontpage? Maybe I'm just being grumpy but it seems like total fluff that's of no use to anyone. I'm surprised it hasn't been killed, are there no mods around today?
As has been pointed out, a single machine works best. You'll have trouble synchronizing software and data between the machines at times, and you'll occasionally forget that crucial file for a presentation or meeting on your desktop. If you really need a desktop, get a second monitor, a nice mouse/keyboard combination, and a docking station if you think that is appropriate.

PS.
Stop messing around and get a Macbook. Unless you need the enterprise warranty provided by Lenovo, you really have no reason other than "it's what I am familiar with" to stick with a Windows machine.
If you are looking to oursource, these guys do django as well http://itteco.com/
I think the author suggests that merit alone should be a determining factor, so that quantative knowledge, which can vary depending on education level, does not determine admissions.

People who feel benefitted by the elite college system will obviously be a proponent of it. They will then keep perpetuating the system which produces similar people. It's not a conscious conspiracy, but effectively one.
A "self-replicating probe" is either so weak in capability that it would hardly amount to colonization, or so strong in capability that it would amount to a rival life form. What functionality would you build into such a probe and by what means would you prevent a "boomerang" effect wherein it comes back and causes problems in the home system?

Additionally, if all you are talking about building is a device that would, encountering our solar system, take up residence in orbit, take pictures, and report "back" - how do you know there aren't already several of them present? It would be rather hard to tell!

Colonization on Earth always had economic incentive. Populations migrated for economic opportunities, even if the selection of who did and did not migrate was heavily political. Colonization, as opposed to mere migration, was pretty much always, more or less by definition, for resource extraction. The colonized pay taxes and/or their raw materials and unique finished goods are exported back to the empire, and/or their local economy is converted to the coin of the empire's realm and taxes are extracted. It doesn't seem like any such program of empire building could work at inter-stellar scales unless there is some surprising physics that we've yet to discover that allows super-luminal communication and transport.

Fermi is "wrong" if intelligent, space-faring life only "works out" given the rules of physics at roughly the scale of our higher organisms and if, for organisms at that scale, colonization is not a viable option. There's no need for any "Great[er] Wall" than that.
Well, there are boards like these:

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Global-Specialties/PB-50...

http://www.erst.ch/english/virtex2/virtex2.html

http://www.mcustore.com/acatalog/AVR-Ready_Prototyping_Board...

Google "prototyping board" for more.
Philip Greenspun Visits Berkeley
Developer's experience augmenting reality on the iPhone
I think his fundamental definition of merit is how well two students would perform given equal academic preparation.

So knowing calculus doesn't make you smarter than someone who doesn't because that other person may have never had the opportuniy to learn it.
Ah, windows mobile, combining the usability of Android with the joyful development experience of the iPhone. Who could ask for more?
"But while these are overt ways to provide advantages for the wealthy, there are far more insidious and subtle methods of skewing the admissions process. Take early admissions. Early admissions account for 35 percent of the incoming class at Duke this year, 20 percent at Brown, 50 percent at Yale and 40 percent at Stanford."

While he makes a good point, the author doesn't note that both Harvard and Princeton recently (~2006) ended their early applications programs completely, to much fanfare. We can hope that other schools will follow their lead soon.
Computer science is the formal study of problem solving. Hence, algorithms - deterministic, mathematically tractable, general solutions to problems. Hence programming language theory - ways to efficiently express solutions to problems. Hence the study of data structures: building blocks that solve small problems, which crop up in many, many larger spaces, very effectively. Hence the study of the formal theory of computation: tractable models of mechanisms for general computations that happily map onto physically reliable machines. Hence computing machines: devices that allow us to compute solutions to problems at high speed. Hence machine learning, computer graphics and natural language processing: studies of specific classes of problems that happily submit to some general (but domain specific) approaches.

Computer science shares some of the creative sensibilities of mathematics: the building blocks (theorems) may be well understood, but there is a creativity and insight required to arrange them in such a way as to produce an [efficient/elegant/small/general] method to solve a given problem (proof). At the same time, this is why coding on its own is such a pale shadow of the entire field of computer science. Implementations at their worst are merely transcriptions of someone else's work.

Don't aspire to be an artist with your code; it's not the medium for art. There's a different aesthetics at work here. You will not habitually provide commentary on society or the human condition. Don't begrudge others the fact that they might. They don't begrudge you the beauty that you produce.
Windows Vista 64bit
But you can't assume college is the most efficient for obtaining other things. It is however guaranteed to give you a degree.
This is real. I know several people who practice this lifestyle.
Counterpoint: the iPhone is God's own portable VNC client. Using any kind of remote-desktop functionality without pinch-and-zoom sounds painful, unless other phones have a clever UI paradigm I'm overlooking.

If you're mostly interested in command-line work over SSH, though, I can see how a phone with a physical keyboard would be the best tool for the job.
> I've heard these arguments time and again while the European borders were dissolved, NONE of it came true.

There is a huge difference. For a country to go into the EU, it has a lot of requirements - it isn't just an arbitrary opening of the borders.

The EU would never allow a backwards developing country to become part.

> People that don't like a level playing field can't be much of a player.

The effect of mass immigration is usually worse on the lower strata of society (plumbers, manual labourers) - not me and you.

And yes, there are people who would not be able to compete - we can't all be rocket scientists.
How in the world does anyone get "bored" with an iPhone, or any other current-gen smartphone for that matter? Adult ADD? There may not be an app for that, but I'm sure there's a prescription.
Not just children- back in the early days of information retrieval user interface studies, they found that pretty much all search-naïve users instinctively use natural language (or at least "natural-language-ish") queries instead of keyword/boolean queries. This, of course, is the opposite of how search engine designers and programmers think about the problem.

For a more thorough discussion, I'd suggest taking a look at Marti Hearst's "Search User Interfaces" (specifically section 4.1.2, on keyword query specification: http://searchuserinterfaces.com/book/sui_ch4_query_specifica... ).
What would you expect?
So you think my posting was not well-balanced, similar to something you would find on a right-wing web site.

See, I'm neither left nor right. I just happen to care. While you guys were sitting discussing my tone, I called Detroit Police, and I called the Detroit City IT deputy director, and so they took measures, maybe not so fast, but not Monday morning.

Was it an extremist right-wing action?

Btw, I was wrong about that lady in Michigan, she did care, in her own special way. She sighed. That may be a lot in certain circumstances, too.

Guys, I would not say I care much about your social attitudes, but if you fix a problem as soon as you see it, that would be great, right? Try to practice it, instead of ranting.

Sorry for intervening in your discussion.
Have you read The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect?

http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/mopiall.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis_of_Prime_Inte...
How dumb does one have to be to use the word "endless" when talking about a very limited resource?

The potential for technology to increase yields and the discovery of additional deposits are nothing new. They were included in the original "peak oil" prediction in 1956 and are part of every serious analysis. The problem is: new deposits are overall not discovered as fast as old ones get used up. Meanwhile the consumption rate has been increasing all the time...
Sure. I would personally only ever switch once, if at all, and that is to use the language itself so that its self hosted. I wouldn't switch for speed reasons, unless the performance is really really really bad and I can't seem to fix it.
so many choices.