skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I for one am interested ... as I'm also interested in iPhone / Android / Symbian tips, news, tutorials ... since mobile development is a trend that can't be ignored anymore (not to mention it's pretty cool for your non-technical wife to find something you did actually useful :))

What Silverlight does best, is to give a pretty painless experience for developers. For instance, iPhone developers complain that Android's SDK is too complicated (simple things aren't simple to do) and that it lacks an interface designer.

In this regard it seems to me like WinMo 7 is going to kick ass.

As for any other complaints related to Silverlight, keep in mind that WinMo7 was designed for it, and you probably won't have performance or look&feel issues.
crontab + wget + diff + grep -v + mail
> Maybe it's just me, but I don't consider Windows 7,

> Silverlight etc to be hacker news. It's just spam.

I'm truely interested to see how Silverlight (mobile or not) works. It's just as valuable as a node.js or mongodb write-up to me.

My main motive is that you can work with Silverlight using IronRuby or IronPython, which means being able to develop mobile apps and (rather) portable desktop apps (off-the-browser mode) in these two languages.

So yes, I'm really interested in this personally.
It varies from company to company (and country to country) but usually you can take vacation days whenever you like, but they have to be approved by your superior. He makes sure that not everyone takes the same week off or that you don't miss a crucial part of a project etc. Often you are expected to take a certain amount en bloc (e.g. two weeks). At least that is my experience from working in the UK and Germany.
You need to get approval of the HR department and of course talk to your colleagues to make sure that enough people are still there to work.
I work at a medium-sized company in the Netherlands and I get about 25 days of vacation per year (I can't recall the exact number). I think it's somewhere in the contract that they expect me to take at least two or three consecutive weeks of holiday each year but I generally just announce my longer holidays a couple of weeks in advance and if I can't or don't feel like working for a day I announce it the day before or in the morning of that day (better than calling in 'sick'!).

Due to circumstances I hadn't taken a lot of days off the last two years which meant I had quite a few vacation days saved up so I could take about four-and-a-half weeks off last December and January to help my girlfriend who was about to give birth to our second child.

There's usually a maximum to the amount of days one can save up over the years and a colleague of mine had to take a couple of weeks off last year otherwise he would lose the days.
My previous employer used to give us 30 days of vacation a year.

You don't have to take it consecutively, but many people often do take it in chunks. The most common pattern is to take 1 or 2 weeks off at a time. You could also take it one day at a time, say take a few Mondays off. However, taking every Monday off is generally frowned upon.

You can take it whenever you want, so long as you announce it early enough in advance and there is nothing planned at that time that requires you to be there (e.g. "the product is being launched that week").

Normally, the process is that you check your calendar and check with your boss. Once the vacation is approved, you book your flights, etc. Typically, it is extremely unlikely for someone to cancel your vacation after you've booked it. The general consensus is that once the vacation is approved, the manager just has to accept that it will happen.

Basically, it's common sense - don't disrupt the company's work with your vacation, be sensible, announce it early enough in advance.
Free & JavaScript-based Geolocation Enable Websites : YQL Geo Library
why ?

It's obviously relative to other commonly used web frameworks (like django, rails, asp.net, etc) - in that perspective it's indeed ultra high performance.

Compared to raw assembler dsp, sure, it totally sucks :)
Thinly veiled advertisement from microsoft?
One more space alien question: if you are too sick to work or you have family emergencies, do you take days out of that pile or some other pile?
Well - why the downvote, honestly ? Is my comment lacking facts in some way ?
Interesting but risky point. What if the new Windows Mobile flops due to critical problems much like the other Windows Mobiles?

Android at least is already gathering momentum, despite all its issues. It's nice that Microsoft cares, but you won't get rich selling to the 3 people who decided to buy a Microsoft phone.

You say "They care about how polished the outside looks, how thin it is, and how smooth and fast the user interface is."

People also care about how easy it is to do whatever they're trying to do. And this combination, smooth, fast, and easy, is really hard to achieve. I'm not entirely convinced Microsoft is still up to it, though I'll be glad to be surprised.
You've got me on the first one...

The second doesn't necessarily seem to be hampering the arts and science (unless, I suppose, we are saying it hampers access to the arts - which I might agree with).
Best CMS
Mythrii have good skills in Joomla,Wordpress,Oscommerce,Zencart,Phpbb,Mambo,Custom CMS
I don't think so, but there's an NES emulator for Android. It probably wouldn't be able to take much advantage of the larger screen, since classic games would look pretty awful stretched out to full tablet resolution.
The UK government set up a committee to look into copyright and their economic analysis suggested that copyright was already 30 years too long if promoting economic activity was the goal and should be reduced to 20.

I know you've made a distinction between "revising" and "dismantling" current law (which by the way Stallman isn't in favour of, he has slightly more complex ideas) but since the industry was pushing for an extra 45 years to be added I'd guess they'd see 75 years less of copyright as pretty much the same magnitude as total dismantlement.
That man is very brave. The guru could have used a nasty poison to kill him. It could have been something that is absorbed through the skin (the guru could have had it on his hand and had his hand protected by a skin like cover).

So, yeah this sceptic was lucky the guru was not especially evil and ingenious.
Max Klein (author of this blog) is a regular HN member with some 5000 karma and many insightful comments.
We used them to control robots too. The reason why is 1> they're nice 2> they're hardy, 3> their comm protocol is USB
Surely with the rise of the iPhone and push GMail, email is becoming more immediate rather than less.

Where I will agree with you, though, is that I'm more and more happy to leave emails festering in my inbox waiting for actions whereas iPhone notifications get immediate attention. Why? Because I choose exactly what notifications I receive. As notifications become more spammy, we will need a new less-spammy system. Rinse, repeat.
There (Lithuania) you get 28 calendar days of paid vacation per year. You can split that in parts, but at least one part must be 14 calendar days minimum.
There are cases when you get 35 days—if you ar <18 years old, single parent, etc. but 28 is standard duration.
‘A’ Week going viral on Facebook and Twitter
People also care about how easy it is to do whatever they're trying to do. And this combination, smooth, fast, and easy, is really hard to achieve. I'm not entirely convinced Microsoft is still up to it, though I'll be glad to be surprised.

I think Microsoft may stand an outside chance; they are already going in the right direction with recent UI/UX changes in Windows. They've always got that it should be slick but usable; their major problems (in the past) have been in realizing that slick on a desktop != slick on a phone...
Thinly veiled advertisement from maxklein?

(sorry couldn't resist :))
I think you've got it backwards. The government wouldn't have the right to just create monopolies for no reason. This allows them to set up such monopolies as long as they serve a specific purpose.

So not "you need to promote progress, so set up monopolies" but "you can set up monopolies, but only to promote progress".

That's why it specifically mentions "exclusive rights" because that's the contentious bit.
Still, after reading his post I can't get Ballmer's sweaty "developers" chant out of my head.
If you can get approved for 4 weeks then there isn't a problem. I get approximately 6 weeks (~27 days) so either take 2 3-week vacations or 3 2-week vacations. You can also use vacation time to pad out holidays. This is a popular option if there is a government holiday on wednesday, add thursday and friday and you have 5 days that only cost you 2 vacation days.

You don't have to take it at a specific time of the year. It can make it easier if everyone does it at the same time. Our office closes for a week in August and December. Since not enough people are here to run things you take them whether you want to or not (or end up running the switchboard by yourself).
The blogpost seems a bit too praising towards Microsoft for my taste. But there is one bullet point missing there:

* Microsoft guys are desperate they will lose the mobile market for iPhone on the upper-end and Android on the lower-end so they will throw as much money at the problem to get into the spotlights again.

Of course this won't help them much since all the 3 companies involved (Apple, Google and Microsoft) have tons of cash.

The rest of the arguments are also debatable.
This trend is for real, I know people who preferred Windows Mobile to iphone recently.
Obviously, it's risky. Given the information that is available at the moment (screenshots, videos, spec sheets), then this particular path is the best to take. I.e, Microsoft can still fuck it up by release a sideways talker or something stupid like that. But I cannot know this at this point in time, and the risk is basically in deciding that if they got this far and were able to come up with something new, then they will also make the final parts of this good.

One thing that worries me a bit is the 0.8 second delay when you switch screens. This may make the phone feel slow, and if it slows down over time, then that can kill the phone. But I can't know this now, one just has to take a risk.
The problem I am facing is the fact that I am both emotionally and mentally drained at my current job, but also, I am getting paid wages which are far below what I should be making if I were working full time doing the same work. I'm basically making student assistant wages, doing full time work that would in industry, make much more than I am current' making.

-ins0mniac
I think he has a point in that I pretty much have the impression that windows phone and iphone users will be more likely to spend a dime on something, as compared to android users I know :)
I funnelled some of the cash I received from Microsoft to swombat. Win, win situation.
The appropriate homemade metaphor isn't "handgun", it's "improvised explosive device".
Here in Australia a "permanent" position typically includes around 4 weeks of paid vacation ("annual leave"). The vacation time is accumulated week by week so that if you want to take a long break you need to "save up" the time. Vacations can be anything from a single Monday through to months.

How this is arranged depends on the company (e.g. large corporations tend towards lots of paperwork) but they all demand a reasonable amount of notice (i.e. more notice for longer vacation periods) as well as some awareness of deadlines and upcoming work.

Different companies do have different policies though. For example, that employees use their vacation time within a certain period or lose it. And yes, some have certain times that are set vacations. My company shuts down between Christmas and New Year, and the non-public holidays count as annual leave.

In the last six months I have: taken Monday/Friday leave to visit family for an extra long weekend, a two week break to do a course (latin :), and a morning in the middle of the week (with no notice) to wait for a delivery.

For contrast: a "casual" job has no paid leave. I believe it is also much easier legally for employers to fire casual employees.
Was he paid by MS to write that (Microsoft cares that he makes money - in more then one way)?
Of course, logically it's the same, but when dealing with people (and politicians are people), names are important, and naming it a transition period, means that it's clear that it should be discussed then.
Microsoft has seen what Apple and others have done,
and have made something along the same line,
but daring and new.

Daring and new is fine, but in this case daring and new is not enought, it must be useable too.
Too many copycats failed for the very simple reason: copying the superficial aspects and having no idea
about the essence why the things they copy work in the first place.

Microsoft is investing in the right type of
future oriented technologies

I'd say that one of the killer apps for iPhone is Mobile Safari. Why one cannot argue about MS effort, sorry, but anything they can put on the device won't stand a chance compared to WebKit browsers.

Microsoft has a huge marketing and development budget
to push anything they want

That may be the problem, not a solution. Thinking that marketing can fix a bad product, or thinking that innovation is proportional to money thrown on the problem. Usually it is the other way around:
restrictions sprak innovation.

Microsoft has integrated its programming languages across all platforms,
implying a huge number of devs will program for their platforms

This is two sided also. Brought back memories of Win shareware.
What is your company doing? Software? B2B? Something else entirely?
Depending on the country (I believe this applies to most of Western Europe), if you or anyone in your family is sick then you call in sick. It doesn't count against your holidays. And you can be out sick as long as necessary. I've heard some being out sick for a 2 months. Reason is the government covers sick days (they reimburse the employer 80%). You will need to see a doctor who will put down how many days you need to recover.

So no their isn't a "pile" of bankable sick days. Just know if you are sick for too long you go on disability which is a separate matter I'm not familiar with.
I don't know about India but I'm guessing he's talking about small superstitions like saying "bless you" after sneezes, "touch wood" (or actually touching wood) after saying something that you wouldn't want to happen or "thank god" after nearly getting hit by a bus i.e. stuff that is technically a superstition but is mostly just a cultural habit.
France here (although I'm not an employee anymore so these rules don't apply to me).

> Do you have to take vacation time consecutively?

No in general, although some companies will try to push out every one 3 weeks in a row in the summer, when activity goes down a bit.

> Do you have to take it at a particular time of the year?

For the 5 mandatory weeks of holidays, no, unless specific situations. What happens in reality is quite often you have to do trade-offs with other people going in vacation, to ensure the service can still run properly.

> Is it subject to some sort of approval process?

Typical process: your direct boss signs off your holidays request and ensure the team is not going off at the same time, then you go to HR for the final approval.
Anywhere I've worked (UK) there's been a limit to the number of sick days you can take and restrictions on having to have a doctors note depending how long you were off. Currently I think I'm allowed 5 in a year off and after 3 within a week I need a note from a doctor.

Take more than 5 days off and you're relying on good will and have to attend meetings to explain it, in theory you might get dumped to statutory pay.

In terms of family emergencies you either take them as annual leave or you rely on goodwill. Normally I've been able to get half days for funerals but that's based on the IT world where they know I'm making up time for them regularly.
You're mistaken:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/barristers-pupils-win-lega...
Practically your choice may depend on how much money you have. The answer is probably networking, if you have just graduated you are in a position where you are probably still in touch with classmates: find out what projects they are working on and whether you can help. Look through the industry and see what you would like to do and see if those projects are hiring.

Many top projects are interested in recruiting enthusiastic and motivated graduates.

With social networking it's increasingly easy to find people who you could help out/work with.
If this were about Apple, I don't think anyone would even think that the person were being paid. No, Microsoft did not pay me, just the same as Google did not way me to write my article about Google Wave.
You are not your job. Your job pays the rent. I'm sorry you are in an unsatisfying job, I'm sure the majority of HN'ers have been there before. It sucks.

Times are tough right now. Getting your next job should be your priority, but quitting your day job to focus on the job hunt is a silly move when unemployment is over 10%. Keep your job until you secure the next one.

Until then take some solace in the knowledge that your current situation is temporary.
Sorry - maybe I'm just cranky this morning but I'm trying to figure out the point of this post. Are you doling out advice - is that why you posted this as a separate thread instead of as a reply in the original thread? I can't help but think this is yet another one of the recent, "Look at how awesome I am!" posts - that's how it comes across to me.
I want to like the new Windows Phone interface, but I hate it. I want to like it because I want there to be competition to the iPhone and Android is so... crummy. Android phones are still unresponsive, clunky, unpolished and just... bad.

Take a look at the Engadged video Max links to. There's no way easy way to navigate through the Windows Phone. Animations everywhere that take seconds. Did you notice that opening the address book took 5 seconds? I sure did. Everything is moving and shifting permanently -- so you'll get nauseous if you put it on your desk. The web browser? Checkerboard all the way through the moment you start scrolling, and you can't even zoom in and out before the page has loaded. And the responsiveness was bad too. Tap on a caption. Wait two seconds. Tap again. Wait. See animation. Scroll. Urgh.

Note the guy didn't mention anything about 3rd party software. Where are those apps going to end up? Will you be able to install/uninstall easily? And so on.

I think it's going to flop.
France here as well, here's what applies for employees: if you're sick you go to the doctor, and he's the one who decides if you must get an "arrêt de travail" for X days which is an official paper stating you shouldn't work, based on your medical condition.

Then there's the question of will you get paid or not - under a certain amount of days you won't be paid (I think it's 3). After that other mechanisms kick in.

Family emergency is usually in the holidays pile. Some companies allow 1 day off per year if someone dies.

You can also (based on company agreement) take a day off and just decide not to get paid.
I'm in the UK too and its all manager's discretion so it varies massively.

One place I worked even let a guy save his allowance and work 4 days weeks from September to December. Another from time to time asked people to cancel their leave at very short notice because of the projects that were on.

Ever heard of duvet days? my mate's boss let him that day off by sending a text from his bed in the morning if he didn't fancy it that day.
My favorite is the modifier for histories.

$ ls a b c

a	b	c

$ ls !$

ls c

c

$ ls a b c

a	b	c

$ ls !:3 !:2 !:1 !:0

ls c b a ls

ls: ls: No such file or directory

a	b	c

$
Sure, one of the major reasons most of us haven't saved a drowning child is a lack of opportunity; but is that any different in the case of my accomplishments? I'd say that the largest reason most people haven't done the things I've done is that most people weren't born to Oxford-educated parents, one a Chemistry professor, the other a high school mathematics teacher.

I can't point to anything I've accomplished as being entirely independent of the advantages my parents gave me; what makes my circumstances any different from Patrick's?
password advice: come up with a system known only to you that generates passwords based on what sort of site you're one. you can base it on the web address, the company name, general category, whatever. now feed that through your algorithm and you have a unique password for each website you visit. if you forget a password you can re-derive it, since there will only be a handful of possibilities. since you'll certainly have your algorithm memorized you never need to write anything down.
It's like twitter is the new Hello, World. I believe every SDK should have a twitter client included in the template instead of Hello World.
I think that the Windows Phone market (>30 crowd) are a great market. They have money, small amounts don't matter to them, they are not so jaded and have not already seen everything on reddit. They also are not aware that they can do a lot of the things they buy for free on some website.

That's the problem with Android - it targets the nerd market, which is the worst market to sell software to.
Here's an old (and silly) set from a wake we threw at our warehouse in 2003 or 2004 for a guitar player that had died that morning. http://www.flickr.com/photos/halliganfamily/sets/72157603829...

if I dig around I can probably find more, and I'm hoping to do a shoot at that oakland warehouse this weekend, especially the basement :)
I wondered that; but what he describes seems a little more ritualistic (signs, elders etc.) than the superstitions / cultural habits (mostly why I was asking really)
I have a long history of completely sucking at starting conversations in online forums. Typically, conversations I try to start either get completely ignored or go down in flames in the worst possible way. Over the years, I have tried to work on this. I go down in flames less, so there has been progress. After I make the observation a few times that I suck at this, I start getting "pity vote" comments -- ie people reply just so there aren't zero comments. I think that may be worse than getting zero comments. I don't remark on my total suckitude to whine. It's just an objective fact. My last submission to HN generated zero comments and the one before that generated pity comments along the lines of "Gee, that's tough. Maybe you should look elsewhere for support". Of 4 submissions here so far, I've managed to successfully generate conversation/meaningful, useful replies one time. That's probably about par for the course for me.

New questions to add to my above list: How would you ask this question/introduce this topic such that it would get replies? What did I do wrong?

:-D
So it depends on the employer. I think there is a mandated 8 days of sick/carers leave per year - on top of the Annual Leave entitlements. Some places (think Retail) are going to insist upon a Doctors Certificate to prove you were ill (especiallly on Monday/Friday). I work for a large 3 letter IT multinational and we have some incredible amount of sick-leave available if we need it. (I've used 2 days in 5 years though - sometimes I feel I should get sick more often.).

I don't believe that any of these leave dates are paid for by the government - but they are specifies as conditions of employment through Government legislation. It basically becomes a cost of hiring a permanent employee (vs a contractor). An employee will be absent approx 6-7 weeks of the year - 4 weeks annual leave, 1 week sick, 2 weeks public holidays (Christmas, Easter, Melbourne Cup)

Yes - In Melbourne, we have a mandated Public Holiday for a horse race.