skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Saint Nick solves a specific problem: Where do the presents come from over the christmas period. It couldn't have been my parents who put them at the end of my bed because they were asleep and as any child knows it's naughty not to be asleep at night. My parents, the guardians of all that is correct in the world, would NEVER be awake at night. So the only reasonable answer is the one given by my parents, the guardians of all the is correct in the world, that there is an advert for Coke climbing into my house and delivering the presents I so wished for.

Then I grew up and it just didn't seem logical any more. Burdened by the truth that may parents, now no longer the guardians of truth in the world, had played a trick on me I went into the world armed with the knowledge that all is not what it seems and that the search for the truth is difficult and long. Over time I realised that this burden was in fact a candle in the darkness of ignorance. A darkness that is in part inherited and in part constructed by the Guardians (whomever they may be) to keep me from the truth.

So you see good old saint Nick has a very specific role in society. He's a lie told by parents to bring darkness into the world of children under the guise of 'magical enchantment'. For some, he is a catalyst to see the lie but for others he is the first snuffing of the harsh light of inquiry and intellectual endeavour that all children are born with.
Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. If the customer has no clear idea of what it is they want and if you are (at the moment) the only bidder for the job, then that's a possibility. But if you are bidding against other companies then this is usually not an option.
A Calculus Analogy: Integrals as Multiplication
Santa claus solves lots of problems as well, where do christmas presents come from for example? Who can I go thank for christmas for another?

Sure, they are not correct answers, but neither are any that any particular god will answer.
No, the original is "Google employees on Reddit answers questions"
+1, same thing happened to me. Only this past semester when I took 8 classes did I realize the value of diligence.

By the way, hope Facebook is going well Ivan!
Yeh apologies. I misread earlier.
Sorry. I've misunderstood you, then.

I wonder what the girl would have said if her boyfriend broke his promise to not publish some private photos of her, and shared these with his friends (and with others on a public website). That's obviously a gift economy but would she have found the argument convincing in such a case?
Don't underestimate the kind of energy that UPS will put in to destroying anything labeled fragile. It may very well be that if you had shipped a mac like that that it would have arrived in bits and pieces just the same.

Packaging something fragile for shipment is also quite an art, and not always intuitive.
The Santa Claus theory solved two known problems when I was a kid:

1. Where do toys come from?

2. Why should I be good?
I'm tempted to change our bug tracker to have a bug status of "it is too late it is too late we cannot be saved".
Prepare a very accurate estimate. Now double it. Now add 50%.
Add a clause that meetings will be billed according to hours actually taken.
Moving from NYC to CA involves a bunch of state tax bullshit. Each state is so broke they have insanely aggressive collection policies, and acc. to my accountant they can end up both claiming > 11% of your income based on overlapping residency rules.
Known problem = Fundamental problem
single stepping is for those who can't read code
Google is "fun" for two reasons. They provide lots of perks since, once their salary reaches a certain level, the top of the talent spectrum prefers these improvements to their work environment rather than an incrementally higher salary. They give people their 20% time since their core business involves a lot of speculative investments, and the 20% time is the best way to do that in-house.

Average companies generally don't have the resources/incentive to hire the best, so they don't need to provide the same perks. They're also less likely to invest their time speculatively, so no 20% time.

I'm sure there's a happy medium where the right amount of perks and fun culture improves company productivity more than it costs up front, much like decreased taxation can sometimes increase tax revenue. I don't think many companies feel confident enough to determine the line appropriately, and I imagine it's more comfortable as a manager to err on the conservative side.
That's not a price, it's an additional benefit.
> watching good people die painfully and slowly is fairly destructive to blind faith in an allegedly benevolent god

How about the other way around? ... people surviving with all odds against them.

> [citation needed]

I think I just gave you one.
Extreme Programming Refactored: The Case Against XP [http://apress.com/book/view/9781590590966] was a fun book for showing the other side of the XP coin.

It does a good job at critiquing the XP movement (and agile), including some of the examples from Kent Beck's Extreme Programming Explained, e.g. showing how the XP/agile poster-project, the Chrysler C3 payroll system, failed.

It's focused on XP, but many of the points work for other agile methodologies.
As an American living in France, I can sympathize. Dealing with the bureaucracy here for any reason is a nightmare.

One piece of advice for those in this situation: get the best American Express card that you can qualify for. It doesn't solve all your problems, but there are many cases where it magically just works. One example is ordering things online: AmEx is much more flexible about the shipping/billing address not matching up, and as a result I can often use it with a shipping and billing address from France with no problems.

In addition, their customer service is fantastic, and they can often give you good advice or help you out when you get stuck in these situations.
Thanks for the elaborate response, although I fear I still don't agree.

No halfway sane person will pursue music fulltime if he cannot earn a living off it.

Who said musicians are necessarily sane people? ;-)

I don't deny that there will always be hobbyists. But the world will be a much poorer place, musically, if we don't allow music as a fulltime career.

This is a strange choice of words. Music has never been a "career"-choice that your parents would be happy with. The prerequisite to becoming successful with music is talent. Not even necessarily musical talent (although that obviously helps), but at least a talent in entertaining people with whatever kind of noise you're able to make.
And ofcourse luck, lots of it.

The only regular "careers" in music would be in auxiliary branches (studio technician and such) or - given the basic talent - the job of a concert musician.

Some of that might go away if all music was set to be free. But complaining about that is about as productive as complaining about low-wage jobs moving to china. It's just the way things currently develop; adapt or die.

However, those who are driven by music will always find a way to do it. And I don't even think it will be harder than today. Au contraire I think it will become much easier for independent artists to gain traction, due to the great equalizer: YouTube. Sheer talent might actually finally regain the relevance that it deserves once we take the music execs and their marketing campaigns out of the equation.

However, I will quit my efforts making music, at least with a band, if I don't manage to get some kind revenue off of it. To not do so would be idiotic.

Sorry if that sounds harsh, but if your goal in making music is the money then I don't think it will be a great loss. There are plenty dedicated "idiots" to fill the gap, no harm done.

Fine, you say: make money through other means -- play gigs!

Actually what I'm saying is: There is no god-given right to make money with music.

If society values music enough to make people rich for it then new ways to make that happen will evolve.

Crying after an old model that has long expired is just pointless. You know, I'd much prefer to ride a horse to work. It just has so much more style than those soul-less vehicles everyone is using today. But no matter how hard I stomp my feet, I have to acknowledge it's 2010 and my poor horse would be overrun by a SUV in short order.
The case that your newegg link refers to seems to be exactly what the OP is trying to avoid: cheap, flimsy cases that won't survive being shipped. The fact is, there are a number of well built cases, but they tend to hover in the $200 to $300 range.
The words "I believe X" used to mean "Based on all available evidence I have seen, I'm convinced that X is true". Lately however people have started to use the word to mean any strongly held opinion regardless of any evidence or reason.

To believe something is "to be convinced of the truthfulness of it", to have faith is to have hope in the future based on a belief.

Believe and faith can be misplaced: To be convinced that something is true does not make it true. A conviction which is specific enough maybe testable, a conviction can sometimes be proven or disproven. It is rational to hold convictions which are consistent with available evidence and experiences.

A theology is a (philosophical) theory about gods. A theology may be specific enough to be testable, most however are not. Someone who is convinced that a particular theology is true has a religious conviction or religious believe, which often becomes part of the persons identity or self-identification.

People who share similar theological convictions often join together to form religious groups and religious organizations. One can be convinced either by personally examining the evidence available or by the believing the word of someone who one considers an authority (often as part of the religious organization one is a member of).

The word "god" has also taken on a whole different meaning. The word god used to mean someone with authority and power. For example: In the bible Jezus applies the word "gods" to human judges? By this definition it's obvious that there are gods, many even. [We could then reserve the word "God" (with a capital letter) for the hypothetical entity which has no authority above him. Which leads to the weird conclusion that (this hypothetical) God would be the only true atheist: a-theist, without-god.]

The word "natural" is also confusing. Regardless of what we personally may think: Assume for a moment that the universe was created by someone who was not created. Now we have the situation that the universe is not "natural", but rather "artificial". The only thing natural would be this creator who what no created.

This makes it currently impossible to reason from within science about intelligent design. Intelligent design is not inherently unscientific, but it does challenge some of the most basis assumptions at the basis of modern day science: The unproven (and perhaps unprovable) conviction that Life, the universe and the rest are all purely natural (and not artificial).

The word "supernatural" is also meaningless. Just try to define any observable phenomenon which is neither natural nor artificial? By implicit definition no observable phenomenon could ever be labeled supernatural. Just the fact that we are able to observe it either makes it natural or artificial. Logic leaves no room for anything else.
I prefer not to use "god" as a pronoun, since it makes assumptions which aren't warranted. Let's remove the assumptions by using "a god" instead, and look at your sentences again.

"I do not believe a god exists."

"I believe a god does not exist."

They look the same to me.
Most people are like that, in varying degree. The internets have certainly made it easier for us to stop doing stuff for more attractive stuff. If I was in jail with only one book, I bet one could really read it and grok it.
Something similar is happening to me right now: a website I was developing has moved beyond the "cool" phase to the "now I need hard work" phase and I already started playing with another website...
> HTML tags lea͠ki̧n͘g fr̶ǫm ̡yo​͟ur eye͢s̸ ̛l̕ik͏e liq​uid pain

Just reading that makes me wince.
I don't believe in any kind of gods, as we have no scientific claim that it exists and people have been looking for millennia.

But even if I did believe that there would be something up there, I don't believe in a Christian God - in fact I know such a person couldn't exist - because the bible has so many contradictions in it.
Chrooting Apache2 With mod_chroot On OpenSUSE 11.2
One in a million miracles happen about once in every million times.
That's a very nice explanation. I'm going to have to file that one away for when my kids are ready...
The immorality of copyright infringement is not contingent on whether the industry can survive in spite of it any more than the immorality of traditional theft is contingent on whether the victim can afford to suffer the loss. The fact I have an Ikea-style ball pit in my basement filled with money doesn't entitle you to come in and grab a handful. Even if you're only just borrowing it, even if you do actually give it back later, and even if I don't even notice you took it, it's wrong.
Facebook:Comments on a photo album, not just one photo. What a non sense
While commenting on a photo makes sense since comments are attached to a particular photo, how allowing users to comment on album makes sense? If I remove all old photos in an album, comments still remain there, so that means I am fooling my friends by making them comment on something and then removing it , but comments still remain there. I can hence totally change the album content while comments still remain there. This is ridiculous I think. Same as allowing others to 'like' my comments on a comment. Where is it going?
Mitch Kapor Tapped by Malaysia
I think this is pretty old and has been discussed everywhere many times. Check the date of the question/answer too.
Wrong question. The real one would be "what is your faith?", because all of us need to believe in something (that is, nobody is auto-sufficient, we all depend on many many things outside of us, we base our existence on a long history etc.).

And (very important), if you ask "what is your faith/belief?", nobody can escape the question saying "not relevant".
This does not get you the two primary benefits of attending a top tier school: 1) the social proof that comes with a credential like an MBA from Stanford or 2) the instant network of friends and alums.

(Furthermore, the other comments about accredited investors is spot on. And lastly, imagine somebody told you they did this and lost it all, would you hire that guy? No, you'd think he's nuts.)
Agreed. But motivation seems to be pretty black and white (you're either making it happen or not), at least in the short term, and cliches (or rather, heuristics) are the best way to keep the motivation revving.
That's about as false a dichotomy as I've ever seen.

You could spend that $120K in much more productive ways than either of these two, besides, when you're of the age to go in to studying usually that money is given to you as a debt with a purpose to spend it on your education so you'll be in a position to pay it back later.

If the return-on-investment in startups would be better than the return-on-investment of student loans you can bet that banks would be a lot more willing to borrow money to start-ups. At best this will teach you a thing or two about investing and leave you in debt to the tune of $120K. You'll be working for a bank the rest of your life.

If you are in the position of spending the money on a startup spend it on your own first, build a success large enough that you no longer lose any sleep over losing a 100K+ and then become an investor in other peoples companies.

Terrible advice this article.
My current rule of thumb is that if I don't think that I'm 90% done when I'm only 50% of the way through my schedule I'm going to miss my deadline.

My suspicion about the cause of this is that I'm conflating 'easy' with 'doesn't take long'. I think there may be some other factors to do with not wanting to admit I'll break stuff when tidying code (so not allowing time to fix it) and somehow assuming that all the little niggles that only take a couple of hours to fix will all be fixed in the same couple of hours.
The accredited investor stuff is pretty US centric, so even if it is spot on it does not apply to everybody, but the advice is simply bad even without that.
It's simple maths. Let's say that in SF an average programmer makes $100k and works 50 hrs/week. If Google can spend $10k on perks and get its people to average 56 hrs/week then it's onto a winner.

In reality when you consider that Google will be buying said perks in bulk, and that people will stay even longer, it might be paying 5% more and getting 20% more work. At the end of the day Google is a corporation like any other. Just one with better PR.
> How about the other way around?

The occasional lucky survivor does not somehow balance out the rest.

> people surviving with all odds against them.

Sometimes people survive when doctors think they won't. The human body is remarkably resilient. That makes it unlikely. Unlikely != miracle.
It's a wonderful thing what persistence and vision can do. Still, that was back in the day when your could execute an idea based on vision and business prowess alone.

Not saying that it's impossible, but the rise in status of developers over the last few years is a result of the increasing technical difficulty of managing a business and growing it to size.

Make note of history, learn from the present, execute on the future.
angusgr's or the original? At least the original is wrong: plural subject combined with a singular verb.
Google Me- a social-networking site by google
What is necessary to make regex turing complete?
Clickable: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1187554.
I didn't mean it to be with long-term intent, but similar to the adoption of a technology: groups that use it prosper, and others join them, or copy them, or are out-traded, outnumbered or conquered by them. There might not be any conscious thought at all, except - they look cool, let's copy.
That argument might work with older people, but it isn't going to fly with the young ones.

Why? Because it is the same song we have been hearing from the record companies for years, and that hasn't changed that many opinions.

And I don't even feel sorry for them - do the world really need another love song? Because if not, we should consider killing copyright.

And I won't drop one tear if Disney goes bankrupt - after all they took all the stories from the public domain.
I realize you're speaking generally rather than addressing the comment you're replying to, but I did say "the idea of God".
> 2. I know of no documented miracles. In fact, such a proposition is unproveable, as is the claim that "miracles do happen".

Thing is, anything can happen ... it's just a matter of probability. Think of any impossible event (like an angel, i.e. a shiny humanoid with wings, integrating in front of your eyes) and that's possible. It's just highly unlikely.

In that light I consider miracles to be very unlikely events. Life on earth is such an event, especially since we haven't found proof that life exists on other planets yet, although we have found the proper conditions (like water).

And if life exists on such a planet, did it manage to evolve like us? This is even more unlikely since we may not have the means to observe bacteria from a distance, but we could observe artificial lights and non-random radio signals coming from other planets.

And then ... if we manage to build interstellar ships and expand to other planets, that will be prof in itself that no other intelligent beings managed to do that ... simply because aliens had a lot of time to expand to earth before we appeared (after all, if you have enough room to expand, the growth rate is exponential).

You can say that life happened by chance, but currently intuition suggests otherwise.

Not only that ... but the miracles you witness everyday stop being miracles. Babies being born are a miracle, simply because this probably doesn't happen in any other of the billions of galaxies. And you being able to transcend your original condition and reason about such things is another.
Haruhism, the belief that our fates are at the hands of a insane Japanese school girl that has no idea she's god.

What can I say? I thought Atheism was just boring.
I had heard that perl regular expressions are already Turing complete. Never verified it, though. E.g.

http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=143298&cid=120...
Arrhenius' college dissertation, containing revolutionary research that served as the foundation for work which won him a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, was graded such that he initially received a 4th class degree.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
Once I was on a trip and landed with a British family in one car, couldn't understand a word, it was sth like (hard to write it) "Ncaaaw, intt!" and took me 2 times repeat and focusing hard to get it was "Nice car, isn't it?". And the whole family was talking like that all the time.

It wasn't any Scottish (this one I recognize). I have no problem understanding and talking to most Brits, Americans, Canadians, but sometimes you (Brits) really surprise me :D
I admit that possibility freely. I'm not sure what you're trying to say that I didn't already. I do claim the Bible is true as well based on these experiences.

I'm not sure a 22 year old programmer goes from reading Russell and Nietzsche one day to following Jesus the next day without something having happened. Whether that's psychological or spiritual something happened to me.
There is more book on project Gutenberg than you can read in the rest of your life.

You can't even read the entire _catalog_ of the library of congress, because they add books faster than you can read them.

So what if no new books were created from now on? No new music, video, anything?

You still wouldn't run out of books, music, etc. Ever.
Yeh, that's certainly not a common British accent or dialect.

I can't place it exactly but it sounds like a London or non-posh southern accent.
I don't think Newton would have attributed his success entirely to his DNA: If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
My standard way of answering my friends on the phone is "how's the virgin" or "I saw your mother out in town last night" or uuuhhhhoooohhh (sex noise). Makes things more interesting for the rest of the conversation. Even my boss takes the piss at work. Great way to prevent people getting 'up' themselves (Irish btw).
Thanks a ton for the TMA link. It was like reading a manual about myself. I have been struggling with my job choices ever since I started working 3 years back. I find it difficult to fit into the system, and I find myself questioning authority all the time. Somewhere down the line I realized that I am able to perform at my best when I am put in an environment with very less restrictions and I have the freedom to make strategic decisions. Being given a list of specs and then coding to the specs is just not my kind of thing. I have often felt confused about my career decision to be a programmer due to this reason.

Just like the OP I find it difficult to sustain my interests for a long time. I have been trying for my own startup for the past one and a half years. I start on ideas with very high initial enthusiasm, but in a few weeks I have given up on the idea and jumped to the next exciting one. Looking back on the last one year or so I feel disappointed with myself for wasting possible opportunities. But many thanks to the OP and all other good HN'ers for throwing more light on this issue. I feel I understand myself better now, and i'm going to approach my interests with a new sense of purpose. Thanks again.