skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I find your first definition overly limiting. And your second too broad. Religious faith, for me, sits somewhere in-between.

As for practical applications, I find that particular versions of faith apply to its focus. The scientific faith I share with you but I don't expect an infinite march forward. Just because a question can be addressed with data doesn't mean the answer lies somewhere in there (see brain imaging and consciousness).

Religious faith for me simply means a faith that I can better the life I'm living and make a positive impact on this world and its people. But I know I'll fail in many important ways. Some would call that "sin" and I was raised Jewish.

I have technological faith that Apple will soon produce an iPhone I have to have. But Google's search won't always find what you need to know. And I don't think technology can solve all of our problems.
Not sold out, available in most of external shop, you can even participate to the GroupSales if you want a cheaper one ;)

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/GroupSales
I note that it was a website banned here that first broke that story.
If Microsoft Ran a Bar...
I think in some circles it already has.

(Don't know why you got down-voted.)
I'm saddened, but not shocked, that very smart people think you need to spend $40k/year in daycare for children. Misplaced parental guilt?
Yeah, we shouldn't underestimate how hard "Getting shit done." really is.

For example, I downloaded the iPhone SDK on the first day, and have been in the programme for ages, and only now do I have some actual code running, and even that doesn't do that much, except scratch a personal itch.

Scratching this itch took until well after 1am last night, and probably the same today.

No wonder my company wants me in a fabric box 9 hours a day!
Waiting for Microsoft to turn green
Understanding "God" as a "Personal God" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_god) is by no means limited to CS circles, I'd say it is the default position in much of the western world.

Beyond that, yes, you're probably right: a broader definition of god would probably lead to less people calling themselves atheist. I'm not sure how you would go about expanding the definition, it seems like any religion which says "this is what god is" will have a natural advantage over one which says "god is whatever you like", since people are better at coming together over things which they share, rather than things they agree not to share.
But if anything, I'd expect programmers to be willing and interested in writing their own definition. The problem only comes in when one assumes that's the only definition. Still, programmers seem more, not less, amenable to re-write when something isn't right.
Why yes, indeedy:

6/13
http://valleywag.com/5016355/google-daycare-now-a-luxury-for...

6/16
http://valleywag.com/5016952/googles-daycare-debacle-the-kin...

A broken clock's at least right twice a day, eh?
So how should I write:
"I think I have seen such data before"
1: I think I have seen data like that before
2: I think I have seen that kind of data before
I stopped reading the article because it was poorly written.
But see it's up to you (if you accept the challenge) to come up with a satisfactory answer. I know I have - for myself. And my wife and I mostly agree. That's enough. We won't teach our (eventual) kids dogmatically but we will teach them a healthy appreciation of the power and pitfalls of religious thought. To us, it's a part of what it means to be human. An atheist, to me, is simply saying "No, that definition is wrong and I don't believe in it!". To me, that's a weird perspective for folks who come up with definitions day after day.

On topic, I do wish folks down-voting me throughout this thread would explain why. I started posting because I'm very interested in the question but lack an answer. Down-voting me only proves the point and necessitating the very question!
Why were Lisp machines so expensive?
Going through SICP, in the last lectures they are going through register machines, compilers etc.

Abelson mentions a for LISP-chip/machine that was more parallelized(yeah spell that) than an ordinary chip.

What was the advantage/disadvantage with LISP-based machines?

They were more expensive I have heard, but why? Harder to make because they needed more parallelisation or just because there was less demand for them?

Are new multicore computers more like LISP-machines were?

Some relevant links:
http://pt.withy.org/publications/LispM.html
http://fare.tunes.org/LispM.html
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~weel/lispm.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machines
This is cool, didnt know of it before:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagged_architecture
I became an atheist gradually over my first year of university. That's when I took General Chemistry and realized that science really does work. Then I realized that the Earth really is very old, not 20,000 years old like my parents had taught me. From that point I just had to examine every one of my beliefs and see which ones crumble before the light of reason.

It's been a long process. I'm still discovering beliefs that need examination.

I think the hardest part about losing one's religious beliefs is that the differing belief systems become a barrier the relating to family and friends. And how can one avoid coming across as a know-it-all when talking with folks who are ignorant of science?
I know several atheists (some of them are scientists) who became Islam, Christian, etc, because they need HOPE in life. And they did not have to wait until science provides them the evidences that show God does exist.
"In rejecting an organized religion, why make a leap to rejecting the entire inquiry?"

They spoiled it for us.

But if you're serious^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hrational in your inquiry, you'll come to discover that, like Santa Claus, God does not exist, at which point you will also reject the inquiry. All of it.
Play the lottery, but don't give up your entire life in the hope of a better life.

I can attest that trying to hit a homerun and hitting only a single or double is still great.

I tried to prove Ferman's last theorem (years ago) for my senior project. I didn't:-) But I turned in what I had and got an A+ and 4 invitations to grad school based on that paper alone.

I entered my fraternity into a contest for Chapter of the Year. I didn't care about the trophy; I only cared about what would happen to us by doing all the things needed to try for it. It worked.

I have often tried to solve the biggest problem at some of my customers over the years, but didn't. But all the little things I had to do to make the attempt turned into pretty good products and services anyway.

Nothing wrong with trying to hit a homerun as long as you keep your wits about you and don't let it become and win or go home proposition.
The topic isn't the problem. Any of the things you cited could be good posts.

They just need a little meat on the bones, preferably from personal experience, not just a list of the obvious. Tell us something we don't know.
Databases are just a library that some programs use

And programs are just ones and zeros that some machines use.
I think Unitarian Universalsm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism is some kind of organized atheism.
Or lazy.

No, the lazy choice is to have the visions of the infinite you mention and instead of trying to understand them, simply to describe them in terms of whatever traditional concepts are floating around in your culture-- which in this case are at best 99% anthropomorphizing fable, and often consciously designed to enslave you.
learn how to code
Why bother with redefining someone else's term for your own use? It seems more straightforward to come up with your own term, if the concept doesn't match in the first place.
It sounds like you have been fortunate and found what is right for you. This may not be true for others and sometimes people must learn things for themselves and walk their own paths.

For others, if you are able to, at least try for YC et al as there is much to be learnt from even the application/interview process.

All the unsuccessful people I have met said it was better to have tried and failed than not tried at all and all came away better from the experience.

Lastly, it seems YC is less a lottery (success soley based on pure random chance) and more like a stable where promising prospects are picked, trained, and groomed (via exposure to competitive environment and advice, insight, and mentoring from experts and alumni alike) before being sent out to race. Hence your chances of success is much greater with YC and if your idea is poor or has a high probability of failure (i.e. not making money/users) then at least you get a considered insight to this earlier rather than later. Either way, you benefit and the reasons to do it outweigh those not to.
Top 5 Tips for Staying Awake
Doing application updates via version-control
+1 on M. I remember a scene where IDs where asked from everyone, perhaps Lang's commentary on nationalization/government control.
As I said - nothing is foolproof these days; and, besides, there are easier ways like using DX10 image-caputre programs.
If you are a young couple with an infant in the Bay Area you don't have much of a choice. A friend of mine and his wife decided that they would be better off if she quit her job and took care of their two kids for a few years, as her take-home salary wasn't enough to pay for day care.
Belief in God and belief in Santa Claus are not equivalent. There is no reason inherent in usual descriptions of Santa Claus that one would expect him not to show up on radar, for example, so you can take his absence as evidence of nonexistence. While there are a lot of specifics in the Bible that can be similarly tested, the usual view of (non-fundamentalist) Christians today is that the miracles and such aren't necessarily literal, so there's nothing to test: belief in God-the-Creator is a given, and no amount of evidence or reason can legitimately sway a believer to disbelieve, or a non-believer to believe.
Maybe some of us geeks just need to get outside more. Go hiking like Francis Collins did.

From (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article673663.ece)
Francis Collins, the director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute, claims there is a rational basis for a creator and that scientific discoveries bring man “closer to God”.

For Collins, unravelling the human genome did not create a conflict in his mind. Instead, it allowed him to “glimpse at the workings of God”.

“When you have for the first time in front of you this 3.1 billion-letter instruction book that conveys all kinds of information and all kinds of mystery about humankind, you can’t survey that going through page after page without a sense of awe. I can’t help but look at those pages and have a vague sense that this is giving me a glimpse of God’s mind.”

“I see God’s hand at work through the mechanism of evolution. If God chose to create human beings in his image and decided that the mechanism of evolution was an elegant way to accomplish that goal, who are we to say that is not the way,” he says.

Collins was an atheist until the age of 27, when as a young doctor he was impressed by the strength that faith gave to some of his most critical patients.

“They had terrible diseases from which they were probably not going to escape, and yet instead of railing at God they seemed to lean on their faith as a source of great comfort and reassurance,” he said. “That was interesting, puzzling and unsettling.”

His epiphany came when he went hiking through the Cascade Mountains in Washington state. He said: “It was a beautiful afternoon and suddenly the remarkable beauty of creation around me was so overwhelming, I felt, ‘I cannot resist this another moment’.”

Collins believes that science cannot be used to refute the existence of God because it is confined to the “natural” world. In this light he believes miracles are a real possibility. “If one is willing to accept the existence of God or some supernatural force outside nature then it is not a logical problem to admit that, occasionally, a supernatural force might stage an invasion,” he says.

As for me, know that I respect your opinion. My life experiences are different than your life experiences. For me, God is very real. I find when I remember to pray sincerely in the morning, I can recognize God’s hand throughout the day. The things I see are usually small things but sometimes they are not small at all.
Let's put down the rationalist cool-aid for just a minute. While in every realm of scientific inquiry we have never discovered a man in a red suit (santa claus) by surprise, we have always discovered a greater level of complexity and uncertainty.

The question becomes whether or not we can assign names to things we cannot reason about. Human language and psychology are great things. I believe we can and I believe it is necessary. To say there is an intelligent prime mover at some level beyond our understanding is only far-out in one word: intelligent. I would argue as a baby species we're nowhere close to having a rational definition for intelligent. It's obvious there are complex levels of understanding to the universe that we do not grok.

So in 4 thousand years, when humans look back on us and laugh, so what? Were the Romans wrong in believing Zeus threw lightning bolts? I would argue they were not: some force existed that caused electrical discharges from the sky. By learning more about Zeus, humans simply took part of the meaning of "Zeus" and replaced it with various theories. (Which continue to be worked to this day, I might add)

We will never complete this exercise. There will always be holes in what we understand. And using our creativity and intellect to tell stories about what must be out there? It's the definition of human.

So yes, Virginia, there is a God. For some he is a personal, close advisor. For some he is simply a thing to be denied until time of dire stress. But he's been there, and will remain there, for millennium. Every time a scientist takes a deep-field shot from the Hubble for a picture of the "face of God", every time a MLK rises up to change society for the better, every time a child wonders where their dead parents "went to" -- God remains.

You can cling to your provisional theories as being the source of truth or you can accept the uncertainty of it all and grow up. Atheism is the ultimate negative statement "there is no such thing as I cannot define" and therefore, at the end of the day, is the most non-rational belief of all - in my opinion, of course.
Why even use a keyboard when you can just use a switch? :O
Skip to the end and read the alternative career suggestions!
Mainly applies to regular HN users? New/infrequent users will not be aware of this (without a sticky or an intro or more vocal policing!?!) so the problem will persist. Other than implementing this upon ourselves how can it be applied to others effectively?
Hangon, so let me get this right...

Not only have Google basically doubled the cost of their childcare, but they're also charging people for the priveledge to be on the waiting list for that childcare?

They dont think this is a strange move at all?
Because we all know we are living in a computer simulation... http://www.simulation-argument.com/
Roswell UFO Incident Confirmed by U.S. Astronaut
Planet organic
Are We Living In a Computer Simulation?
Is the limiting factor good quality observers/teachers? Why don't they open their own daycare? It's a lot of work, but if a parent has quit their job any ways, what's a few more kids?
The problem with flat organizations like Google is that they aren't really flat at all; all that happens is the org chart is hidden rather than out in the open. This story is nothing to do with daycare per se; it's to do with the crackpot ideological ideas of one individual who is very powerful on the hidden org chart, and is abusing her position to further her own social engineering experiments.
Yes. Look at all the photoshop/dreamweaver/other plugins etc. if you want examples. If you build something useful that people value, then you can build a business on it be it a shop, a website, or software like an extension/plugin.
That's a very strict definition that I mostly agree with to understand the past. But it still leaves the leading question unaddressed. The solution to rejecting something isn't replacing it with nothing. By "understand them", I think that can operate on many levels simultaneously. The key for me is either giving up traditional concepts or reinterpreting them in contemporary terms.
Or a perl, java, .NET, python, ruby, PHP user group or a Linux /BSD user group.

You could take a 2-prong approach: see how far you get on your own by defining the core functionality: database schema , the CRUD operations you'll be doing (transactional side) and report generation / summary tools you'll need (analytical side). Don't worry about HTML, CSS and javascript, Shoot for something that barely renders in 1 browser (opera or firefox), but you'll have to learn mySQL or postgres or SQLite reasonably well, and it'll tell you how complex the app is, roughly.

Then write up a RFP describing the core functionality, something you could take to a web app developer and they could put together numbers of how many hours to produce wireframes, basic models and controllers and a first prototype.

and, oh yea, do some searching on searchyc.com, reddit, techcrunch, see if somebody's done it already. This is tricky, you may go through dozens of sets of keywords.
Unfortunately, you first have to define something before you can say whether it exists. And a proof for God has remained elusive. Santa Claus I don't know about because I never believed in him (or the Easter Bunny!).

Still, there are some definitions you might offer for God that I'd agree with. And your conclusion would be to reject the existence. Mine would be to ask for better a definition.
No, the lazy choice is to have the visions of the infinite
you mention and instead of trying to understand them,
simply to describe them in terms of whatever traditional
concepts are floating around in your culture.

maybe it's not an either-or choice. E.g., Don Knuth manages to be a (non-lazy) scientist who has thought a lot about infinity and a Christian at the same time.
Unfortunately though we put too much faith in the scientific method. I'm still waiting for an adequate explanation of Gravity but I believe in it.
This is the case, I think, in most cities, even where the cost of living is not as high as the Bay area. At best, one salary is enough for day care costs, but very little is left over.
Is this as close as it gets to a personal invitation on HN? :)
Motorbike Wanderings in Thailand: The Childlike Eyes of Travel
It's because some of them are european buddhists :)
That, I think, is a fine question. The emergence of "spirituality" is seemingly one approach to get around the term. For me, I'm okay with struggling with the term because it leads to good discussions with folks of differing persuasions.
Well, I suppose that the conjunction of a lower demand and a more complex processor (which executed Lisp directly) is a good reason for them to be expensive. The complexity is a problem in the beginning, and if the demand had been higher the prices would lowered, but... I think the main reason of the failure was due to the business side and not the technical merits, unfortunately history shows that technological success has more to do with business skills (i.e., ms) than with the technology (i.e., Lisp Machines, 80's Apples...)
37Signals isn't really in the "eyeballs" business.
Perhaps some of us have grown out of our traditional concepts designed to enslave us and have managed not to have visions of the infinite (study of infinities is a fairly mature science, btw) but still understand the need for a taxonomy of the unknowable?

The lazy is on you, it seems, for making all kinds of straw man arguments here. Surely 99% of belief in God is based on culture and anthropology, but 99% is not 100%. You do the topic a disservice to say that it is.

Personally? I find it funny when people say they're an atheist. "How do you know what not to believe in?" is my first question, and usually that shuts them down. You see, atheism is a response to those traditional cultural ideas of religion (and the history of how they have evolved), not to the real concept of a God. To the atheist, God, santa clause, the christian church, the easter bunny, etc -- it's all the same thing. Stuff you can't prove. They haven't grown to understand where the definitional fault lines are.

That's lazy.
You can build a RepStrap to bootstrap your RepRap:
http://dev.www.reprap.org/bin/view/Main/RepStrap
Sam Harris hikes, and this is his take on Collins:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060815_sam_harris_lang...

What is your opinion on his interpretation?
RepRap is a cool project, but it's an exaggeration to say that it copies itself. It can make its own plastic parts, but you still need to obtain some metal parts, a motor, etc, and assemble it. Sort of like a metal shop, which is nothing new.
Interesting article. Would have like to have seen a graph adjusting for a combined CPI and currency changes.
"No, the lazy choice is to have the visions of the infinite you mention and instead of trying to understand them"

There is some ground between being religious and being an atheist. Being an atheist implies some degree of faith. The question whether there is a God cannot be answered within our current knowledge (and it may pretty well remain so until the end of our universe). An atheist firmly believes the answer is "no". An agnostic acknowledges we are unable to answer the question. Maybe in a million years, maybe never. Interestingly, the only answer science can give to questions like these is on the lines of "we can neither prove nor disprove this hypothesis".

As I use to joke, I lack the faith required to be an atheist. ;-)
I think that these are bad tips. Coffee is ok, but you don't have to abuse. Eat properly is a good tip, but I don't think it's related to staying awake. Naps are a great thing, but never do a 1 hour nap! Something like 20 to 30 minutes is a great way to refresh your mind. The windows thing is a good thing, but like food, I don't know if it will help you to stay awake: in summer I sleep with an open window by my bed. Creative distractions are ok, but I think of lego, smart putty, a paper and a pencil, some bal, blogging (writing, not reading)... facebook doesn't count as a creative distraction nor does Hacker News, although at least HN is inspiring.

Finally, I'll add my own tip: exercise. Go take a short walk around the office/home, or a little bit skating. Exercise will wake you up like anything else, and will put your brain in a more aware state. Also, a cold shower is a better way than coffee to get a quick boost.
Actually, it works in Opera, Safari, Firefox and in Internet Explorer (using the excanvas). Its still evolving a bit, and I hope to add more statistical analysis to it, but its a bit fun.
"How do you know what not to believe in?"

There are an infinite number of things we can believe in. This makes it necessary to come up with a rational framework based on what we know to make probabilistic inferences. This is basically an argument handled as such:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

I don't want to come off as attacking faith or your beliefs, either. I know what it is like to believe and to not believe so I can respect your experience even though I don't share it.
we just ran some extensive testing to move a highly trafficked website from a cluster of dedicated servers (at theplanet) to ec2. note that our application is to use ec2 as a real-time web server. the bottom line:

dedicated servers allow for much faster ip takeover (critical for high-availability) and had lower latency. ec2 rocks for scalability.

in the end we decided to hold off on ec2 until they address these 2 deficiencies.
Something like http://xdelta.org/?
After all, not all zombies can fly and that one did.