skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
At this point, I don't know why MS bothers to keep VB .NET going. The languages are effectively the same. AFAIK, you can map class-by-class, method-by-method from one to the other.

How hard would it be for VB .NET programmers to migrate over to c#? My guess is that it would be FAR EASIER than the transition they took from VB6 to VB .NET 2003.
I think there are a couple of things that can be good about sticking with a legacy technology:

1. Code maintenance can be quite lucrative if you can assemble a well-networked client base who'll give referrals

2. The number of other competitors in the field may decrease much faster than the slow abandonment of legacy code

3. Customers with loads of legacy code are often - secretly - interested in new solutions, and you're the one with the understanding of their existing business, software solution and can potentially migrate them out of legacy in little salami slices of profitability

And of course, .NET isn't actually dead as a VM (well I assume that, but I don't do anything in the MS space, but I still hear things about new stuff), so the migration paths (for you as a professional and for legacy code) aren't particularly awful.
I think there is a very plausible argument to be made that it was your CUSTOMERS who benefited, not you.

In other words, I think that if Wolfram chose to sue you for thousands of dollars plus court costs because you violated your contract with them that you would be able to say, in defense, "I never agreed to anything." Since Wolfram delivered the goods (some answers, in this case) to the USERS of your application, not to you, I think this might be a valid defense.

Of course, the strictures of polite behavior extend further than the iron force of the law. Polite behavior suggests that when they ask you not to link to them you shouldn't... which is exactly what you did.
See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2274791

As I said there, I agree that this is interesting, but I think it's just as interesting to a wide audience, and has nothing specific to hackers or hackery. For that reason I feel it's off-topic for HN. The guidelines say:

Off-Topic: ... If they'd cover it on TV news,
it's probably off-topic.

In particular, I've seen the same story from several sources now, and hence I feel that it's not specific enough for HN.
Except that with "old code" the quote refers to VB6.
'I sold a 16x16 pixel image for $50'
The Humble Indie Bundle: Leaving no customer behind
Same here. I spend a huge amount on movies, tv shows (box sets), and itunes music store. But I also don't mind a single bit hopping on Pirate Bay to download something. If it's good, it always ends in me spending money on something.

Still, I consume more media than I buy. Like 70% of the public, I'm perfectly ok with that.
I don't think so. The syntax of C# is far closer to Java than it is to VB. C# has often been described as "Microsoft's version of Java", and if you read about the history of those languages you'll see why. It would be far easier for someone familiar with Java to move to C# (or vice versa) than to move between VB and C#.
I agree that this is interesting, but I think it's just as interesting to a wide audience, and has nothing specific to hackers or hackery. The guidelines also say:

Off-Topic: ... If they'd cover it on TV news,
it's probably off-topic.

In particular, I've seen the same story from several sources now, and hence I feel that it's not specific enough for HN.

My opinion only. FWIW, I haven't flagged it, although I have been tempted.
I recently spent $1500 on a NOMOS Tangente wristwatch. The Tangente is a manual-wind, mechanical wristwatch with an in-house movement. Based on the comments I've seen so far, most of you will think I'm crazy.

I bought it partially because I just wanted a nice watch (the jewelry factor), but also because I didn't want to dig around in my pocket for my phone.

"But it's less accurate than a quartz watch!"

True, but absolute accuracy is not what I was going for when I bought the watch. When I look at it I'm looking more for the general position of the minute hand than exactly what minute it's on.

I find the ticking it makes to be calming and the exhibition back fascinating to look at. Taking 10 seconds in the morning to wind it to me is an enjoyable part of getting ready each day.

I'm sure some, or even many people will still think I'm crazy. C'est la vie.
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"[...] in a country ruled by the people"

Name one.
The Kitten-Color-Clock: https://gist.github.com/849093
Can you change the title to correctly say "Christchurch" instead of "Chirst Church"?
The list is a generalisation across all fields, so discounting it based on how something might not be true in your field is a bit short-sighted. #1 is true still for many fields.

Of course, the link you provided wasn't for the general tech sector - it was specific to universities, which have other aspects in play. Even within the general tech sector, there are plenty of reports of questionable hiring practices. I've found to be not uncommon for my gender (female) to be an issue during interviews, and we've seen posts here in the past about this subject. Further, women are often moved rapidly into management roles, and their technical abilities treated as suspect.

And yes, I'm speaking as something big corporate IT, and it's no better. Just looking across at our large (40+) server support teams, you can count the number of women on one hand. The application support teams here are slightly better, but only just. We're a typical shared services company in the UK, and our competitors are all very similar.

As for 14, you've found a truth about privilege lists - they might not always be things you like.
Will Apple replace the Macbook line with Macbook Airs?
Just wondering who else agrees with me that the Macbook line will eventually be replaced in the next couple years by the Macbook Airs. I'm sure the prices are going to come down as the number of Airs sold (already quite popular) increase. Eventually the price gap would no longer perhaps be significant and mobility with sufficient power be easily achieved by the Macbook Air along with its light weight, fantastic startup times and battery life. So, are we looking at a future with Macbook Airs for normal computing (browsing, doc creation etc) while Macbook Pros will remain the domain of power users? I think so.

Who else does?
Why not just learn C# on the side?
I know, I'm from the real world too. It's a perfectly valid argument - there's a vast amount of C# samples and examples out there. It's also pretty much directly mapable to VB.NET given they share a runtime and type system, so it only really matters if you really don't want to make the effort to understand the code you are pasting.

It just striked me as a not so good priority to have when evaluating your choices for that particular decision.
If a person really can't see the disadvantages / advantages - I don't mind.

But it depresses me to think that some clients (who aren't knowledgeable enough to know any better) are being provided with sites that make use of something that was introduced as a stopgap solution 15 years ago.

The main reason people use tables is because they don't understand how to provide the alternative. That's not a good reason. People who do use tables should educate themselves - or pass the work onto a front-end developer.
Android 2.3.3 gains ability to take screenshots without root access
You don't care about learning outcomes?

Sorry - I'm gonna have a hard time caring about the rest of your argument until you justify that a little.

I'm not arguing that people should fake ADD to get scripts. I do think this is a wrong and bad thing to do - but not because it makes them "academic cheaters" - it's because it forces up costs on the drug that genuine ADD people need just to be level with ordinary people. I know - because I genuinely am one - believe it or not. And I'm gonna be pissed if I have to start paying 100 bucks a bottle because the government's budget gets blown on a-holes who are faking it. But that's a different issue to what we're talking about here.

Having said that - I think the solution to both problems is to throw open the market with certain controls to limit substance abuse - and let the free market bring down costs (since the larger market will allow greater economies of scale in production).
Do you currently feel that the existence of libraries is contributing to that purported underproduction?

Maybe you should redefine your "normal" level of production? There are two, valid, competing concerns here, that of the content producer and that of society. After all, the point of copyright, according to the US constitution is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Allowing content producers to make money is merely a means to that end, not an end onto itself.
I'm both a lisper and unix user. I've historically been an embedded developer, but I'm currently leading a team developing a (greenfield) .NET application for testing embedded systems.

Choice was pretty simple for the following reasons:

a) Mature VM/Languages (although there are alternatives)

b) Existing Team knowledge-base. This is a biggie. I have another former lisper on the team and I could drag the rest kicking and screaming to lisp or python, but, it's really not worth the effort of convincing management we'll be more productive in language X.

c) Vendor support. We're using a ~$10k interface card. They offer drivers for Windows or VxWorks. The drivers come as either a user-space C Library or a .NET wrapper. Any other language choice I have to either justify to management writing an FFI wrapper to the C library or write it and maintain it on my own time.

d) WPF is very code generator friendly. A majority of our application forms are generated using either XSLT or python.

e) Easy UIs for what has to be customized.

In short, I'm more productive in python or lisp. My team is more productive in C# and WPF. That being said, I'll try to add scripting in the next version using iron python, but, the core will stay in C#.

EDIT: typo in first paragraph.
Single page: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/science/space/01orbit.html...
Piracy is socially acceptable, but politicians are passing ever more draconian laws in a futile attempt to prop up the music industry's obsolete business model.

If you want to stop this, and live in Scotland, you can vote for the Pirate Party this May. I'm one of their candidates.
I am not sure if I can watch TED again, after reading the article on HN about how TED seems to run, its appeal is lost.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2268336
When I was an education major, to the extent that people commented on my gender, the comments were all positive—as a teacher I would be providing kids with a “male role model”, etc.

(Of course, one of the reasons that I didn’t go on to a career in teaching is that the pay sucked. I believe that one of the reasons teachers’ pay sucks is that it’s a traditionally female occupation, and schools can recruit women who do not depend on their teaching salary for the majority of the family income.)
Was the ordering food the rudeness or the eavesdropping?
A week ago I got my first Android phone. One thing that my Nokia N86 did better was that I could hit the button on my headset and say, "What time is it?".
I think I get his point. Not sure if app/business is the right terminology, but he's distinguishing between: building something "better" VS understanding how and why you will realistically win users/customers.
Not if the game is installed on another computer. I assume he meant lending a computer game disk and not a physical game console.
Would Leah Culver's "creative" rounding method have been nearly a big deal if she'd been male?

Definitely not. If she were male (or an unattractive female), we'd never have heard of her to begin with. She would have been just another anonymous low level coder working for Kevin Rose.

"He's the Michael Moore of software." That's what the community says when a man with visibility writes bad code:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=923660
Or they're a suburban home dweller with cable and a 50" flatscreen.
The Basic Rules of SEO
piracy is the opiate of the youth.
Think people getting monster sued only to be made an example of.
The music industry bribes politicians to do what they want.
IPhone Needs a New Home
Paid to Eat Pancakes: The Truth about “Passions”
Ask HN: Feedback about ServerBCC.com
We're building ServerBCC which allows you to write BCC rules for your incoming and outgoing mails. Some of the benefits are:

* keep your colleagues, partners, bosses in the loop.
* Monitor your team, subordinates or your entire organization.
* Keep your CRM and project management tools in sync with your email conversations
* Archive all your mails or a subset of your mails based on your own rules
* Add conditional footers to your outgoing mails for compliance and branding

How it works:
* Write rules or filters in our web interface like you do in outlook, outlook express, eudora, thunderbird
* Configure your mail server to have your incoming and outgoing mails pass via ServerBCC SMTP servers.
* ServerBCC does the aliasing or bcc part transparently and automatically based on your BCC rules.

Do you have requirements for such a software?
Would you prefer a hosted version or an in premise version?

Let us know your opinions.
No one's suggesting that it should. He's just pointing out that if you ask people "is X socially acceptable?" then the results may be quite different from if you ask "do you accept X?", and they may well be less interesting or useful.

Imagine a society consisting of 40% Prudes, who disapprove of everything, and 60% Libertines, who disapprove of nothing. And suppose that people in this society are well informed about one another's opinions. Then if you ask "Do you approve of goat-fettling?" you'll get 60% yes, 40% no; but if you ask "Is goat-fettling socially acceptable?" you'll get 100% yes, 0% no, because everyone knows that most people approve.

Now suppose that the media in our hypothetical society aren't perfectly accurate and unbiased; they somehow give everyone the impression that there are more Prudes and fewer Libertines. This doesn't make any difference to the result of the "do you approve?" survey, but it may change the result of the "is it socially acceptable?" survey to 0% yes, 100% no because now everyone "knows" that most people disapprove.

(How relevant all this is to the present survey, I don't know, because my Danish isn't up to working out just what questions they actually asked.)
clickable: http://www.serverbcc.com
Thought game.

If I deleted my digital copy that I sent to someone, would that be okay?

If I download something from someone, am I responsible for verifying the copyright or is it the distributors responsibility?

If someone requests something from my computer, and my computer allows them to have it without my explicit intervention, am I responsible?

Am I responsible for distributing a file if someone downloads it after accessing an FTP server I setup using an anonymous account?

What if it required a password?

Note, I'm not trying to push the agenda that piracy is right. Rather, that piracy isn't as easy as saying someone copied a file.

Edit: I really want to stress I'm not trying ot make a point. Even I can't answer all these questions easily.
... and for exactly the same reason, if you paste it into a comment (which seems like the most obvious use) then you lose.
> I usually prescribe (and follow) "as dumb as possible (but no dumber)" rule

to what end?
You can also view something as undesirable without expecting that the full force of the law is used to enforce that view on others.

I don't "pirate" copyright material but I don't see why others should be treated as criminals for doing so.
According to Wikipedia the UNIX-Pipes came along in the 70s. This document however seems to refer to something called DTSS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_(Unix)#History
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It is similar to the difference between "citing" and "copying"/"plagiarizing": a gradual thing where the distinction is clear at extreme ends of the scale, but muddy in the middle.
There is a good example of data skewing here: http://bit.ly/dZvy2g =)
I was hoping the "novel" approach would be to use realistic fiction to get students inside the mind of a programmer, using actual languages. A novel has an advantage over an autobiography because the characters can be put in teaching situations in an ideal order. Also, if the author is honest about his own experiences, he will not let the characters self-edit their experience to present a hopelessly optimistic or pessimistic picture of programming.
I feel the same way. I'm disappointed that social status and elitism permeates throughout a forum that is supposed to be about advancing human knowledge and the human condition.
I just finished his book as well, and he does mention long work sessions and the hard slog of being on the road, but there are plenty of months (and years) where he is "living it up" in Tangiers, Jamaica, the South of France, etc. Sounded to me like he lives a pretty sweet life.
That's what latch was saying: Java and C# are similar in syntax, but C# and VB.Net are similar in more important ways.
Yeah, that's almost as unusual as someone giving precedence to the small, biased sample of "people I know well" over the results of a survey of a much larger sample where some attempt has been made to avoid bias.
What a strange, skewed survey. It seems to pre-suppose a single reason you'd participate in Open Source, then asks a bunch of questions so that you can answer "yes, that's right".

None of those questions have an answer I can check that applies to me.

As an example, take the Internationalization library for ASP.NET that I released as Open Source last year. Sure, it's nice to give back to the community and all that, but there's a business reason there as well. It's hosted on one of my product domains, so having developers link to the project has measurable SEO benefits. Weighing that benefit against the negligible competitive advantage of keeping it in-house was the main part of the decision, along with the fact that it was comparably easy to break out as a reusable piece.

"Goodwill" might have weighed slightly, but "Esteem", "Self-Actualization" and all the other tick marks from that survey were never part of the equation.

This isn't limited to small projects, either. Pick any big-name OS project, and chances are you'll find a big corporation or two behind it, promoting (and funding) it to further their own business need.
I bought one too. Thanks for the coupon.
Thanks - this looks great.

Any suggestions?
Any sites with free business-related books that you know of too?
Which fields is #1 true for? Regardless, I'll assume you are right. Points 1-3 are irrelevant for the conversation we are having here (about women in tech), so I'll keep reading.

4) is a matter of whether you personally adopt a collectivist viewpoint or not. If women disproportionately adopt collectivist viewpoints, why is that anyone's fault besides their own?

5) is probably on point. 6) may be true in general, but (much like 1-3) it seems false in tech. Consider Leah Culver - "ooh, a girl that can program, and hot", as opposed to "meh, barely competent".

7-14) may be true, but are similarly irrelevant to a conversation about women in tech. Also, you still haven't explained how 14 is a "privilege". How does Obama's penis benefit me, relative to a woman?
The implementation is really smooth, but - while not being a very frequent visitor of Reddit at all - I've got the impression that minus lost to imgur. But apparently the Internet isn't Reddit.
I'll be curious to see the outcome.
(you misspelled necessary in the last paragraph).
Hope Patrick or someone in the HN crowd doesn't mistake it for Bingo Card Creator ;)
The last attracts me!
Instead of offering pointless invective why not provide at least one reason why you make this comment? Atlas Shrugged has sold six million copies. That's no argument for the thesis put forward in it but its impact on a fair number of thoughtful people over the last fifty years or so at least commands, don't you think, a reasoned comment in that you felt strongly enough to post your one liner?
C# has identical syntax to Java, but it's object model, libraries, IDE and supporting environment are identical to VB.NET. Syntax is the easiest part of a language to learn.
I'm not sure if you read my comment, but I specifically said that C# and Java share the same syntax.

C# and VB.NET share lambdas, linq, anonymous functions, delegates. They share the same implementation of generics (which is different than Java), the same type system (which is different than Java, enums, nullables), covariance, contravariance. They share the same frameworks (WPF, Silverlight, WebForms, WinForms, MVC, ...), and the same IDE and other tooling. They share the same patterns: deterministic finalization, asynchronous programming, fluent interfaces. They share the same language shortcuts: auto-properties, properties, collection initializers, ...

Java and C# share braces, semi-colons, &&.

Java and C# are more similar for about 30 seconds.
How to Actually Get More Women to Attend your Hackathon
Did Apple keep the other 30%?
I actually submitted the same article--didn't see this one. (Clearly) I think it's relevant. Granted it's not about YC or node.js but it is about things that are are more interesting to the HN demographic than to other demographics. 150yo visions of the future, secret compartments, and tragic luck to reveal them. Would it be picked up by TV news? Maybe. Would some of the other articles on the homepage (HBGary CEO resigns)? Yeah.
> Do you have requirements for such a software?

Hmmm... no immediate need here, but sounds kind of interesting.

> Would you prefer a hosted version or an in premise version?

If at all we use it, would certainly prefer an in premise version.

HTH
What's Hitting Earth?
Yes and no. In a few years, a lot could change and for all you know, a totally new Mac line could come out to replace the Air as well as the Pro. It's hard to speculate that far in advance and not think that Apple will continue to shake things up.
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Some copy-editing would be good: "You does not seem to be logged in to the website. Please login in order to view this page." (try "Please log in.")
Ask HN: Ever notice that Google's logo is actually an image sprite?
f) tons and tons of documentation on msdn

g) a vibrant Q&A community in the form of StackOverflow

Adding IronPython support is a trivial exercise. Its seriously 2 lines of code to add, plus a few lines to define the scope.
Snap :-)
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Webmaster WordPress Vbulletin ve pagerank ile ilgili seo makale yarışması . Webmaster WordPress Vbulletin ve pagerank kelimesinde googla arama motorunda 1. olmaya çalışıyoruz.
Recognize text in scanned documents/images using Google Doc
What Microsoft Can Learn from Mac OS X (and vice versa)
HackNY Doubles Effort To Match Top Tech Students With NYC Startups
I could be wrong but I'm fairly certain PLAI covers basic type checking & inference. It doesn't get into harder stuff (e.g. dependent typing) though.
Which is the best way to support discussions on game design?