skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask YC: Questions about defun and lisp in general
I know this is not the best place to be asking lisp questions so if someone opposes to it, I make this once the single time I do it.

I've been reading PG's ACL book, and since coders are restless beings, of course I don't want to read the whole book to understand what went wrong with what I did. See, here at page 15 he defines this nice 'SUM-GREATER' function. It takes 3 arguments and returns true if the sum of the first two is greater than the third. Here it goes:

(defun sum-greater (x y z)
(> (+ x y) z))

Not that hard. NOW, I know that the + function can accept any ammount of parameters so I was trying to figure out how to pass a list as one of the first two parameters (or both) and do not crash the function. Passing another sum doesn't count as a solution. What I am looking for is more on the lines of a C "..." parameter type.

Now, if I haven't annoyed enough yet, I know there is a mirc channel about lisp somewhere, but on which mirc net? I think I should ask future questions there.
As a consumer, nothing.

As a business, hosting/mail/sourcecontrol accounts, and the big one is the ADC membership. Sure, you can get the devtools for free but the WWDC videos make it worthwhile around a new OS release.
Marc Andreessen (Netscape cofounder) invests in video startup Qik
Why we bill by the hour
Skype phone number and skype-out.

Tax preparation software.

Everything else online is business related.
Exactly. One should always differentiate "legal advice" from "advice about a legal matter."
I remember paying $.99 for a Google Video once. That's laughable now!
Learn while doing?
I'm not a naturally born coder, don't have a CS background, and my career has been more on the sysadmin, project management and IT management side of things. I've always loved building things and I've got several ideas for web apps floating around in my mind. I've done a bit of tinkering in csh, vbscript, asp, javascript, so I'm not starting from absolute zero. To get myself started on this new path, I'm thinking of building some "fun" apps as educational exercises, and then moving to bootstrap some of the ideas that I think people may pay for.

Has anyone else gone through this process to having a viable startup or is it the domain of the CS grad?
At least for the Rockets, the one team I follow religiously, the insider stories are stories just ripped from the Houston Chronicle.

It would be useful though if you care about a bunch of teams and don't have time to read the hometown newspapers of all your teams.
Computer Virus Found on Laptop in International Space Station
Canvas Tag

SVG

HTML5

That's all i ask for in order to touch I€8 with a stick...
You're inappropriately focusing on revenue and not access. Suppose I had a goose that laid golden eggs /ad infinitum/. I have infinite net worth, but if you take one of my eggs, you now have access to value which you otherwise wouldn't have had. Just because your theft didn't impact my revenue it doesn't follow that you didn't steal.

IP is actually quite similar. Suppose I wrote a book (.pdf) that contains important business information about the future of the oil market. I obtained this information at great personal cost. Your accessing that information doesn't remove that information from me, but it's still stealing access to information you otherwise wouldn't have had.

Saying, "But I wasn't going to buy your crappy business book anyway!" doesn't change the fact that you've still taken information that doesn't belong to you.
It's called signal to noise. All content is not good content and serves to make the good content hard to find. Deletion is necessary.
"Causing someone not to get income they might otherwise have gotten is not theft."

If it were, Blizzard would lose the biggest class-action lawsuit in the world! I mean, if all the time I spent playing Starcraft were spent doing something productive...
Leaving aside whether pirates would pay for the item, the idea that someone has a right to future sales is wrong. The guy who opens a competing business "hurts" Best Buy in exactly the same way that a pirate does, but this doesn't mean that he's actually taken anything from them, because they don't own future sales -- they only hope to eventually own them.

[Edit: but, reading down the page, I see that pg already made a similar point more concisely. Oh, well. :) ]
You pay 'royalties' on anything that can record music in Canada, which is about a BAJILLION times worse than what the RIAA is doing here. In Canada, the fee on mp3 players (or audio cassette tapes) affects everyone, even if I didn't want 'free' access to music in the first place.

It's also illegal in Canada to upload or share music if you don't have the rights to do so , so at least theoretically you're downloading that music because the artist/label wants you to.

(( http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39118537,0... ))
BoardGameGeek, although it's more of a donation.
Behind the scenes: Redesigning and coding the Highrise sidebar modules
This has been done plenty, and the educational execise apps are a really good way to get started.

Find a language that feels right with your way of thinking, and perhaps one that will also be applicable for your sysadmin duties (if that is still relevant).
Rainbow for Firebug brings javascript syntax highlighting to Firebug
YUI Meetup (San Francisco) at Yahoo Brickhouse (Thursday September 4, 2008) - Upcoming
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deletionism#Rationale_for_del...
I love this piece. But given Kay's historical essay, the Smalltalk entry should arguably be amended to:

Smalltalk: Lisp didn't go far enough.

In other words, Smalltalk wasn't an attempt to fix Simula so much as an attempt to fix Lisp. Simula-style objects were just the vehicle.

Edit: The passage I'm referring to deserves to be quoted.

I could hardly believe how beautiful and wonderful the idea of LISP was [...] but there were deep flaws in its logical foundations. By this, I mean that the pure language was supposed to be based on functions, but its most important components---such as lambda expressions quotes, and conds--were not functions at all, and instead were called special forms. [...] Why not just base everything on FEXPRs and force evaluation on the receiving side when needed? I could never get a good answer, but the question was very helpful when it came time to invent Smalltalk, because this started a line of thought that said "take the hardest and most profound thing you need to do, make it great, and then build every easier thing out of it".

That last line is one of my all-time favorites.

http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html (typos corrected)
How do you know what questions to ask your lawyer? How do you know what info might be pertinent to helping your lawyer to give sound advice?

Let's say I were to ask for advice about X. Someone posts, "Oh, when I went through X, my lawyer advised me to do Y and I think it really helped." So, then when I talk to a lawyer I can ask about Y. I don't see how opening a dialog hurt anything?

How does a little extra knowledge lead to disaster? Note: I'm not talking about forgoing a lawyer's advice in favor of listening to an internet nutjob.

You seem to be advocating ignorance and/or blind faith lawyers. How do you recognize a bad lawyer if you don't make any effort to educate yourself?
As a suggestion, based on your background, pointed out by qhoxie, and provided your Javascript history, I think Perl would be a great language to do your sysadmin, educational and general fun apps. I think you'll find it very fun and highly useful. Hypothetically, it should transition well into those paying apps you touch upon.

I haven't gone through the startup process you speak of, but I can tell you it's not just limited to the CS grads.

Best of luck to you!
10 Tools for Evaluating Web Design Accessibility
startups are for anyone, and some people learn best while doing.

if you have the time and a good idea, go for it
This seems like a good idea, has anyone else tried using charity for marketing?
American Lawbreaking: Illegal Immigration
SDL and the XSS Filter
apparently there is at least one: Photobucket’s Sale To Fox: How VC Insiders Made Big Personal Returns

http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-photobuckets-sale-to-fo...
I'm trying out the "charityware" concept on a little Facebook word game I wrote. (Palabra: http://apps.facebook.com/palabra)

Basically, instead of showing users yet more advertising, I have a little message that requests a small donation if players had fun with the game. 50% of the donations are given to UNICEF literacy programs. The remaining portion goes to PayPal fees, hosting fees, and finally, my time.

I just launched the app the other day, so I don't have any data to share just yet, but will post more at a later date. In the meantime, would love to hear what others are trying.
The experience of teaching improved my public speaking significantly. I think most people hate public speaking because the initial experiences they have are for short periods of time when they're nervous and full of adrenaline.

That adrenaline surge burns off pretty fast though. Physiologically you just can't sustain it and (at worst) within about 15-20 minutes you relax. When you teach a class that may be several hours or days long, that means you're relaxed for the vast majority of the time. I think that experience conditioned me to be more relaxed for public speaking in general.
Where to buy domain names and register domains at the cheapest prices
A list of the main domain trading locations and cheap deal registrars for all TLD and ccTLD domains
Windows Live On Facebook
I don't give a fly about what comic books Apple bans, but it drives me nuts to click on a thumb only to see a "full size" picture 5 percent bigger. Yeah, I'm looking at you yahoo news aggregator.
Got it. So this is designed to be the piece that allows publishers to easily integrate with intermediate services like Gnip, or with aggregation services like FF, SocialThing, etc.
Rhapsody, Audible, GoToMyPc
ASP.NET myths debunked, more or less
Gen Y takes to Google Apps
Download Twilight Movie
TWILIGHT is an action-packed, modern day love story between a vampire and a human. Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) has always been a little bit different, never caring about fitting in with the trendy girls at her Phoenix high school. When her mother remarries and sends Bella to live with her father in the rainy little town of Forks
Gang of 1 recommends looking at erlang
Download CSI Episode
Are you tired of missing episodes of your favorite TV show CSI? Don’t you think that the DVD’s are way too expensive? Would you like to enjoy all your favorite CSI Episodes at the comfort of your own home? Imagine how easier and cheaper it would be if you could Download CSI Episodes.
So my last line up there had perhaps some unclear meaning. There are more PHP developers out there, but there are good developers to be had in both arenas. As for salaries, you get what you pay for.
Classic Pac-Man Source Code (commented)
Why does CNN still act surprised when Gen Y does something?
Ms. Pac-Man: http://cubeman.org/arcade-source/mspac.asm and another one: http://www.donhodges.com/how_high_can_you_get2.htm
I actually found Squeak to be a bit non-intuitive and lurid, but I have played with VisualWorks and Dolphin, to try & get a feel for Smalltalk, but I never really got my head round how things worked.

Having a book handy means I have something to turn to the next time I give it a go.
I downloaded The Man From Earth and liked it so much I recommended it to a lot of people who had never heard of it. They mostly bought or rented the DVD.
Microsoft will simply push the 1.0 release to Vista users via Windows Update, no? And if that's the case, developers won't have a choice but to support it (in addition to all the people still on IE7 and IE6.)
Yes it really is. People like John Hollinger and KC Joyner are must reads for my line of work. Chad Ford has gotten a ton better as well - he used to be a hack.
Careful with that. I took it to the extreme and almost got permanently banned.
The Journey to Find, Analyze, and Fix Pac Man’s Split Screen
In a lot of cases, learn by doing == Startup.
I'll read that paper when I have a chance.
Friday The 13th Could Be A Lucky Day
A lot of people are having phobia of Friday the 13th, actually it's not that horrifying. Take a look at the resources provided and you will know better.
Movie Showtimes + Reviews + Tickets (Now Playing, but better)
Restaurant Suggester (Think Netflix recommendation engine meets Yelp/Yellow Pages Phone Book)
NBA Score Keeper (past games with points & highlights, current game scores and upcoming game times)
Cab Reserver (Open Table for Cabs)
a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

its never too late to start, just look at Grandma Moses.
Almost all applications can do without the canvas tag and SVG. What parts of SVG do you want implemented? Firefox's text support in SVG is horrible, especially when you look at what's available in Microsoft Silverlight. IE7 and a SVG->Silverlight translator will get you much, much better SVG support than any other browser.

HTML5 isn't even close to finished, and there will be all kinds of (formal) objections to overcome before it can be published; in fact, I'm not sure it will ever be published. Regardless, IE8 already does implement some parts of it.
There's no reason to avoid supporting IE8. On the contrary, once the kinks are worked out of it, web app developers would be wise to help as many users migrate to IE8 as possible. That is true even with IE6 vs. IE7 but it is especially true with IE8.
No, there are no absolutes.

Lets break it down. Is killing children always wrong?

In many countries it's legal (today) to kill children. In some cultures surplus children were left to die of exposure (Sparta for example).

And once the child is dead - well some cultures eat the dead as a form of burial.

There goes your absolute.

Just so you know: it's not possible to create a moral system from first principles. It always has to be imposed from outside. In most countries the bible serves as the starting point.

If you want, you can have one guy decide, and use his ideas. But you can never defend them as absolute and correct. Another person, just as logical, can come up with conflicting ideas, and you can never prove one is right and the other wrong.
Please Help Me Decide What to Build
I am getting ready to build my first native iPhone application and I wanted to get some feedback from the community on what they'd like to see built or what you would use.

Please vote for the one you like best.
Restaurant Suggester (Think Netflix recommendation engine meets Yelp/Yellow Pages)
Contact Maker (you take a picture of a business card, app reads the text, then makes a contact in your phone)
"As far as graduate programs go, the law degree isn't really that long."

I did not interpret this to mean doctorates. When you said graduate programs, I took you mean, all post-undergraduate programs. Since there are many master's programs out there of the one to two year length (especially professional degrees that can confer "expertise") I took a three year law degree to be fairly long. I have no doubt that you have a lot of knowledge about this, and obviously the number of years you state for the length of degree programs is accurate (although I guess, even more on your side would be the argument that although an MD is four years, medical education is much longer), I just had a misunderstanding of the sample space we were talking about.

Obviously you're correct that three years is not that long when compared to six.

I did mean for some of my reply to be in response to your post, obviously, but by no means was everything I said a reply to your post, but rather the thread at large.
The angle of attack of the cutting edge appears to vary by about 90 degrees.

But I'm sure it works for spherical chickens in a vacuum.
I would say "A mistake" rather than "The mistake."

Another mistake in this analogy is that between criminal and civil law. Theft, in most if not all countries, is a criminal offense.

Piracy, formally known as copyright infringement (or copyright violation), is a criminal offense when done for financial gain, civil offense otherwise in countries which recognize software copyright. The vast majority of occurrences of copyright violation we see in the media are for personal use, not financial gain, thereby a largely civil legal matter, than a criminal one. Hence theft as a comparison is inaccurate.
Jaiku comes back with a new TOS and unlimited invites
This is so basic, I'm amazed it still needs to be said. But I understand why it needs to be said (lots of idiots in the world).
Mocking and Dependency Injection in ASP.NET MVC
David Heinemeier Hansson at Startup School 08 | Omnisio
Jawaharlal Nehru Biography
Buying a physical copy of a book is a little different, as it does offer some additional benefit (in terms of portability, different medium, whatever). However, let's say that your argument is that some people will like the author and "buy" a copy of the music they already have, even though that copy offers zero additional benefit to the consumer.

That's a donation, not a purchase.
You're right that this is the wrong forum.

Anyway, the syntax you're looking for is &REST

(defun x (y &REST zs) (...))

Good luck.
That's what annoys me about this endless argument. The entire reason it's endless is because it confuses and mingles legal and moral aspects:

- Yes, it's illegal. I don't think anyone actually argues it's not, but somehow it still keeps popping up as an argument to support that it's theft.

- Legally, as far as I know, theft and copyright infringement have very different meanings. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm willing to bet that neither are any of the people arguing piracy=theft. Anyway, I don't really see how arguing and personal opinions can come into this. The law is what it is.

- Morally, it's hard to argue that it's right, but at least this is the only part where you CAN actually have any kind of debate.

People arguing about different things without realizing it = recipe for endless, unproductive argument.
I wish more clients realized this and were comfortable with such an arrangement. It does require a great deal of trust in your developer, though.
no, i don't think microsoft pushes IE major version upgrades on people. people run who proprietary web apps that don't support IE7 are still using IE6.
Who provides what in the cloud
Ugh...I hate Forbes.com with all their ads and janky crap.

here's a slightly more bearable version:
http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/27/microsoft-google-browsers-c...
Create something you care about and have fun doing it...you never know where it will go.

And don't worry too much about having the "right" background. The great thing about the web, and technology in general, is that it enables people without the right background or pedigree to turn the world upside down.

Just go do it.
to understand that it does not steal income, you would need to live in place where authorized copy of MS Office exceeds net month salary of an Engineer. Would you pay one month salary for MS Windows? This is something that Western companies just do not understand when making business in Eastern Europe, China, Vietnam. When they hire guys to work for 300usd a month that's perfectly fine. When they offer software written by Indians for the same price in India as in the US - they consider it normal too? Very interesting logic.

I make over 100usd/hr and I pay for my software. My colleges in developing countries make it in a week and I don't blame them for copying software. Otherwise they would stay forever poor instead of learning stuff.
1. Basecamp is well known within the developer community but not as well known outside of that.

2. The problem is not catching up, it everything else which is hard to explain. The layout, the features to provide or to leave out, finding the right mix is harder then the programming itself.

3. Their new products are not very well integrated and have overlaps in features so that is a weak point.

4. A generic offering is not where the money is. You develop the generic components and then you put them to work in a way that is specific for a particular vertical market. You sign people up free to a generic version, then once you have the vertical version done you offer them that at a higher price point. You do offer a generic "pro" version and some buying of additional useful "modules" for those you don't have a vertical version for.
Legally, the copyright of comments doesn't seem to work the way Disqus says. If you comment on my weblog, I have a right to reproduce it as I see fit, as you've voluntarily given it to me for the express purpose of reproducing it, knowing full well that I will reproduce it indefinitely. In fact, people who comment are almost invariably disappointed (or worse) if their comments are not reproduced immediately and indefinitely.

The website owner is actually doing commenters a service by publishing their comments. In the case where the website owner publishes links to the commenters' sites; the website owner has also compensated the commenters with a bartered advertisement. Even without publishing the link, the website owner has provided a service to the commenter that the commenter has purposefully chosen to utilize.

On the other hand, nobody has given the comment aggregator (Backtype in this case) any permission to reproduce any part of the website and/or comments. Backtype's republication of the content is allowed only if it is done as fair use.

From looking at what Backtype does with my own comments, its usage of the content isn't anywhere close to fair use. That will be especially true if/when they attempt to monetize my comments. I personally would rather not have Backtype (or any other company) republish my comments without my permission. Instead, I would rather monetize my own comments myself, on my own site, by implementing a similar service myself (see http://firehose.diveintomark.org/ for an example).
I agree with several of the author's points, but I'm not sure the case is made clearly enough that this would be an advantage. Perhaps some examples of the architecture would help.

Also, I'm not sure that #2 is a benefit of such a system over any other offline client. And if you want offline access to web-based apps, products like Google Gears seems to be the way to go, rather than yet another client app.
If I hire a financial planner and he gave me bad advice, he could be liable (depending on the laws of the state, exclusions on the contract and so on). So bad analogy there.
State of the Art: Content + Commentary
This is called "link hijacking" or another variant is "cookie stuffing". Generally looked at as unethical and dishonest. Though it is done quite frequently and very successfully by some people out there.
Youtube was originally "the flickr of video."

http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2005/08/14/youtube_the_fl...
1 Year of blogging, What i learnt
How to make a cardboard chair for your cat
There's been an all out bidding war for sports writers lately. I guess that must be why.
But some of the ping servers already publish SUP-like consolidated feeds.
Personal: Backpack

Biz: Basecamp, Campfire, PBWiki, AWS ... and hosting from Slicehost, Rackspace, and EngineYard
I don't disagree that copyright infringement is bad for those in our business who rely on sales of software or media licenses. And sure there are negative residuals like trickle down economics of the media and software publishers. But it is not cut and dried/black and white. What about fair use? What about abandonware? The law is what it is only now. We (as a society) change the law as we use it. The new round of IP laws, such as the DMCA, are new and the full effects not yet known.

Arguing about this is good because it fosters thinking and may prompt people to actually DO something to improve our current situation.