skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
.NET puts you high in the sky, so you need very long hands to fix the shit deep in the earth.
This must have been posted just to demonstrate that slashdot is 2 months behind in FUD topic trends.
I've really never felt that WinForms was "clunky". Compared to Win32, it's amazingly consistent and intuitive - you can learn 75% of it just with the form designer and IntelliSense. Doing anything in Win32, by comparison, almost always requires a trip to Google and a paragraph of code.

I don't know why anyone would willingly write a Win32 or MFC app over .NET unless they were simply unfamiliar with it, or overly worried about performance, framework availability, or code security.
I am hoping you don't include ASP.net webforms inside your statement ASP.net. Sure it makes tons of money but it is a awful web technology for so many reasons.
A little late to reply, but thankyou!
Why are we not talking about this article on the front page?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_art

Prior ... constitutes all information that has been made available to the public in any form before a given date that might be relevant to a patent's claims of originality

OK, so you're saying the links above don't have any bearing on the originality or otherwise of iOs multi touch? That's absurd. If what you're getting at is that there's some legalese-technical argument as to why a seemingly obvious prior occurrence of the "invention" then this indicates to me that the system is broken.
No, we call them crosswords. ("Cryptic crosswords" when it's necessary to distinguish them from the sort that's dominant in the US, and yes, that can be abbreviated to "cryptics", but that wouldn't be the norm.)

I'm guessing that the complaint was actually about "England" versus, say, "the United Kingdom".
In these sort of arguments I don't really understand why civility in and of itself is valued. It only makes sense in a social situation that affords civility. For that you can make "giving up anonymity" opt-in, rather than opt-out (which is mostly what is being done a lot, from forums that force you to use FB accounts to tor users in various countries who have no easy way to opt-out of foregoing anonymity).

It is rather silly to quote civility when the alternative, the lack of anonymity, has terrible "real-world" consequences, as mentioned in the article.

the argument willfully ignores the many voices that are silenced in the name of shutting up trolls: activists living under authoritarian regimes, whistleblowers, victims of violence, abuse, and harassment, and anyone with an unpopular or dissenting point of view that can legitimately expect to be imprisoned, beat-up, or harassed for speaking out.

Can someone explain the rationale of placing civility ahead of the above consequences?
Here's some news for quants - you are responsible for a disaster and one day will be held to account for it.
From the article:

> Quasi-satellites orbit the Sun...

By definition, that makes them not a moon of Earth.
19 year old gets $1M to launch a social app.
The only mistake was not going full-Open from the start. Even with Mono today there are enough proprietary libraries on top of C# that make it still effectively windows-only for a lot of things. They can't ever be a JVM killer if they don't run on everything smoothly, and by now with all these JVM languages to use instead of Java I don't think they'll get that chance again.

Things like http://www.netmf.com/gadgeteer/ are nice though.
You're more than welcome to forego the contract subsidy to buy a Nexus S (or many other phones) at full price and use it on any GSM network. Nothing stops you from pulling your SIM card out and using it in another device, provided said device supports your carrier's frequencies. The rest of your complaints are the fault of the carriers, not Google or OEMs.
I don't have down vote privileges, but you just lived up to your handle. Idle words indeed.
-1
As we know - the idea itself is worth 0

Exactly. Go out and work out your marketing plan first: who are the users you want to target, and how are you going to get them to sign up for you app?

If you can execute this step successfully, creating the app itself will be the easiest part :)
I agree with your conclusion (suffering for lack of modern native code development) but disagree with your solution.

C# still has the potential to be vastly superior to C++ for "native" development. The problem is that they spent the last 10 years working exclusively on neat features like LINQ instead of something that they promised back in 2002. I wish I had a link to the article, but back in 2002 I read an article from one of the C# leads stating that, unlike C++, the CLR would be able to do processor specific optimizations at code generation time. It also talked about inline functions, and that it didnt matter that C# didnt have an inline keyword because of course the JITter would do that automatically.

Roll on 2011, and my lovely Matrix44.Multiply(Vector4[] foo) neither inlines the internal Matrix44.Multiply(Vector4 bar) nor does it SIMD any of it even if I inline it myself. Ditto for Matrix34.Multiply(ArrayOfStructs baz).

Then there are the kind of performance guided global optimizations that you could do with a language like C#, using data-driven compilers, or manual-driven attributes. Memory management, for example, could be class/struct specific giving those classes performance as good as any C++ custom memory management (e.g. pools), while allowing initial development to proceed rapidly.

Sadly, none of this came to pass. If anyone wanted to hire me to work at a games company it would be on the condition that the first thing I got to do was write a C# toolset that did exactly this. (Funnily enough, nobody has hired me, but the idea of scrabbling in the just-post-punch-card shit that is C++ is enough to discourage me from dropping the requirement).
yes. also disable flash, and run widgetblock in chrome.
Yeah,Silverlight seems more and more to be a dead end for "rich internet applications" but it has been pretty good for LOB apps. I can take the logic out of winforms apps and I no longer have to roll application updates to thousands of desktops.
Haskell could also fit easily into that table, especially since people already [1] have Haskell projects running on Heroku's Cedar platform.

Dependency management: Cabal, Hackage. REPL: GHCi. Embedded webservers: Snap, Warp, Happstack Server. Web frameworks: Snap, Yesod, Happstack.

[1]: http://www.yesodweb.com/blog/2011/07/haskell-on-heroku
I find that unwatchable. I've never watched any of Vaynerchuck's non-wine related videos, and didn't realize he was trying to spin himself as a start-up expert.

Who is he marketing this to, and why?

If you're a part of the technology scene, you know what an incubator is, you're familiar with the space, probably know about TechStars, though maybe not.

If you're not in the technology space, why should you care? The mainstream media is already covering YC, Bloomberg apparently did a piece on TechStars.

I just don't get it.
Can't believe I made that mistake ;)
How to Build a 'Paywall' That Doesn't Break the Web
You believe that being pro IPP or anti IPP is an ethical position?

I am pro IP protection (IPP) and but I strongly dislike the existing IPP system we have.
Sorry about that, I can now see how I miscommunicated. I was lazily using empire to allude to - 'an economic entity with a well defined identity and well defined borders'.

Let me take an example to clarify this situation - Lets assume a hypothetical situation where Nokia has reached its limits of what it thinks a Phone could be it has stopped doing fundamental innovation ie it has a well defined empire with a well defined cost structure and a well defined revenue model. In such a situation it is in Nokia's self interest to use their immense patent portfolio to create a moat around their business to keep upstarts like Apple / Google away.

On the other hand lets consider another hypothetical situation where Nokia were innovating and trying to reimagine what a phone could be. Perhaps they were doing interesting things in software to displace desktops and make the phone the central location of the users global state. In this case they would be encroaching onto areas where other entities (like Microsoft, Google) might hold significant patents. In this case it would be in Nokia's self interest to be the anti patent candidate.

I have often found that when I use more words to clarify a miscommunication I often end up causing more damage. I hope that is not the case here.
Is that not what they did back in april [1] or march 2009 [2]? I'm surprised by the implication that Google hasn't publicly opposed software patents.

"It's for these reasons that Google has long argued in favor of real patent reform, which we believe will benefit users and the U.S. economy as a whole."

[1] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/patents-and-innovatio...

[2] http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/03/patent-reform...
Randi Zuckerberg Leaves Facebook to Launch Startup
Funny how I was thinking about .NET in today's world. It seems like the trend is in creating native apps that work with the internet (the cloud or whatever you want to call it) but it still makes sense to invest in some web app, even if just for quick reference when a native app is not available on your machine (because you don't have your iPhone with you or any other reason, I can think of dozens).

With this perspective in mind, one could hope for the easiest way to develop for both platforms (native & web) and, guess what?, .NET does both and it's really easy to use (I'd say it's the easiest thing to work with even if it can be more painful to do something truly unique).

It's too bad it focused so heavily on the enterprise market, there could be a horde of startups using .NET nowadays if it wasn't so expensive to get a Windows Server running back in the old days (and besides BizSpark it still isn't as cheap as the *nix alternatives).

Disclaimer: for personal stuff I never use .NET but it's what pays the bills for quite some time now. And I like it.
Depends on the type of app. With UI heavier apps that are new WPF is very popular. Sony Vegas, VS 2010, Expression Blend, HP Touchsmart shell, are some examples of apps that use WPF.

If you're writing a new app, and you can deal with the WPF restrictions (can't run too far downstream or on underpowered computers) then its hard to go with anything else. With that said, I do wish it had better perf.
Practice.

Seriously - like most other talents (sports, music, writing etc.) it all comes down to doing a lot of it repeatedly.

Start by carrying a notepad, and noting down anything that pops into your head that could conceivably be an idea - no matter how crap it might seem at first. Keep doing this day by day, and eventually you'll hit upon one that grabs your fancy. Don't stop there though - always keep adding :)
I wonder if anyone in Google is wishing that they hadn't tried to adorably bid pi billion, and had instead played to win.
I think you're doing the right thing by writing this story up and posting it on HN. You certainly got me to check the game out. Keep it up!
This is surprising based on Microsofts support of h.264.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2011/02/02/html5-and-web-...

Could this be a strategy to challenge Apple's (apparently) open standard FaceTime which uses h.264?

Other reasons?
Poor guy. Someone should give him a chance at a lab or something.
What I always wonder about with every Apple story on HN is if all the sycophants are just willing fanboys or if PR types are being paid to work HN comments.
The Geek Capital of America
Linus Torvalds dumps Gnome3 for XFCE (G+ discussion)
Solve your own problems -- even the smallest of problems can be solved by creating a service around it. Usually, you are not the only one having the same problem (and you also may not be the only one trying to solve it).
We're working on adding BitBucket and Ohloh soon
I pretty much stopped getting mad at truckers when two things happened:

1) I learned that many trucks have 24 gears. Could you imagine having to downshift and upshift 10 or 12 times every time somebody cuts you off?

2) I started riding motorcycles. As a motorcyclist, whether or not you are in the right, if you tangle with a truck you're dead. So, instant respect for trucks. I want them to see me, and I want them to like me.
No, they opposed "low-quality software patents," which is a goal, not a reform proposal.
Most of my Windows apps use WTL for UI. Just a thin-OO wrapper on top of the Win32 API. Works great.
Authoritatively do not go there with Nym.
For those that think this is cool, checkout Garbage Warrior[1]. It's a documentary about a man building sustainable houses out of old tires, plastic & glass bottles, and the like. It's like startups meets home building!

[1]http://www.garbagewarrior.com/
You're on it.
Something is off about that statement. I don't want to sound judgmental, but I don't think guilt about owing companies that offer free services is a good reason to watch or listen to ads. If on the other hand you think that advertising offers value, then I might accept that view. Also the world changes, and what might have made sense in the past (e.g. buying printed books or label-music), doesn't necessarily have to make sense now.
That makes me wonder what the role of traditional media like BBC and CNN now. They try to differentiate themselves from "New Media" as a source of verified information. However as this incident shows, they are not any better in that department.
I would lie if I said I didnt write the story to generate some buzz for the game, but I really think if I have those problems, many others have them, too. There must be ways for developers to market their ideas, people who can't be 24/7 online for social connections like a garyvee.
The argument is that online anonymity itself also creates real-world consequences, such as character assassinations, harassment, and downright internet crime.

If "Civility" means "being nice to each other", why shouldn't we value it, in and of itself?
off-topic, but if your weblog is not a personal one and has multiple people authoring content, put the author name immediately under the post's title.

reading a post that starts with "I have worked" makes me immediately stop reading and scroll around to find out who "I" is.
Sure it does. And since most smart people prefer eating over starving as well, that preference also suggests that you are smart. If you combine these suggestions with an assertion of excluded third, you can say that a preference for eating over starving implies a qualifiable intelligence.

That is to say, suggestion is not implication. I can reasonably suggest that you are stupid without it being the most reasonable suggestion.
You didn't hear it from me, but I suspect many of the /. guys have come here recently.
A Non-Foolish Consistency
Viral Invites Considered Harmful
Figerworks patents: 1999 to 2005. Keep citing MS Surface like it's relevant.
So I detest ASP.net webforms as much as anyone - but you can't dispute that it was very successful in turning a ton of legacy VB6, FoxPro, etc. LOB apps into web apps. The learning curve was just right for the develoeprs and all the downsides matter much less inside the firewall than out.
Reducing Page Load Times Dramatically Increased my Googlebot Crawl Rate
How about try to not just bid a magical number but actually try and win auctions instead?

After pi billion they went up to over $4B before giving up.

They want to throw their weight around with patents just like everyone else and use the system in the exact same way as this axis of evil who are conspiring against them.

This is utterly unsupported by anything.
I suspect you are conflating the copyright/anti-copyright issue with the patent/anti-patent issue.

I don't know what "patents are wrong" ideology you refer to. The arguments I see against patents over and over are concrete examples of small companies coming into trouble because they did something obvious, and do not have the legal and financial muscle to handle it, to for example have the patent invalidated because it is on something obvious.

Patents are supposed to help small actors fight big ones, not the other way around. Software patents have come into a bad light because they frequently do the latter.
Roll on 2011, and my lovely Matrix44.Multiply(Vector4[] foo) neither inlines the internal Matrix44.Multiply(Vector4 bar) nor does it SIMD any of it even if I inline it myself. Ditto for Matrix34.Multiply(ArrayOfStructs baz).

The CLR does inline, but it has restrictions that you're probably hitting. But it doesn't do processor specific opts. That does suck.

Then there are the kind of performance guided global optimizations that you could do with a language like C#, using data-driven compilers, or manual-driven attributes.

The CLR does have a profile based optimization system, but according to this article, it is internal-only. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd569747.aspx Oh well.
This is a rather silly meme. Bidders were allowed to place more than one bid.
Isn't this like nation-states trying to prevents wars so that they can compete on building effective societies? It would be perversely cynical to suggest that the nations more confident in their ability to deliver effective societies were somehow cheating by trying to prevent the needless destruction and waste of wars.
Not Google but OEM yes.
The European Pirate Summit - Cologne, 20th September 2011
i only block ad in firefox - why? its the browser i instruct my 9 year old daughter to use
Skype was already using VP8 for group chat before the MS buyout; I doubt Microsoft was driving the choice to use it for one-on-one as well. I'd just see this as an effort to simplify their code, for now.

PS: It's also possible that they could be standardizing on VP8 so they can have Skype in the browser sans plugin with WebRTC; but I'm not sure if WebRTC would be workable with Skype's protocols.
> this is a 100% standards compilant Markdown library

Eh, what's that now? Isn't Markdown implementation-defined? I wasn't aware there was a spec, I thought it was just some notes on a dude's blog.
Jst trying to confose you more - He used 'u' in more than just you. (Just, emulator)
Well done! Could you elaborate on how you came up with 5546 ? Perhaps there's a simpler technique than the one I describe below. btw, this was the technique that I learnt in school -

1. You have 12 months. Ignore February. Then you have 11.

2. The remaining 11 map to either 30 days or 31 days . ie. 30+0, or 30+1.

3. So the object is to write a many-to-one function that maps some members of the set to 0, rest to 1. Add 30 and you get the right answer ie. number of days in that month.

4. So you want to map {1,3,5,7,8,10,12} to 1, and {4,6,9,11} to 0.

5. Write down a 13 bit number. If you rightshift x times and AND it with unity, you get 1.

6. So then, x belongs to {1,3,5,7,8,10,12}.

7. That means the bit in each of those locations must be on. The rest of the bits must be off. That gives you the number 1010110101010, which is simply 5546 in decimal.

8. So that's ((5546>>M)&1)+30, except for M==2.
"Apple didn't patent anything first, they bought the inventor and paid him."

http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Se...
the horizontal scroll will finally have its day
Because there is no truth in "trivial" and "obvious", there is only value, as in "guilty" and "good".
google doesn't sue to hinder competition. At Apple and MS its a regualar practice. And yes MS is making more money off of Android than WP7
Although, I think that click-once solved the deployment problem (mostly?) for .net apps on windows. If you want something that works for both mac and pc, obviously silverlight solves it, too.
Newt Gingrich and Followergate. Really?
I'd rather ask society if they're better off, because that is the argument that you're trying to make isn't it? That patents are a good idea, not that they're a system that it's easy for individuals to game for financial reward.
Remembering Bruce, the 25-foot mechanical shark used to make 'Jaws'
This is a myth that MS doesn't support WebM. They do. They just don't ship it in the box. But if you have it on your system, they'll use it. MS doesn't ship a lot of its own technologies in the box -- it doesn't mean they don't support it.
If this was coming from an open source community (instead of Google) that's developing something like Android to give away for free, I would have understood. But, Google gives away Android for free so that it can sell loads of them and there by locking down most of the users (non-geeks) to the Google Ad universe and earn its revenue by selling loads and loads of Ads. Its not like Google genuinely cares about the expensive mobile industry and its actual intent is to provide cheap phones to those who can't afford it (on the lines of OLPC). While whether or not patents and specifically Software patents is good or bad for the society is a different argument, this issue doesn't deserve the same sympathy that companies who are attacked by patent trolls do.
> This piece really is all about the Nortel patents.

You bet! Nortel is a household name for all they have done to advance technology and for the smartphone industry in particular, I am shocked that anyone could dispute the validity of these patents. We owe them a debt of gratitude for the Nortel PalmPilot, the nDroid, nPhone, the nPad, and all the other consumer products Nortel has poured their innovation into. They gave so much, in fact, that they went into bankruptcy. If it wasn't for Nortel, why, who knows where Apple, Google, Microsoft, and the others would be? The bones of Nortel are probably brimming with innovative new product ideas that only need cash from Apple or Microsoft to see the light of day.
I second the 99designs recommendation.

As soon as you get a single design that you think you might be able to live with, guarantee the auction. You will get better submissions.

You can see my archived auction here:
http://99designs.com/logo-design/contests/bizen-logo-54825
What you're saying does not contradict the meme at all. The meme goes that Google first bid Brun's constant, then upped it to the Meissel–Mertens constant, and finally pi.

That's more than one bid.
I don't think it's actually any more powerful in that regard than, say, <iframe> tags. If your application lets users perform destructive actions with a GET request, you were already vulnerable.
I wonder how this relates to exponential growth in "Persona Management Software". I heard for some companies having thousands of Facebook accounts under control. And apparently they are "real" and non-anonymous as it gets.

My question is: how are they going to distinguish puppets from real people?
A Tale of Two Bridges
I second this. I used 99 Designs as well for a project. It ended up being in the $400-450 range, but the quality was amazing.

Just note, they're in Australia... so you may have to pay a small international transaction fee depending on your bank.
I'm not against doing an early release, I'm just not fond of the permanent label, I mean, Bing is still in beta! Gmail was in beta for how long?

http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch15_Better_Not_Beta.php
It's not like that at all. Your analogy is completely lost on me.
So you can connect to social network profiles. I don't see how this improves security significantly.
I dropped all side-projects when I went all in on my current startup (bizen.com). I now work on it full-time.
Teleport - opinionated server setup with Ruby
(years ago) I would read the site compulsively. Now I need an article link to it from HN or reddit or X that reminds me that the site even exists.

So it goes.
Normally I have to go to MacRumors to read this level of content-free fanboyism, so thank you for saving me the time. While it's clearly pointless to attempt to explain that more than one person could have come up with the idea of putting a "Buy" button in an app, I will just note that for an alleged supporter of free market capitalism you have a surprising amount of faith in a government agency that dispenses monopolies.