skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
#5 says that pricing specials for the first month have been shown to work better than free trial. Is that from personal experience or is the auther referring to some studies that have been conducted?

We're selling a SaaS solution to small businesses and our entire process is built around a free 15 day trial. I imagine that if we required payment info upfront, our sign ups would drop dramatically, our cancellation rates would go up and I'm not sure what would happen to the customer acquisition rate. If the net result is positive I wouldn't care about the change in our metrics.

Does anyone know of any articles written about that topic in particular?
Wow, what a stuck-up response to a serious question.

My point is, market forces drive innovation. "Flash is proprietary" -- in what possible way is that bad? Most of the luxuries of life are proprietary. Humanity is better for having the concept of "proprietary".

Imagine how you'd feel if someone was saying, "Viaweb must die. Viaweb is evil. Viaweb is proprietary.". It would sound rediculous. And yet, Viaweb was a platform, just like Flash. So ask yourself, why does that sound rediculous? Could it be that there is some pent-up anger or frustration with Adobe and Microsoft in particular, and that anger is distorting our ability to look at the situation objectively? I don't know. I personally think Microsoft has added a lot of real value over the years, and that the world is better with them than without them.

Also, I don't like feeling as if I'm in a roomful of zealots. Please make thoughtful continutions to Hacker News.
If Richard Branson Ran GM
Thanks for the link. I read the one on Germany as well.

It seems more like a combination of employer and employee payment with the governments being involved as a single payer system - in the case of Germany.
I've got an N95 version one, and its got some better features then iPhone3G.

Every smartphone has its pros and cons, its up to the consumer to decide which one to purchase, and I agree that its up to the press to report it only, and leave the consumer to decide where he wants to put his money.
Another review from Time magazine: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1860717,00....

The Time reviewer didn't like the click screen at all.
You have to agree that the UI interface of the iphone is elegant and really intuitive. It seems that, that's the hardest problem to solve for iphone competitor. They try to hard to pack as many features as possible put forget about the user experience.
"But is it better than the iPhone? Short answer: It's close, but no."

Every single smartphone review I've read could be boiled down to that one sentence. Why read them at all? Just demo each phone and pick the one you like.
Because the new crop of internet devices don't have flash?
Part of the problem is, that the higher you force the wage, the fewer employees a company can employ. So, when unions push wages (and pensions) too high, it prevents the companies from hiring as many employees. In the case of UAW and GM, it went so far that GM was forced to close down factories and many UAW workers lost their jobs as a result.

A better way to improve wages and income for workers is to improve their productivity, that is, their subjective worth in relation to the employer, as wages tend to naturally approach this value. Tis is best done by increasing the quantity and quality available to the workers. Effectively this means increasing innovation, which GM and Ford have not been able to provide for years. UAW is part of the problem here as well.

Not that unions are all bad, workers should have a negotiating body in order to prevent abuse by employers, but I think that in this case they are part of the problem.
I have fond memories of PC/Computing. In one of their 1,001 best downloads issues, they included my first piece of freeware. I think I have the issue somewhere still.
Neat hack for the current ruby quiz
Tongue in cheek perhaps but very true! Never underestimate the power of publicity stunts :D (hmm).

Although of course if he did run GM then they wouldn't be in this mess in the first place would they (though Im not sure I'd want to drive a care branded "Virgin".. only comes in white :P).

Sharp commentary.
Back to Digg with you!
Things like IE scrollbars covering the content, word-wrap weirdness, designMode idiocy.. Differences in how iframes are handled - Things like that. Not to mention all the IE6 rubbish like if you set left and right, it can't figure out width.

"Most UI code written in JS is a variant of "find something in the DOM and change it"."

I'd agree to a point, but I'd note that ideally you want to keep handy js references to what you have in the DOM so you don't have to find it again. And if you put it in the DOM, you don't ever have to find it, you just store it somewhere handy. Constantly performing search operations just isn't efficient.
Ah, come on, it's not that hard.

A bug is something that should be working according to the specification (or, if the specification is missing, according to common sense), but is not working. If you have a button labelled "print" and it doesn't print, that's not a feature request, it's a bug.

Feature requests are made up of enhancements and requirements.

An enhancement is an small, incremental and obvious improvement to an existing function/element that doesn't change the fundamental functioning of that function/element. If the print button is there and is working fine according to the spec but a user requests that it also prints the date at the top of the document, that's an enhancement.

A requirement is a wholly new piece of functionality that didn't exist before. If the print button is there, and it works fine, and the user requests that it should allow the user to select which pages to print before actually printing, that's a new requirement.

It's really not rocket science...
Is that like Chrysler needing Lee Iacocca? If so, does this presage an attempt at resurgence that will eventually be for naught when a big economic downturn hits and everyone goes bankrupt?
Wait! I thought SEO tactics were bullshit/dead...
Where's Jeff Goldblum when you need him?
Exact strings matching algorithms
Researchers find new vulnerability in Windows Vista
"let them just be" - a slogan for the extinct animal cloners or a plea to not "unextinct" a species. Works both ways.

And someone should make up a nice word for that before the media does it for us. The need is coming. I don't think "restinct" works.
Will the future be programmer-free?
Couldn't agree more, I play CS:S and HL2 whenever I can and am thrilled I don't need discs, CD keys or have to worry about patching my shit (or even 'installing' my games on new machines or reformatted ones). It's awesome for a "grown up gamer" like me who doesn't have a lot of time to play.
CDNs Gaining Broader Use with JavaScript Libraries
Actually, it's the software in the ACPI tables that does the work. Presumably the BIOS provides the same information to both Windows and OS X (although some BIOSes intentionally lie to Linux).
The invitation feature has been turned off AFAIK, I tried to invite a friend a while back and I could no longer find it anywhere in the UI.
It really disgusts me that this comment has been upmodded so much. it reeks of overgeneralization, ignorance, and hyperbole. it's very easy to sit on your high horse and talk about hypothetical denny's waitresses, but a little harder when this actually effects you and your loved ones.

Very true. The dangers many Americans face as a result of all this are real, as are the hardships that prompted folks to adopt these broken systems in the first place. However, that doesn't change the fact that there are very serious problems with the system and that the hardships could be made much worse if they are not addressed.
I work in a contract environment, and it's in our mandate to avoid feature creep. Enhancements have to be derived from the requirements and design that the customer bought off on, or we require more money. Bugs that interfere with our commitments to the customer, on the other hand, are handled with extreme prejudice.

MS is in a different situation really because they have no contractual obligations. Nobody is really pushing against their products for quality, so their upgrades are driven by marketability or something.

The irony is that quality is the best marketing. The product that aims at marketability at the expense of quality will achieve neither, the product that aims at quality at the expense of marketing will achieve both.
Radio is hard, anyone who listened to mush mouth JD host his own show (for Artie) the other day knows this.

/if you don't know JD don't worry about it

The problem is the few that can do it well, become the voice of the 'movement', which is not always a good thing. It apparently worked for many years but they got exactly what they wanted (power) and blew it royally.
They probably can't in any way that would make it usable to people.

As Steve Yegge always points out when he talks about open sourcing his Google side projects, Most of it depends on other Google technology that isn't open source.
Sounds like every "report writer" or "does everything you want as long as you don't want to do much" 4GL I've ever come across to me.

I loved two quotes:

"Anyone who is comfortable writing macros or sophisticated Excel spreadsheets has what it takes to create apps with Coghead" - so basically programmers then.

"A person needs a basic understanding of relational databases" - but in my experience most otherwise excellent programmers lack any detectable understanding of relational databases.
Then why do they have a problem?
And before people down-mod me because I forgot to mention it, the reason why Jeff is perceiving that something is horribly broken there is not because there's a problem with classifying what kind of "request" the user made. If your developers are in the habit of ignoring feature requests because they're not bugs, you need either new developers or a new project manager.

"Work items" (whatever kind they are) should be implemented based on the value they add to the product, the company, the customers, etc. Bugs can be minor and requirements can be critical.

In the case Jeff discusses, yes, it's a bug, because it should match the requirements, which presumably include providing customers with the tools to build quality Windows applications. Is it a critical bug? Depends on the point of view. From a developer point of view it's not critical, and they are right to ignore it from that narrow perspective. "Critical bug", in developer-speak, means "The sky will fall when someone clicks that button". However, it should be critical to the windows UI guidelines team and they should be the stakeholder pushing to get it implemented, on the basis that it makes them look like dunces.

So the problem there is not about what you call the bug, it's about the fact that the windows UI guidelines team don't care enough (a fact more than obvious whenever I stare at a vista screenshot).
Although I do agree bugs may be pushed to the vast abyss of feature requests or "enhancements," the answer is pretty simple:

In the waterfall model, if it isn't in the requirements/specifications doc, it isn't a bug. It's put in as feature request and if you're lucky maybe some day years later it will be addressed in a redesign project or a "phase 2", but most of the time it will never happen.

In agile, if it's not a story, you put it in the backlog and it will eventually make it into an iteration. For example, as testers, we bring it up to the PM/PO so that he can write a story for it. They'll prioritize and put it in an iteration because the developer will not do anything about it unless it's a story and his time accounted for it.
Amiga Power
SS works out to ~15.3% add Medicare etc, and they are at ~20% the absolute top tax rate is 35% assuming zero deductions but capital gains is only 15%. With 16k * .2 we get 3,200$ in tax.

Earned income tax credit = $428 with no qualifying children wow that helps.
It's a mix. You can try out what they say if it seems like a good idea to you. But the only test is whether it changes user behavior or drives signups or whatever.
Discussions about the meaning of words, while sometimes fun, only rarely produce any useful results. Generally it is better to choose some precise definition in your context, and see what you can build from that / where does that take you.

This whole post is such a disguised discussion. He never picks a precise definition of "bug" or "feature request". If he did, it would be immediately obvious were each case lies - but then it would be also obvious the post is content-free...

At any case, it would be nice if there was some way of telling HackerNews "I don't want to see any posts coming from codinghorror"...
well the mouse helps FPS on PC big time too
Yeah, this is one of the arguments for universal healthcare and government-managed retirement benefits.
I think that he means explicit wealth redistribution. If government uses your tax money to to finance the police system, sure it is moving wealth around, but a healthy police is necessary for a free society and functioning economy, so in the end, everyone benefits. This is different from just taking from one group and giving to another.
The aim of government is not to support businesses but to support the citizenry. The relevant question is not whether businesses will be better off, it's whether people will be better off.
I'd say that it's less wrong, to redistribute in this fashion as it is at least under the guise of charity.
Totally. Just need someone to make a bookmarklet so that we can automatically generate this from any selected text:)
The most remarkable thing about this article is that it isn't spread over 15 pages. They can't quite bring themselves to get it down to one, but limiting any of these "X greatest Y things" articles to two clicks is major progress.

And, indeed, where's OMNI? Page three, no doubt...
I'm not going to spoil it for you, but try uploading your logo to http://www.logopond.com and soliciting a feedback.
I work in a contract environment, and it's in our mandate to avoid feature creep. Enhancements have to be derived from the requirements and design that the customer bought off on, or we require more money. Bugs that interfere with our commitments to the customer, on the other hand, are handled with extreme prejudice.

My employer (who works in a highly regulated industry) works the same way. If a core product must be modified, we issue a change control memo. The items in the memo either have to be tied to bugs in our bug-base or, in the case of enhancements, a specification.

Because of the high volume of paperwork that surrounds software releases (specifications, documentation, test matrices, test reports), enhancements are typically put into a stack until there are enough to justify the load of paperwork that must accompany such a release. Bug fixes still require paperwork, but specs don't need to be written, only test reports.
As Steve Yegge always points out when he talks about open sourcing his Google side projects, Most of it depends on other Google technology that isn't open source.

That doesn't really prevent you from open-sourcing it. The Google-specific parts can be replaced by someone who cares.
PHD Comics: Clever Acronyms
Ugh oh .. is "I asked Twitter" are going to be new "Top 10" lists ? It's a same concept really.
J200i Joystick Ways, J210i Mouse Problem
j200, j200 joystick problem, j200i joystick ways, j210, j210 mouse ways, j210i mouse problem, joystick, juming, mouse, sony ericsson, ways
$73 is labor cost, this includes many things on top of the $30 per hour. This is higher than their competitors but not by as much as it seems.
It's true, that Republicans are more likely to uphold free-market principles than Democrats are, and this vote does demonstrate that, but it also demonstrates that that R next your representatives name is no guarantee that he is fiscally conservative. I prefer to vote based on personality and not on party and would prefer that both parties were destroyed and sent back to the abyss where they belong.
one must ask why a waitress at denny's who makes minimum wage and has no healthcare must bail out union workers at gm who make 8x the wages, do less work, have ZERO DEDUCTABLE healthcare (do you? i doubt it), and full pensions.

It's not the waitress at denny's - there is a very good chance she pays no federal taxes.

No, it's the engineers, management and entrepreneurs of all the successful companies in the US that are going to pay for the bail out(s).

I agree let them go bankrupt or even a managed bankruptcy. They need to get those liabilities off the books.

barak obama cannot force me to buy a buick

This is how much of the world works, subsidize the local car companies and tax and tariff the foreign car companies. Currently the foreign car companies are essentially on the same playing field as foreign car companies in the US. Hopefully it will stay that way.
3/4ths of teachers sounds about reasonable.
1- Be Seth Godin.

2- Run a blog with ads.

3- Profit.

4- Expound obvious stuff couched as deep marketing voodoo.

5- Sell that.

6- Profit again.
10 Best Wordpress Web Hosts Compared - 2009
The sites listed below all feature more than adequate PHP and MySQL features, so the major differences among the hosting solutions are the ability to handle traffic spikes and price.
Defensive design: Magnetic zones on the unibody MacBook
Inside a frozen pizza factory
thats the problem isn't it? GM/Ford/Chrysler CEOs just don't get it. If they got it, their companies wouldn't be in the crapper like they are today.
I agree. I remember the days when hacking was all about windows and desktop apps, but times have changed.
LG VX5500 Verizon
The LG VX5500 combines essential functionality and mobile fun. Snap pix of life’s greatest moments and share them instantly. Use voice–activated dialing to call, then talk hands–free with the one–touch speakerphone or go completely wireless using the Bluetooth® capability.
Ask HN: Review my website, please.
I built my site a few months and have been tweaking it and trying to get more exposure. There are some really bad baby name websites out there - and lots of them are in the top 10 search results for "baby names" I thought I could make something better, and here it is.
You live in a collective. Your tunnels are highways, and you do in fact have a job to perform. Back to work!
If you use a product made by a company that can't manage to fix something like that over the course of 4 years ("fix" because it goes against their own guidelines) you probably deserve to have all your fonts look like shit.

Just sayin'.
Presidential Birth Announcements
Would it not be nice to get the President of America and the First Lady send a congratulations card for your new baby? Would your son or daughter not be thrilled to see this card when they grow up? Will this not make a wonderful collection for your baby’s book? Certainly! Who would not love to get a congratulations card from the President of America and the First Lady? It would be something that your son or daughter can boast about.
Small, Agile Web Firms Make Best Partners in Tough Economy
And undercar kits would be standard.

All jesting aside, this blog author makes a good point about the lack of panache and poor PR of American auto manufacturers to coastal Americans.
Financial wing GMAC got killed by subprime, the credit crunch, gas prices... all that on top of lagging sales. Sure, some of that perfect storm is their own fault. But, it's not as simple as "their cars suck" and "the workers make too much money".
Ruby Isn't Fun Anymore
Spoil what? I'm sure that my logo design abilities could use quite a bit of improvement, but if my work sells, it sells. My site's out-of-date for sure (need to add more Testimonials) but you'll see that the client for whom I made the logo was quite pleased.

I'm a frontend developer first, designer second, and backend developer third, and I like to do work in all three.

In any case, I said plainly that I'm not a professional logo designer in the comment you're responding to.
Seth's blog doesn't even have ads, unless you count the links to his books. And he doesn't even make that much money on his books; the only reason they aren't free entirely is because he wouldn't he able to get distribution and promotion otherwise.
13 Years on the Web - A Retrospective, Part I
Paypal currently offers the ability to SMS payments. Why would I choose Twitpay over that SMS?
World Of Warcraft's "Lich King" Shatters One-Day Sales Record
Puppet and Ralsh
I built my site a few months and have been tweaking it and trying to get more exposure. There are some really bad baby name websites out there - and lots of them are in the top 10 search results for "baby names"... grrrr.

I thought I could make something better, and here it is.

At first, my unique angle were these scalable "clusters" of names (based on word similarity). And, I also had links to wikipedia grouped by name. I also had very detailed popularity charts over time.

Just recently, I made these US maps which are shaded by popularity for each state. That is a totally unique feature which is not available at any other baby name website. They are actually really interesting to explore.

Anyway, what do I do now? I want more visitors and better search ranking. I have some other ideas for the site itself - like to simplify the multiple page types ("cluster" page vs. "single name" page) into one page for name details. And I have a few other ideas with respect to the maps.

I think I am going to re-brand/rename my site to: BabyNamesAcrossAmerica.com since my main feedback from friends is that my URL is kinds of geeky and hard to remember. But, there are so many domains with "babyname" already taken.

Thanks for any suggestions.
Wasn't that what the 37signals guys were advocating?

http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1256-making-money-twice
Why Google Chrome Needs Add-Ons
I think the point is exactly that these precise definitions should just be thrown out. The goal is to make something people want (or, at least, that they will pay for). Making distinctions about where bugs come from, who reports them, when in the cycle you found them, etc. are all part of most development processes, but they are masking the issue.

Make your software do the right thing.
Flagged for politics, but in the meantime you'll excuse me if I, as it were, stick my dick in the mashed potatoes.

I think it's a rather silly analysis. Firstly, for the whole premise:

This might be the key passage of my interview with John Ziegler on Tuesday, for it is, in a nutshell, why conservatives don't win elections anymore.

By "conservatives don't win elections any more" he means that they've lost two congressional elections in a row. And one Presidential election. That's not a death of anything, that's just a normal part of the political cycle.

Secondly, for his proposed reason:

There are a certain segment of conservatives who literally cannot believe that anybody would see the world differently than the way they do. They have not just forgotten how to persuade; they have forgotten about the necessity of persuasion.

And that's supposed to be unique to conservatives how? Being unable to believe that others don't think the way you do is extremely common on both sides of politics. Working at a university as I do, the left-wing equivalent is almost ubiquitous among just about everybody I talk to on a day-to-day basis.
Before it got disposed of, Upside.com hosted every issue of Upside. Sadly, I only got a few articles about Louis Rossetto before the website was scrubbed clean.
you can now move on to the next big thing and be a serial entrpreneur! :)
If you think it's about politics you're missing the point.
Be A Turtle: Surviving Economic Downturn
Let the Games Begin: FIRST robotics competition moves to 32-bit controllers
Hasn't this been solved by bookmarklets?