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The question, as I'd ask more specifically: what philosophical/legal principle can/do "liberals" [1] use to determine what is or is not a legitimate function of the government?

For example, many liberals believe that Jim Crow laws or laws giving special privileges to straight married couples (but not gay married couples) should not be permitted even with popular electoral support. I.e., liberals often consider "the citizens of the US were able to elect representatives who X" to be an invalid justification for policy X.

The question is, what principle are liberals using to come up with views like this? Another question in the same line of thinking is: is there a principle beyond "I like/dislike this policy" which the courts can use to invalidate laws? (Note that appealing to court precedents and reinterpretations of the constitution doesn't really answer this, since the court can always re-reinterpret or make a new precedent.)

[1] I hate phrasing it this way, since the feelings it generates ("I {love/hate} liberals SOOOO MUCH") reduce everyone's IQ by about 15 pts.
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Python and C# are, IMO. Can you explain why you disagree?
All true, but weren't comic book sales in decline before DC and Marvel were bought by Warner Bros and Disney? I don't think it's all bad. The indie sector is still very vibrant, and the good artists there usually get jobs in the majors and do good work (Remender, Abnett and Landing, etc).
I think the worst of it was Naggum's utter conviction of his own moral superiority... at the same time he was gleefully dumping shit on others.

He's dead, BTW. Although he was smart and sometimes made good points, I do not miss him.
Engindex: the search engine index
http://www.engindex.com/

Would you use something like this instead of Google or Bing? Why or why not?
Python maybe. C# (at least when i used it, 3.0)is basically Java and is very object oriented.
Pricing an e-book higher than the paperback is not ridiculous. That's capitalism. If technology has enabled a new version of a product that is superior for the customer in convenience or capabilities, the customer will be willing to pay more and the producer has every right to capture that, regardless of what it costs to produce. (Leaving aside OCR quality issues.)

This happens all the time. DVDs cost less to produce than VHS but sold for more because customers were willing to pay. TicketMaster can charge its service fee because customers will pay, even though it's certainly lower cost for TM to email PDFs than to staff a physical box office and buy ticket printers. A smart capitalist captures the consumer value he creates, regardless of his own costs.
I believe that it is a moot question.

Let me explain what I mean. Some people say that Ben Franklin messed up when he named positive and negative charge -- that the charge which is on the electron should have been called "+" instead of "-". Imagine legions of physicists arguing back and forth over this issue, some vigorously defending "=" and others advocating for "-". It would all be wasted breath: they are just NAMES, and it doesn't MATTER which name you use. What matters is building a transistor, which depends on understanding that it's electrons that carry the charge, not on what the charge is called.

Similarly, any time that two MATHEMATICALLY equivalent theories both explain the facts, I personally don't care which one is true... I don't want to spend time debating it, and honestly I don't believe that one is more "true" than the other. Is classical mechanics driven by Newton's laws or by the Lagrangian "action is zero"? Both! Either one implies the other.

And this is how I view the question of whether the universe is a simulation. Finding out the laws of our universe seems interesting. Finding out whether those laws are implemented by a universe or a computer simulation of a universe... there is no meaningful difference so I don't care.
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That would be http://betali.st. All other similarly themed sites (launchsoon & co.) appears to be scraping/re-publishing their content.
Of couse that's an over-simplification, de-normalisation certainly fits in after many other forms of optimisation.
That's not really accurate - they merely interpreted ambiguities in the tax law in the most favourable way for themselves (and paid all the tax that was due... In Luxembourg, another EU country). Google do this (in Ireland). Hell, The Guardian, the most left-wing paper in the UK, does all its financial affairs offshore (really: http://order-order.com/2009/02/02/guardians-tax-hypocrisy-is...). They pay 0.3% of their profits in tax. 0.3%.

A similar case is ongoing now (Gregg's the bakers) but bizarrely public opinion seems to have come down on the opposite side this time.
The G2 (assuming you mean the T-Mobile G2/HTC Desire Z) has 512MB of RAM. It's actually surprising to me that it has that little free on a boot, though Android often sees the most memory pressure immediately after boot. For example, lots of applications listen to boot events and make sure that various alarms are still scheduled.
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As someone who once worked at an IIT, money is not lacking, imagination is.
or they have chosen to stay anonymous to avoid being pressured by various governments to implement backdoors. I guess we will never know for sure.
>If we want computing to be a friendly and welcoming field and contribute to the betterment of humanity, we can't tolerate people who behave like this in public.

Other people can't tolerate overly-polite, overly-cautious, overly-friendly, overly-political-aware, overly-PC tone.

It makes us droozy and keeps the discussion in a level better suited for enterprise brainstorming meetings and committees. Everybody looses.

Tech and science leaders where very frequently passionate and prone to rant. Just think of Torvalds reactions to (what he thinks are) stupid ideas in the kernel list -- even if he's wrong, it helps keep everybody vigilant and agitated for his contributions.

>If we want computing to be a friendly and welcoming field and contribute to the betterment of humanity, we can't tolerate people who behave like this in public.

The aim is not to make computing a "friendly and welcoming field" (that would be the boy scouts), it's to make it an effective, productive and interesting to work in field.

If you start judging contributions to a field by politeness of "behavior in public" then you're doing the field a disfavor.

The biggest scientist in some field could as well be a huge jerkoff -- for example, Djikstra was known for his passionate rants and snarky tone against everything he considered a bad practice.
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I believe what kiba is intimating is that no matter how much you pay... some drugs and diseases are just hard to come up with solutions for. To give an example everyone is fairly familiar with... even if you paid USD100 Million per research position to get a cancer vaccine, I'm not certain you would get it any faster than if you paid USD200000 per position. Or USD100000. It's just REALLY hard to come up with.
Thanks, that's the kind of perspective I was hoping for. Hm, 37Signals did an amazing PR job, come to think of it.

Will see what's the best "angle" we can come up with, without being fake of course.
Watch this video: Mike Arrington speaks at Startup School 2008 about how to get, and how to respond to press for your startup.

http://youtu.be/HbUnatPfSgg
The descriptions for intrapersonal and interpersonal appear to have been reversed.
I find it a bit disturbing how this post reaches the top of HN. But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

I probably live in my own little bubble, but only lately have I realized that NoSQL has two audiences: (1) People for whom normalization can't work because of their application's characteristics and the limitations of current hardware. (2) People who just don't understand basic relational concepts, or why they were invented in the first place.

It's kinda sad. I've consulted on projects where people implemented sharding before adding any indices to MySQL.

The thing about being in group (1) is that you can also recognize when the ground shifts beneath your feet. Artur Bergman is one of those guys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7PJ1oeEyGg&feature=youtu...
> presumed the "every-day accidental crimes" would be misdemeanors.

It's interesting that you're accepting of the idea that ordinary activities are likely to be crimes.

It's actually rational to have harsh penalties for minor things. You're trying to control people. Minor penalties won't be heard about by others. In addition, prosecutors and police aren't much interested in minor things. Harsh penalties get their attention.

The only way to break this cycle is to stop criminalizing these minor things, which is something that a govt with a control fetish will never do.

By accepting the idea that ordinary activities can be criminal, you're buying into that fetish. Your "but they shouldn't be felonies" is either embarrassment or ignorance of the consequences of said "buy into".

Here's my rule. If I'm unwilling to have my mother shot for doing {thing}, said thing should not be a crime. That's an appropriate rule because criminalizing said thing will result in someone being shot....
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>I think the worst of it was Naggum's utter conviction of his own moral superiority... at the same time he was gleefully dumping shit on others.

How is that "the worst"? One's feeling of moral superiority and dumping shit on others are not contradictory --except if one's conviction of his moral superiority is wrong. Dumping shit on others does not make you morally inferior (in the same way that they could be), if that's what you suggest. If one is bad-mouthing some rapist, it doesn't mean that he's as morally bad as the rapist because of doing so.

That said, all this "moral" thing is beside the point: what Naggun was utterly convicted of was his _technical_ correctness, which is something completely different.
Now try to apply this to the real world. The most popular and widely used SGML-derived format by far is (X)HTML. Show me e.g. how a paragraph with a few embedded links is improved by translating to JSON.

It is not. Of course some kinds of data are indeed expressed simpler with JSON.

Another real world example is RSS. More data-y that HTML but still may contain mixed content. Would it be better if it had been JSON from the beginning? The answer is not clear cut.

So maybe JSON is not always the right answer. Maybe it depends on what kind of data you want to express. But then it suddely is not a debate with a "XML-defenders" which "dont get it". Then it is a discussion about which tool is approprite in a given situation rather than a war between tribes. And how do you boost you ego and sense of superiority with a boring debate about tools?
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Unless you are talking about mobile devices, there are so many other things one needs to look into before trying to tune the CSS for getting better performance. Stuff like gzipping, caching and CDN will all contribute to page load performance in a much more significant way.
Unlike you, who is prone to hysterical generalisations. Perhaps you ought to step outside and meet some other human beings rather than just looking at them on computer screens.
Was a little baffled by this part,

"It would be an adventure and a statement. If he could do it, he would prove to the world that there are other alternatives to powering sea travel besides fossil fuels and wind. It would also demonstrate just what solar power is capable of."

It didn't really prove anything ..
The parts you quoted between === from the article aren't at all a compelling case to me, that's nothing more than a prescription. If he has some argument here, he needs to make it.
Performance based advertising was perfected as early as the 1850s. Newspaper advertisements would use coupons that were redeemed at stores, then given to the advertiser so the stores could be reimbursed.
This seems to fail Occam's Razor. The argument boils down to "Our observations are consistent with what we'd see if we were in a simulation, so we're probably in a simulation" modulo some specious asymptotic extrapolation. There's nothing impossible about the idea that we're living in a computer simulation, but unless the idea is falsifiable it does not constitute a rational, scientific theory.
You're setting up a false dichotomy. There is a middle ground between behaving like an asshole and too much diplomacy. Do you really think respectful disagreement is the same as being "overly-PC"? Torvalds is a little harsh sometimes, but it's nothing compared to the disgusting rudeness of this rant.
Your use of capitalization reflects your emotional state of mind on the topic.
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No, this is how European psychologists/psychoanalysis guys in general see Americans.

As a general notion it's not that far for the truth, if you ask me, even if the casual mechanism to explain it is wrong.
Tell me about it! :) Our current blog (http://blog.metaome.com/) is too product focused. Have some ideas in the works..
The parts of this that aren't about XML are stupid as hell.
Conditionally superior in convenience, pluses and minuses in capabilities, definite minus in terms of ownership.

Ticketmaster is an effective monopoly, publishers are an effective oligopoly. Neither are exactly capitalism's finest examples.
Anybody else who's played Minecraft :)

I've toyed with the idea, with the notion that the laws of physics are written such that it's easier and cheaper to simulate the universe.

But then one would have to ask, If the universe is a simulation, what is the seed number?
C# is fundamentally OO (especially considering the .NET framework that it's tightly bound to in real-world use), but can be used in functional ways. C# has first-class functions and closures. The LINQ stuff introduced in 3.5 is amazing to work with, giving C# many capabilities of a list-processing language also. I love C# and would definitely call it multiparadigm.
I want to check out at that period of time does stuff in Google use Inktomi to do some experiment also?
I see where the author is coming from. Playing devils advocate as someone who runs a reasonable sized event in London[1] I can tell everyone ere that the single biggest expense is the venue itself, closely followed by all the little bits on top (such as catering etc.). Having said that, £799 for a single track two day conf is a bit steep (for a comparison 44con's two day ticket[2] is £300, fully catered). The biggest bugbear I have is poor speaker ops. Speakers need to be taken care of, if you don't then you'll struggle to attract quality and end up with a depressive spiral. It seems this conference failed.

The interesting point for me was Sencha. I wonder if thy had Sencha sponsored slots? We don't do this, especially as people pay to attend.

The point about travel expenses is unforgivable. We cover our speakers flights and accommodation so they're not out of pocket. At the very least it shouldn't cost the speaker a fortune to attend.

[1] -http://44con.com
[2] -http://44con-2012.eventbrite.co.uk
To finish Heisig with > 95% recall: 2 months. I had a general idea of what I was reading in Japan as soon as I arrived. Passed the JLPT 1 in 1.25 years. (I had a year of university study before Heisig, but the # kanji I knew was likely only in the 100-200 range.)
Show HN: The way I'll beat Facebook?
Hi!
3 months ago, while I was exploring my Facebook newsfeed, was the first time I really got bored of Facebook. I started to wonder why, and to be honest - I haven't figured it out yet. But I did start to think of the gaps Facebook doesn't cover. Maybe I'm wrong, but one of the things that came up to me is the subject of interests and users will to use social networks in order to get to know new friends (real ones), in an efficient-good way. I thought combining those two gaps is a really good idea.
So I started to develop that big idea (double meaning) - interests based social network.
The site is in a quite advanced stage but some key features are still missing. Even though, I released an early sign-up landing page (www.itimdi.com), in order to see the amount of demand on this one.
I'd like to get your feedback on that project, please.
Thanks in advanced!
We'll never know. If the universe is a simulation then it's similar to a virtual machine running on top of a hypervisor.
The virtual machine doesn't know that it's not a real machine unless its hypervisor tells it so. From inside the virtual machine, there is no meaningful distinction to be made between being a real machine and being a virtual one.
@jebblue

>Your use of capitalization reflects your emotional state of mind on the topic.

No, my use of capitalization reflects my frustration with being unable to bold words for emphasis.

Your use of psychobabble on the other hand reflects a lot more on your cultural background.
But what I was suggesting was putting more people on the problem, not offering more per position. In fact, the research done in India would cost less than in the US.
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It's an interesting question, are we in a Matrix, or computer simulation, or the slightly older theory from 1641 where Rene Descartes imagined an omnipotent demon lying to him. Maybe I'm simplifying the question, but I reckon it boils down to how do we know what we know? Am I sat in front of a computer screen now, or do I just believe I am?

I'm not really a philosopher, at all, but the Oxford Companion to Philosophy says:

"Do you know that you are looking at a... book right now rather than, say, having your brain intricately stimulated by a mad scientist? The sceptic carefully describes this alternative so that no experiment can refute it. The conclusion that you really are looking at a book, however, explains the aggregate of your experiences better than the mad scientist hypothesis or any other competing views."

which I think makes sense to me. I've met one or two people who say they believe that they live in a Matrix/Alien computer simulation, but observing, they live as if they don't.
Who here believes that computer simulations are universes?
And all the fandroid hostility is precisely because this ugly device doesn't look like an iPhone. Smartphones were mostly ugly before Apple came into the market, now Apple have set the aesthetic standard and all the wannabes can do is copy it. Now the fandroids wet their panties bacause the plagiarists are sued for plagiarism.

EDIT erroneous reference to microphone icon removed
For me, issues like this raise the question: Does capitalism still make moral sense in a world where a large proportion of the population is so poor as to be unlikely to participate in the free market during their lifetime? Even at $150 per month, those drugs aren't in any way affordable for most without government funding.
if you are developing websites for clients don't get into this much detail cause no one will ever appreciate the work you made.

on the other hand if you are running a single web app and have the time to spare it might be a good idea to look into this cause apart from nice visuals and intuitive UI, the more responsive your web app is the more likely users will not give up on it.
Occam's Razor is just a guide... The simplest case is not always the explanation.
Figure out a way to speed up the research process itself. We can't afford to wait 10 to 20 years. Many lives will be lost during those time period.

Yes, research take time. Yes, medical research is extraordinary hard. It still doesn't excuse our slowness. We need to look at fighting diseases as a war, not a scientific exploration project. Science is good, but solutions are better. We don't need to understand in extreme details how cancer work, we just need a way to defeat cancer.
It's certainly a poor way to argue when you set yourself up so that unless the opposing side agrees with you on politics, morality, the U.S. government, education, human development, and oh yeah, portable document formats, they're going to be forced to disagree with you.
It's confused bullshit. The rest doesn't matter.
Except you'd need a 2/3 vote in that scenario to enumerate a new silly power and not the 50% vote required today, so I would think that the government would have fewer silly powers than it does today.
You don't have to ask us: you can ask the scientists (who should be working for subsistence wages, apparently). Of course manufacturing is cheap once the difficult, risky bit - discovery and clinical trials - has been done.
if we are in a simulation, we could possibly hack our way out of it.

i've thought for a while now that the "speed of light" limit is a result of a distributed consesnus algorithm taking a bit of time to convergd.

also, quantum mechanical noiss is leakage current flipping bits in memory.
I bought all five volumes for my kindle, and they obviously weren't OCR'd.
Where's the public good if these drugs are never developed in the first place?
> Yes, it's a rant. Why?

Actually, the rant's author just liked/felt compelled to communicate that way, pretty much all the time. It really hurt him socially.
He basically suggest turning XML into s-expressions. Eg.

<p>Hello, <a href="http://example.com">world</p>

Turns into something like:

<p "Hello," <a <href "http://example.com">"world">>

Not an obvious win as far as I can tell, wouldn't like to fix an ummatched bracket in a document ending in >>>> rather than e.g. </form><div></body></html>. But your mileage may vary.

His other ideas have more or less been implemented, with varying success. XML-Schemas have been introduced which is more powerful that DTD's. Some schema languages can indeed do complex computations for better or worse.

The macro-expansion approach is how XSL-formatting worked, and it turned out it was not as powerful or elegant as the CSS approach. It made sense when coming from a publishing background, but didn't predict dynamic interactive web pages.
You've obviously never had to plug a non-mainstream USB device into a virtual machine and get USB passthru to work properly!

If we could find a cosmic equivalent to plug into the universe we might just be able to determine whether we're in a real or virtual one after all.
I would be careful saying that you'll beat Facebook, because then people expect this to really rival Facebook when it can't at this stage. PG recommends this when going after a problem, don't tell investors that you're tackling email because then they will expect to see massive results and constantly compare, on the flip side, take one part of it and get that down and go from there.