skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You could make the same argument regarding typewriters and word processing software. I would think many more copies of word processing packages are in active use than was ever the case for typewriters. Word processing is several orders of magnitude easier than typing and as a result it's an incredible success. If a 3D printer allows you to pick a design from the web, click on the 'fab' button and start using your new product within the day, expect them to sell like hot cakes when the price drops.
Be wary of ad-hoc networks in airports. Ever time I've fired up a wireless device in an airport I've seen a "Free Wifi" ad-hoc network which was almost certainly some dude with a laptop trying to steal peoples data.
Cut your losses. At some point you have to admit to yourself that you've been had and you won't get any kind of compensation. You're just wasting resources. Next time you'll be more apt at heeding the red flags.
I'm very tempted to get the lawyers involved, but that will be expensive, take a long time and might not be worth it.

Sounds like you have a similar problem, at least Im not the only one.

I waived any late fees ( I didn't even mention them) and offered him bonuses if he finished within a certain date (he didnt but hes still demanding them).

Its amazing how angry he gets when I ask in the politest way possible that he show me some progress, even when he's 6 months late!
Windows Vista Exec's Solo Album Almost As Good As Vista
I've got a unique perspective on things as I've looked into both sewing AND 3D printing for different hobbies. Sewing as a young kid, 3D printing as I got older.

As someone who owned and learned how to use a sewing machine at the ripe old age of 10, I can't help to find fault in this guy's argument.

Admittedly I was building Rokkaku's, Speedwing Stacks and Parafoils out of ripstop nylon and carbon fibre (well, the parafoils didn't use carbon fibre), but that's not the point.

I recently looked into 3D printing for producing components for another hobby of mine (tabletop wargaming) and the fact is that it is stupidly expensive at the moment in terms of both purchasing a machine or getting someone to print for you. I ended up just learning to sculpt and scratchbuild with polystyrene card.

Now to address some of his points.

1. when someone develops a 3D modeling application that anyone can use and many can master

http://www.blender.org

2. when someone develops a post consumer recycled 3D printing material

I'm fairly sure you can recycle acrylic and print with acrylic, so where's the disconnect there? My chemistry isn't up to scratch so can someone please clarify?

3. when printing metal and circuits becomes cheap

Got me there, I never researched printing either of these things, so I can't comment.
Man replaces lost finger with USB drive
This is yet another post about stereotypical employees/coworkers. I don't like to think of people as hollow stereotypes that someone online can precisely nail down so as to dispense wisdom on dealing with them. Yes, I've worked with lots of people who sort of resemble the stereotypes and I'm sure all of you have, hence the popularity of such posts.

However, I urge everyone to please remember that stereotypes are templates and nobody fits the stereotype exactly. Everyone has something special about them that is worth considering. Just imagine if you do have a "mr. know-it-all" at your work who gets a bit frustrated when you ask him to do important but "boring" things like documentation or protocol compliance. Advice like this will suddenly put this person in your view as negative, despite the fact that "mr. know-it-all" is a very hardworking employee who is extremely loyal to your company. Nobody is perfect and thanks to this new stereotype that you just read about, you cannot help but compare him to the guy that "one everyone has to tiptoe around." Oh how you hate that stereotype and look, this "mr know-it-all" totally fits the description!

You could solve your documentation problem in some other way but once you fire this guy, you got two problems - you don't have a loyal, hardworking, "mr. know-it-all" anymore and you don't have the documentation on what he did and how he did it I'm no managerial-guru but I sure hope nobody starts firing their top tech people because of random posts on the Internet.

Of course, the hypocrisy here among most of us is that when a large company does fire key tech people from their staff, we all come in rallying for support of the tech folks, arguing "how can a company survive if they fire their lead tech!" Well, companies can survive. And yours could too despite the fact that you fired your key tech person as long as you have a good infrastructure in place. However, that doesn't mean your competition won't welcome them with open arms and now you got a third problem.
>Subversion 1.6 recognizes a new kind of conflict, known as a "tree conflict". Such conflicts manifest at the level of directory structure, rather than file content.

>Situations now flagged as conflicts include deletions of locally modified files, and incoming edits to locally deleted files. Files and directories which are victims of a tree conflict cannot be committed before the conflict is marked resolved.

Wow - finally! This is great. We've had to handle these edge cases during merges (greatly slowing our scripts) for a long time. Hopefully this will give us significant speed improvements which should help with one of the minor irritants of our users.
My problem with this is I think that many people will simply think it is some kind of malware or infected page and stop going to the site they found it on altogether.
I feel like I've put enough time into this (not to mention money!) that makes it very hard to do that...
Actually, I think vim comes with pretty good Python support by default. I'm using vim 7.1 and there's, for example, a good python.vim syntax file that came with.
The assumption is you limit bulk guessing of passwords vs requiring long passwords. To consider a concrete exam-
ple, if a bank allows only 6 digits PINs (a relatively weak
password) and locks an account for 24 hours after three
attempts an attacker could search

If an IP is spitting out 5 password attempts a second you can safely ignore their passwords cache the Login Failed page and go about your day because they are not the user. If a user has attempted to login more than 50 times a day lock them out for 24 hours unless they reset the password. 50 * 365 * 10 < 20% of 10^6 and a tiny fraction of your users are going to try 50 times to get in.

PS: I would also a CAPTCHA the login process for any IP that fails 25 times a week without any valid logons.
You don't need a lawyer for small claims court. You just pay the small fee(something like 20 bucks) and you get to present your case in front of a judge. And the small claims court case really won't take that much time. Chances are, you'll be presenting your case within 3-4 weeks.

I would give your guy the ultimatum right now. If your experience is anything like mine, it'll be faster for you to hire a replacement(who'll be paid upon completion) to finish the site from scratch, than it'll take your current guy to finish.
Blender as an example for 3d modeling application anyone can use and master? I suspect the author and you have seriously different understandings of usability, to put it mildly.
Facilities like CRA and TIF did not contribute to the housing crisis in the manner you postulate.

They contributed by giving real estate developers political and, more importantly, financial cover for redeveloping inner city areas. The areas redeveloped were full of impoverished people, BUT the areas were not redeveloped FOR the impoverished people. Generally, those people were moved out to section 8 housing, (rentals), and new people would come in. People who were decidedly non poor. Then, of course, those people started to default on their mortgages and the rest is history. Witness the downtown condo boom that happened across the US. Then witness the downtown condo bust that is happening presently. Been to Chicago or Miami lately?

So, in short, the developers never sold their condos to "ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell clerks". They sold them to retirees, empty-nesters, and a crapload of yuppies and speculators. Now the data coming in right now, at least the data for the developer that I worked for, seems to indicate that selling to yuppies and speculators was a mistake. But the gentrification of those neighborhoods was not a mistake, in my own opinion. I know others may think differently.
that you "paid for a service for which you didn't receive" is your version of the story. i'd be willing to bet that the programmer involved would have quite a different one. i'm not making any claims about who's right or wrong, i'm just pointing out that he's likely willing to fight you over it.

suppose you reverse-engineer the app and the old programmer finds out. he says "hey, that's my work, you are not allowed to do that" and sues you. if he's as vindictive and unproductive as you claim, that seems a likely outcome.

what you're talking about is throwing good money and effort after bad. you're digging yourself into a deep, dark hole. you and the programmer could be taking revenge shots at each other for years.

starting over puts you at zero, which is way better than sinking deeper and deeper into negative numbers.
Cut your losses. You need to work out, what's worth more - the time or the money.

You could start legal proceedings and 2 months down the line see someone else launch your product... I'm one for speed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost
You can't actually recycle plastics like you can aluminum. Each time your reheat and remold the polymer it breaks down and eventually becomes unusable. Even when recycled plastic is used in industry it is typically Pre-consumer. e.g. when you go to the movie theater and get a "Watchmen" soda cup, sometimes they misprint whole batches. Those are ground up and mixed with virgin plastic before they ever leave the factory.
I will be more flippant than pg: Just get up already.

Now I will explain my reaction so I don't just get downvoted and if you disagree with me, reply.

Most people in the world have responsibilities. Kids to feed and to take to school, chores and errands to do plus a (sometimes long) commute to a job where they cannot afford to be late (responsibilities, a boss, or both). Yet, they all manage just fine.
Easiest and best way (imho) is to simply to work for a startup.
man rsync

Also, buku? You mean beaucoup?
It may be emotionally hard to cut your losses, but it may be economically sound.

There's a concept in economics called "sunk costs". You can't recover your investment, so whatever your choice, the money's gone. The only choice you have at this point is: do you continue or do you stop?

Since it looks like you have to pay more for continuing (and maybe even more after that) you should contrast that to the costs of starting over. It may be better to stop and try again if that's cheaper. It feels terrible, but it can be the best choice.
rsync... it will basically do everything you just listed for you, while making sure everything gets over from server to server OK with multiple checks. If your transfer fails halfway through, you can just pick up where you left off.

I would not recommend gzipping 11GB of files into one archive... it will take hours to compress/unzip.

Good luck!
Blender isn't actually very complicated to use once you get used to the way it was designed.

It's menu's might be a bit confusing to begin with, but I had the same sort of experience when switching from office 2003 to 2007, until I got used to it that is.
Experiences how Scrum works in multi-site situation
First question: Has he released any source code to you yet? You mentioned in one of your replies that he's met (and you've paid for) two milestones. At either of those milestones, did you receive the code? I assume you don't but I figured I would ask.

Second question: You said, "I offered him 10 percent of profits" - did he accept? Was that part of the written agreement or an oral offer? My thinking is that he's probably going to ask for more and more as he gets closer to finishing and, if you do decide to totally back out and start over, this is important.

Third question: What will he do with the code he has written if you decide to end the project? Will he release it for free, market it separately, or...? Does your contract cover that?
Protocol coverage metrics
Sensationalism. If you're looking for a faster Firefox look towards the 3.1 betas. If you're willing to use unstable software (alpha Chrome), there's no reason not to check out 3.1. The new Javascript engine is just as fast as Chrome's.
Tell him to provide the source code to you. You have a 90% stake in the product, you are of course allowed to have a copy of the code. When you have a copy of the code, make your terms clear.
The undocumented life of jQuery’s .append()
I will clarify 2 for you; yes, my school has two 3d printers. one uses acrylic. both can't print more than a 15cm by 15cm by 10cm object, and both are huge.
secondly, blender was a bad chioce; but I can't think of a better one off the topof my head.
Because of the ignorance of the police you need to be nuts to run a Tor exit node.

I don't much see the point in Tor anyhow, you want to be anonymous for some reason just use an unsecured WIFI AP or a proxy in another country, easy enough.
> Simple...sue him.

I beg to differ. As an entrepreneur, this path would cost time and money. $2500 can't be such a big deal. Also, you'll never get support for the code by anybody else. As a programmer, I'd never work for anybody who sued a fellow programmer over disagreements (only possible case for excuse of this: trojan inside the code or backdoor.) You are part responsible because you hired the programmer,

Next time perhaps you should use a site like rentacoder, elance, or topcoder. And learn first how people use it, it is a tool to help you out, not a one-click solution.
or it could be due to a very strange windows xp bug. here's the best explanation i could find, after not much googling:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-us-co/2008-February...
I hire developers from time to time. I avoid the situation you are currently experiencing by asking for a development plan which includes milestones and a requirement for "reasonably" documented source code. After agreeing on a price, the fee is split based on the milestones, and paid as code is checked-in and the milestones are reached. If the developer doesn't meet the schedule or decides to bail on the project, then another developer can pick up where the previous "coder" left off.
How about a compromise: you submit your design to Zazzle or whatever and they 3D print it for you.

Same principle as ordering a 2D print right now. Some people print at home because it's instant and cheaper and there's no shipping cost. But there's plenty of reasons to order 2D prints online instead, including different materials, potentially higher quality, and lower up-front costs.

The 3D printing concept seems like it works even better than 2D printing as a made-to-order service; it's more dependent on materials, a fancier machine will be able to make better stuff, you probably don't need it instantly, and shipping costs will be relatively smaller.
REST simplifies web applications because it works with the behavior built into the different levels of the web infrastructure. Browsers pop up a dialog box if you try to go back to a page requested with a non-idempotent method (anything but GET or HEAD). Caching servers treat non-idempotent requests differently from idempotent requests, etc.

Understanding what REST actually means and whether something is RESTful isn't always obvious. To me it means use the appropriate HTTP method as defined in the RFCs; use the URL, including query string, as the sole resource descriptor; use the request body only to contain new information. I get a bit tripped up over what I understand to be Roy Fielding's objections to maintaining state through cookies - I continue to do that, but with a vague feeling of unease that I'm missing something.
But what is a Talented employee if he is close minded, dissects ever little decision, and only implements what he thinks is right according to his experience?

And frankly I do not see the case where one person is worth 100 randomly picked persons in his field.
You make good points that I partially agree with, however I still don't believe this is optimal for a few reasons.

End-user design is about creating a usable experience and often deriving an emotion to make them want to do it again, a process that relies on color combinations, layout, typography, etc. -- the complete package. I'm less attached to GOOG webapps because they lack subtle things such as sound feedback. I've found sound to be critical in software usability, far more important than very minor color discrepancies. That is, when software goes outside of very basic operations, and requires more attention from the end-user.

(Fighting about the shade of blue makes me puke in my mouth at the thought of such a corporate cliche).

Furthermore, this type of color testing would need to be extended to cover cultural differences to be truly effective. Colors will trigger completely different responses in China, Japan, France, etc, often the exact opposite of American counterparts.

Honestly, I think the engineers have a place AFTER a design has been released and there is data to mine and analyze that takes into account the entire product presentation as a whole. Interjecting them in the design process too soon and giving their opinion overriding power is a mistake. It's akin to slapping memcache on your back-end before you've done an ounce of optimization on your queries.
Exactly.

Does your contract with engineer cover the very likely case of the project being delayed? I mean, most projects out there are subject to delays or budget overruns. Writing software is unpredictable business. If your contract does not make any provisions about this, that's very unfortunate but I'm sure you won't make the same mistake next time.

If your contract does cover it, then what you're entitled to is specified therein. Trying to reverse engineer the software so you can sidestep these provisions is very questionable, and would also expose you to litigation.
Use the indentation script pointed to and explained by this article:
http://henry.precheur.org/2008/4/18/Indenting_Python_with_VI...

It is better than the default vim python autoindentation behavior.
Read Founders at Work.
I'm afraid I have to disagree with you, how is blender a bad choice? Have you actually sat down and tried to use it for an extended period of time?

I learnt modelling under 3DS max, purchased and worked on a copy of Maya 2008 and only recently have switched to Blender to work on a different project (mostly to try and prove a concept)

While Blender does have it's own nuances (eg, the menu's change based on context) it isn't any worse than the other tools in the case of workflow for model creation. Nothing overly noticeable anyway. In fact, they advocate learning and using mostly keyboard shortcuts which is handy.

However on the animation side (different kettle of fish understandably) it has a vastly superior workflow and I can produce content at a faster rate, which I would estimate to be 2x faster?

But really, the difference in price between Blender (free) and Maya (starts at $2k per license) and many of the other Autodesk (Autocad starts at $4k, 3DSmax at about $3k) the difference in price is astounding. Even Zbrush which is a fairly artist friendly tool starts at $600

Besides, Blender is open source. If you don't like something in it, change it...
If I hire someone to build a house they don't get insulted when I offer them 10% of future rental yields. How can it be insulting to offer a percentage which wasn't even in the initial agreement?

Maybe you're thinking about it in the wrong way. If you were to commission somebody to create a painting, you wouldn't paint over his or her name, scribble your own over it, and try to take credit for the work, would you? Even if you bought an unsigned piece of artwork for investment, you wouldn't go around telling people you created it, would you?

Sometimes it all boils down to something as simple as respect or attribution. If this desktop app is the next big thing, the coder probably just wants to at the very least make sure that he gets some kind of acknowledgment for his work. For some, acknowledgment can be as simple as ensuring nobody rips off their code and reverse-engineers it, and stamps a different name on it. For others, it is about monetary compensation.

I don't know what this dude's deal is, but of all the factors in your little moneymaking scheme, having the ability to write working code is probably the most valuable. 10 percent doesn't seem like a very equitable exchange.
I Can Haz Internet Millionz?
Good point about ORM for any framework. Eventually you'll have to write SQL, so why use the ORM in the first place?
Creating pseudo 3D games with HTML 5 canvas and raycasting
Part 1:
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/creating-pseudo-3d-games-with-html-5-can-1/

Part 2:
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/3d-games-with-canvas-and-raycasting-part-2/

Demo:
http://devfiles.myopera.com/articles/650/step_4_enemies.htm
I call ad hominem on the age attacks.

Comparing how emacs and vi/vim are different from other editors and like saying no one will ever use lisp because of all the parentheses.
what does the contract that i hope you got signed say?

if you didn't get a contract signed, you kind of brought this on yourself. if you did and he's violating the terms, take him to small claims court.

if there isn't a contract, consider walking away and finding someone else to do it.

i'd highly suggest avoiding rentacoder and simlar sites. they do not typically produce high quality work, and there is often a language barrier issue.
I've spent years customizing vim and most of it was long after I first started using it.
> Because of the ignorance of the police you need to be nuts to run a Tor exit node.

You'd be nuts to do that because 90% of the traffic going through your node will warrant legit police interest.
<sarcasm> Hackers were still using svn and not a dvcs? </sarcasm>
A programmer views "a year late" as, makeing him do more work than he was contacted to do. House construction doesn't work that way. You hand over a detail plan diagram and the contructor develops exactly that. One doesn't break down half the house after it's 80% done to build it a different way and check how it looks. Though that happens frequently in software development.

Most probably than not, this programmer can work a year more on this project and still not "finish" it in real sence. Specially if there was no specific finishing point mentioned in the agreement.

Software rarely gets finished. All these might be the programmer's point of view, just wanted to mention.
The problem is that REST only makes sense when your UI is all about data entry. Sure, it's great there. You update things, you create things, you delete things, you replace things. Wonderful stuff.

But as soon as your application steps beyond that, you're sunk. The user of a web application only rarely interacts directly with resources. Individual forms can be linked to multiple database objects or none.

What REST can't handle is any level abstraction between CRUD and UI.
This article explains what needs to be done and what needs to be stopped:

http://www.aspousa.org/index.php/2009/03/no-we-cant/
FTA: What is the biggest impediment in 2009 to mitigating the harmful effects of energy problems in the 21st century? The answer may surprise you—it is insolvent zombie banks and our entrenched FIRE economy (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate).

Or if you want a quick 10-minute explanation of what should be done watch this interview with Michael Hudson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pwAFohWBL4

My favorite source for economic news is entrepreneur Eric Janszen's articles at http://itulip.com . HTH.