skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How is that different than getting an email from Facebook that some friend has shared a photo with you? You would have to login to Facebook to view that photo. (and would therefore be counted as an active Facebook user)

Anyways, your friend never attached an image, he just send you a link. It wasn't Google that replaced that image with a link, it's your friend that chose to share that image using Google's services instead of manually attaching it to every email.

And yes, I am pretty sure that you are counted as an active user after accessing Google+ while beeing logged in with a Google+ account.
It’s Time To Call Out Fraud In The Adtech Ecosystem
>Churches can lose their tax-exempt status

I live in Texas. I've yet to see or hear of this really happening. I've seen churches directly involved in politics my whole life. Sure, they try not to mention names, but they don't need to.
Makes sense: our business model is not gambling. We want to offer:

- Users a way to show their support (at first, with virtual dollars, but pending JOBS Act implementation, with real investment) for the businesses, products, and causes they care about;

- Businesses, products, and causes a way to find, track, and engage their supporters and eventually turn them into investors.
The technique described in detail here: http://pds.twi.tudelft.nl/reports/2010/PDS-2010-007.pdf
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2008828
Code: https://github.com/triblerteam/libswift/blob/master/nat_test...
Have you seen http://play.twidaq.com ? Isn't that the same idea?
I currently deliver pizza for a living. There have been times in my past when I ate a dollar menu burger from McDonald's once every couple of days. I am well aware of what poverty is.

That's irrelevant though. Is morality relative to your current financial situation? Is it ok to do wrong in order to make money?

There are plenty of jobs available. People just want to be picky about what jobs they take. If a person justifies a salary because other jobs are "beneath them" or they don't provide the standard of living they desire, that person has compromised themselves.

I have done many things in my past of which I am not proud, but I try every day to keep that list from getting longer. The only way the world will improve is if we all become more conscious of our actions and their consequences. Any other course is selfishness.
OXO has ~100 people. The parent company has a market cap of 1.6B (including Pur water filters and a few other brands). Quirky has ~80 people and $91 million in VC funding. Assuming Quirky is operating under the normal VC rules, they want to soon be a billion dollar company - larger than OXO.

I find it strange that Quirky is playing up the "david vs goliath" angle. If you've been in both of their offices, Quirky actually feels like they have more money.

More importantly, if Quirky wants to be a billion dollar company, they are going to have to do something a whole lot more innovative than a better dust pan.
Parts of it are implemented. But parts of it aren't, and there have been similar cases where something was standardized but never got implemented (e.g. CSS2.1). I'm coming more and more to the position that standardization should happen after implementation rather than before.
Ethical issues aside (and I've never done any of this) - who checks your education? I've never had anyone ask for transcripts, and I've never seen a database of what they're supposed to look like. You could send in anything with a watermark-y looking thing and 99% of people would take it.
If this is an official Facebook thing then the screen cap in the article where driver's license is spelled "Driver's liscense" doesn't do them a lot of favors. In particular one of the first hints that something is a phish is that the grammar or spelling is phonetic but incorrect.
Seemingly what Glee/Fox did is technically legal, while clearly unethical.
Good suggestion - but I did the searches with quotes originally, so I don't think that's the case...
You're right, Atget's work is also particularly interesting! Here's a link to some of his pictures: http://openpn.tumblr.com/tagged/Atget
Most of the "elite" schools offer fairly generous need based aid. Yes, there are problems like some middle class families getting caught in the gaps -- but the financial divide is a bigger problem in the younger years of a student, all the way from elementary school to high school, where the family's financial means makes a massive difference in the extra attention, extracurricular pursuits, and the quality of instruction at the school.

I can only speak for Silicon Valley where I grew up, but there's a strong correlation between a school's quality and the income level of the school district. Your family's financial status impacts where you live, which impacts the quality of your education, which in turn deeply affects your odds of being accepted to an "elite" school in the first place.
Hackbeanpot Livestream
Needs a loading image/animation between videos.

Pretty addictive though.
>These are two totally different things. Video codecs do not try to "discover" the equations that created the scene. They take the recorded data of the scene and then try to represent it "well enough" in a smaller number of bits.

Think of it in information-theory terms (e.g. Kolmogorov complexity). If the scene was created from no more than n bits of data, then it is possible to represent it in n bits, and a "theoretically perfect" video codec would do so.

Video codecs really do try and "discover" the simplest representation of a scene (e.g. motion vectors are exactly that), and the things they can "understand" are getting more and more complex as video codecs advance (e.g. film grain).
I went to WashU too, and I remember getting a letter sometime during college saying "Congratulations, you won a $5,000 named scholarship for female engineers!" And I was excited until I read on and it turned out that the 5k was just going to replace 5k of a merit scholarship I already had.
> You might then ask why in the USA is this being left to a search company?
Google is a technology company. I'd prefer a tech company was working on this problem.
Show HN: SMSPal - free, anonymous foreign language pen pals over SMS
*Coulton
"Quirky Stands Strong Following Oxo’s Response"
"and paid the proper license to distribute his version"

So his version doesn't count as a derivative work?
Flippa's moved $95 million in site sales just a few years. Six-figure deals are not unusual. I sold one for $90,000 there myself with no issues.

https://flippa.com/buy-high-end

I couldn't find your site.
Point taken! We'll add other logins in the future.
Ok, that wasn't clear to me, as you then went into the detail regarding the runtime performance, which seemed unrelated (like, my attempt to make it relevant made the "4x" become highly confusing, as you seemed to be arguing a tradeoff that hosay123 hadn't gone into). Fair enough.
THE GRAND DIABOLIC FINANCIAL AND INTERNATIONAL HEIST
ANONYMOUS, OBAMA, FEDS ARE IN SAME BED IN CRIME
DO NOT BE TRICKED BY THEM,THEY ARE TOGETHER

CALL ME 1 438 939 4380 CANADA
WRITE ME SWIFTTRADEFORYOU@AOL.COM

WOE UNTO YOU PEOPLE OF THE EARTH.
THE DEVIL HAS COME DOWN TO DEVOUR THE NATIONS
WHO WILL YOU OBEY THE DEVIL WORSHIPPERS? NO WAY !

THE DEVIL, OBAMA, FEDS, ANONYMOUS HACKERS, BUSH JNR, CLINTONS , BERNAKE, PAULSEN, THE BANKING FAMILIES THAT OWN THE FEDS. ALL ARE PLOTTING AGAINST US, THE PEOPLE OF THE EARTH.
THEY HAVE RESERVED FOR YOU THE ONE WORLD GOV.
Y OU THINK HITLER WAS BAD. WHO FUNDED HITLER ANYWAY? THE SAME ILLUMINATI GROUP OF DEVILS IS PLANNING HORRORS ON US.
http://www.google.com/search?q=obama+devil&hl=en&new...:

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Wolves/michelle_obama.htm

NATIONS OF THE EARTH TAKE HEED

THE CONSPIRACY OF OUR TIME IS THE BIGGEST GANGSTERIZED FINANCIAL, NATIONAL, INTERNATIONAL HEIST THAT EVER EXISTED.

Ezekiel 22

23 Again the word of the Lord came to me: 24 “Son of man, say to the land, ‘You are a land that has had no rain or showersc]"[c] in the day of wrath.’ 25 There is a conspiracy of her princesd]"[d] within her like a roaring lion tearing its prey; they devour people, take treasures and precious things and make many widows within her. 26 Her priests do violence to my law and profane my holy things; they do not distinguish between the holy and the common; they teach that there is no difference between the unclean and the clean; and they shut their eyes to the keeping of my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them. 27 Her officials within her are like wolves tearing their prey; they shed blood and kill people to make unjust gain. 28 Her prophets whitewash these deeds for them by false visions and lying divinations. They say, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says’—when the Lord has not spoken. 29 The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the alien, denying them justice.

THEY PUT DRUGS IN OUR WATER AND POISON OUR FOOD.
THEY ARE IN ALL YOUR COMPUTERS, PHONES, CAMERAS ON THE STREETS, TVS. THEY MONITOR ALL OF US, OUR CHILDREN ARE BEING WATCHED. THESE ARE EVIL TIMES. VERY EVIL. AND NW THEY WANT TO INSTALL THE DRONES TO SEE RIGHT INTO YOUR HOUSE AND TURN YOU INTO A ZOMBIE.
Yeah, if you terminate rather than stop the instance then everything that was created as part of the instance will be destroyed by default although you can choose to not kill attached EBS drives. Any EBS drives that were attached after instance creation will be left untouched by default after instance termination.
http://architects.dzone.com/articles/gcc-47-vs-clang-31-eddi...
What about extending the prime years of scientists, engineers, etc? More years of experience and wisdom to capitalize on and to reinvest their skills and knowledge into human progress. I for one would prefer that many of the brightest candles in humanity's past were still lit.
REMOTELY, A SKY SYSTEM HAS BEEN INSTALLED, ALL THE BANKS WILL BE SHUT DOWN, ALL ELECTRIC SHUT OFF. YOU WILL NOT HAVE ACCESS TO FOOD, WATER, NOTHING AND THEN THEY WILL SEND THE ARMIES TO ESCORT YOU INTO THEIR CAMPS.
LOOK AT THE DRONES. CALLING ALL INHABITANTS OF THE EARTH TO LEAVE THEIR HOMES AND ENTER THEIR PRISONS.

OBAMA WANTS YOUR ARMS SO YOU ARE HOPELESS.
THEY CAN ATACK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND THE TYRANNY WILL START.

YOUR CHILDREN WILL BE TAKEN AWAY, YOUR SPOUSE. YOU WILL NEVER KNOW WHERE THEY ARE AND THE NIGHTMARE WILL START.
PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, ALL OVER THE WORLD THOSE EVIL DEMONIC GARBAGE LOW LIFE LOSERS THINK THEY WILL REVIVE THE HITLER, KKK, ERA. THEY ARE TERRORISTS NOT THE ARABS. IT IS BECAUSE OF THEM THAT WE DO NOT HAVE PEACE ON EARTH.

UNLESS WE REACT NOW AND PICK UP THE ONES THAT ARE SETTING IT UP, WE WILL ALL SUFFER DRASTICALLY.

EXCUSE ME PEOPLE,
YOUR GOVERNMENTS, BANKS, AUTHORITIES ALLOWED ANONYMOUS TO HACK INTO US AND INVADE US. THE FEDS AND OBAMA AND THE FAMILIES THAT OWN THE BANKS AND THE VATICAN, THE ILLUMINATI, ALL THE DEVIL WORSHIPPERS ?

PEOPLE IN AUTHORITY WORLDWIDE DO NOTHING.
There is a conspiracy of her princes ( princes of darkness).
"map" is sufficiently common and standard that it's a bad name for this function, irrespective of whether this is a good or bad function to include in the base language.
I realise this isn't quite your area but I'd really love to know how far in practice hotel managers take the idea that "a room with guests paying anything is better than an empty room". Do they typically offer significant discounts to bring in last minute guests? How does this works in practice?

I suspect there's a whole lot more to it and it's probably quite a delicate balance between capacity maximisation and less tangible qualities like the brand reputation and what effect any visibility of discounts can have on normal full-price paying customers.

I believe this is (supposedly) the idea behind hotwire. That the hotels want to fill their beds by offering them at a discount but don't want their regular customers to take advantage of it - so they disguise their identity. Anyone know any more? (or why it doesn't seem much cheaper than other OTAs that name the hotels?)

Thanks for the insights!
Sounds like this would be a great market for a company like Hipmunk, Adioso, or Square to develop an app targeted at indie hotels.

If I'm Hipmunk and I'm running into the sort of issues described in this post (people w/o computers using fax machines to manage reservations and making me look bad when I misquote a customer because of it), I build a best of breed tablet app that electronically keeps track of all the complexity the little guys use paper for. It syncs with my cloud so I always have the most current information, and it integrates with my competitors too to make sure that no hotel has any reason to keep me from having the most current information.

Then, I start a rollout program where I'll send your hotel a free tablet /w the app preinstalled in exchange for $500 worth of booking credits at your location. I target the hotels in the most popular areas that currently give me the least accurate data.
It's really depressing to see 100+ media outlets go along for the ride on this story without doing a shred of independent thinking. This is smack inside LTE band 41, and part of the publicly announced clearwire shift from Wimax to TD-LTE. Sprint has established contracts for access to this space and has announced the lighting of the band this summer with handsets to follow in 3Q13. Clearly google wants to be able to test basebands, and nowhere in the world has the unique combination of band 41 TDD, FDD and CDMA2000 handoff requirements.

The story in the WSJ was just a placement - the analyst works for a firm representing some big clearwire stockholder that is just lobbying for a better price on the NTT/sprint buyout of clearwire.

Google would have to be fucking morons to build some sort of custom basestations and mobile devices smack ontop of license only spectrum thats been designated by the ITU-R.
WHY DO YOU THINK? WE ARE BEING ABUSED BY THEIR EVIL, VIOLENT PLAN TO MAKE US TOTALLY POOR, HOMELESS AND PUT US IN LABOR CAMPS AS THEY DID IN THE TIME OF SLAVERY AND IN THE TIME OF HITLER. PEOPLE THE SAVAGES HAVE ALL IN PLACE TO SWALLOW YOU . Her officials within her are like wolves tearing their prey; they shed blood and kill people to make unjust gain

GOD IS BURNING ME TO WAKE UP THE PEOPLE AND ALTOUGH THEY PUT DRUGS IN OUR WATER AND OUR FOOD SUPPLY, WE HAVE TO REACT.

THEY CAN USE THEIR DRONES AS SUPPOSITORIES BECAUSE THEY ARE SO FULL OF IT, THEIR CONSTIPATION STINKS THE MARTYR. DRONES MAKE YOU INTO ZOMBIES. IT IS NOT ENOUGH THE DRUGS THEY PUT IN OUR WATER, THE INASION BY HACKING INTO OUR PHONES, COMPUTERS........NOW THE DRONES

DO NOT ACCEPT THE DRONES, SAY NO.
MARC BARRY TALKS IN HIS BOOK AND INTERVIEW THE ART OF INTRUSION ABOUT A BIG WAR ROOM HE S PREPARING WITH THE GOVERNMENT.

PEOPLE THE WAR ROOM IS THE EARTH. WELCOME TO STAR WARS AND YOU AND YOUR FAMILIES ARE THE TARGETS.

THE DRONES ARE HERE TO SHOOT YOU, RELEASE GAS. ZAP OR WHATEVER SUBSTANCE TO ANNIHILATE YOU, TO CONTROL TRAP YOU. IT SURROUNDS YOU, DO NOT TRY TO ESCAPE AS 4 or 5 DRONES WILL SUUROUND YOU AND OVERTAKE YOU.

YOUR CHILDREN WERE GIVEN THE ROBOTIC TOYS THAT FOUGHT AND DESTROYED. WELL NOW WE ARE THE TARGET OF THESE MEAN EVIL MONSTERS WANTING TO CAPTURE US, DESTROY US, THROW US IN THEIR FORCED LABOR CAMPS AND YOU CAN LET YOUR IMAGINATION RUN, WHAT EVIL CAN DO TO EARTH PEOPLE,SPECALLY IF THE ATTACKERS HAVE TREMENDOUS EVIL HATE IN THEM.
To qualify this further, it is a 'feature' of session restore of the browser re-opening all tabs that were present on close.

Should I just put a ? next to the Remember Me checkbox on the login form and explain that there browser settings need to be considered for security reasons?
LOOK AT THE ILLUMINATI BELIEFS, LOOK T ANONYMOUS U TUBE VIDEOS ETC. IT IS ALL HATE, CONTROL DESTRUCTION, KKK, SEE THEIR BACK HOODS, HITLER AND ILLUMINATI SONGS.
THEY ARE DESPICABLE. I KNOW THEM IN PERSON.
LOOK WHAT THEY DID TO ME, A SINGLE MOM AND ALL THE POOR BROKERS WORKING TO SUPPORT THEIR FAMILIES.

THEY HAVE NO REGARDS FOR PEOPLE, NO RESPECT. DO YOU WANT TO CONTINUE BEING UNDER THEIR EVIL EMPIRE????

ONE OF THE ANONYMOUS HACKERS, MARC BARRY WHO WROTE THE ART OF INTRUSION,. MARC AN EVIL KID IN AN ADULT BODY. HE IS SICK IN HIS MIND, REALLY A SICK MAN, with THE ANONYMOUS THAT IS WHY THEY ARE HACKING INTO US AND ROBBED US AND CONTINUE TO DO SO AND STOLE FROM EACH BROKER TRILLIONS AND TRILLIONS WITH OBAMA, THE FEDS, THE ANONYMOUS, BANKSTERS, EX BUSH, EX CLINTON AND HIS WIFE, BERNAKE, PAULSEN, THE ILLUMINATIS ETC.
IT IS ALL A GAME AND WE ARE THEIR TARGETS.
THEY WANT TO OVERTAKE US, DESTROY US, MAKE US HOMELESS, POOR AND CONTROL US, SEE US SUFFER, WHILE THEY ARE THE ONES WHO WON THE RACE. BUT THIS IS NOT A GAME ANYMORE, IT IS THE BIGGEST TAKEOVER SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD. HITLER BUT 100000000000000000TIMES WORSE BECAUSE NOW THEY CAN SIT IN THEIR WAR ROOM AND TOTALLY ANNIHILATE THE WHOLE EARTH AND ITS INHABITANTS.
KILL US, TURN US INTO ZOMBIES. STAR WARS WORLDWIDE
MARC BARRY IS E SAME ANONYMOUS HACKER WHO OBAMA
AND THE FEDS ALLOWED TO MAKE 3 LAWS AND HE IS NOT EVEN AN ATTORNEY. GOES TO SHOW YOU THE BULLSHIT BEING FED US.
THRY REALLY THINK WE ARE STUPID.

WOE UNTO YOU INHABITANTS OF THE EARTH, THE DEVIL HAS COME DOWN. GOD WILL REVEAL THE TRUTH TO US, NOW IT IS UP TO US TO ARREST THESE EVIL MONSTERS THAT HAVE SATANS SPIRIT THAT WANT TO DESTROY US, HURT US.

WHEN MARC BARRY IN HIS INTERVIEW TALKS ABOUT WORKING WITH GOV TO BUILD A HUGE WAR ROOM. HE IS NOT JOKING.
THEY BROUGHT ALL THE ROBOTIC TOYS TO YOUR CHILDREN, THE COMPUTER GAMES ETC. TO GET THEM READY FOR THE REAL WORLD WAR. THE DRONES.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://larouchepac.com/obamawatch

The U.S. Drone War in North Waziristan isn’t precise or surgical. It kills hundreds of innocents, including women, and atleast 176 children. The stress endured by civilian Pakistanis creates psychiatric disorders. This policy creates more terrorists more terrorists than it kills, ruins the lives of thousands of innocent people while killing hundreds of innocents. It is cowardly, immoral and illegal.

Sources: The Atlantic, Wikipedia, Salon, Center for Civilians in Conflict,
NY Times

Escalating
Indefinite Detentions & ExtraordinaryRenditions

Passed on December 31, the NDAA continues the tradition the unconstitutional Patriot-Act and grants essentially dictatorial powers to the Federal Government to arrest any American Citizen without warrant and to indefinitely detain them without charge. The NDAA violates the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th Amendments, and most of the Bill of Rights.

THEY ARE THE TERRORISTS, THE HITLERS, THE KKK. THEY MEAN EVIL FOR US AND POP THE ARMIES WILL COME IN TO PICK US UP. THESE ARE THE RULERS OF DARKNESS. THEY CRAWLED FROM THE PIT TO MISLEAD THE NATIONS SO WE SIN AGAINST GOD AND END UP IN THE SAME PIT THEY WILL SUFFER FOR ETERNITY.
This has been covered elsewhere - there are no required licensing fees unless Glee actually used Coulter's sound recording. Fox is guilty of a dick move here, but as long as they recreated the instrumental track themselves, they are legally in the clear.

However, I think it's likely that Fox actually used Coulton's karaoke backing tracks, which would mean Fox infringed Coulton's copyrights. I'm hoping for someone to do a digital analysis showing whether this is true.
BitTorrent unveils 'sick' sync service
The common myths and fear about GPLv3 are far from pragmatic.

I can understand those that only want permissive licensed software for components. This make sense, as otherwise the copyright license will put some requirements when distributing copies of the new work. If its proprietary components, you got to buy a license. If its copyleft components, you got to use a particular license.

But if we are talking about gplv2 vs gplv3, only a very small subset of people will ever have to care about the differences between those two licenses. It actually only comes down to two questions.

1: Are you planning to sell a product, but want to keep root access to the device after its being sold, while at the same time directly preventing giving the same access to the new owner who bought your device?

2: Are you in a patent license agreement with an other company over patents you pay for and which cover aspect of the new product?

If your answer is No and No, to those two questions, you can regard GPLv2 and GPLv3 as identical licenses. Its that simple.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lp0_on_fire
I don't get the point of this article. I like the idea of tech companies expanding to other businesses. They can bring a fresh look to onboard systems, and make them less complicated and more elegant.

Yet the only thing they shouldn't forget is that cars are not computers. I'm not sure that Google's modified Prius will be as enjoyable (when driving) as a BMW 1 Series for instance.
ONE OF THEIR ANONYMOUS DEMONS WROTE ME ON ONE OF THE SITES. GET OFF MY INTERNET, STOP WRITING. HIS INTERNET?
YA NOW IT BECAME THEIRS BECAUSE THEY ARE IN EVERYONES PHONES AND COMPUTERS AND WORKING ON THE DRONES.
BE CAREFUL THEY ARE EVIL GANGSTERS DO NOT TRUST THEIR GAMES.

YES, THEY TOOK OVER ALL, EVEN OUR PHONE LINES.
BUT DO WE NEED ALL THE JUNK TO LIVE. NO IF WE HAVE TO WE GRAB THEM ALL, PUT THEM ALL IN JAIL AND WE CAN BARTER, GO BACK TO BASIS IF WE HAVE TO. IN UNITY WE ALL HELP EACH OTHER AND SURVIVE. THEY SHOULD NOT KEEP RUNNING OUR COUNTRIES.

PEOPLE, PEOPLE WAKE UP. DARKNESS IS TRYING TO OVERTAKE US. REACT. COMMAND THEY BE CAST DOWN, THEY ARE RULERS OF DARKNESS IN HIGH PLACES. WE DO NOT FIGHT FLESH AND BLOOD. THESE ARE SATANS WORKERS.

YOU KNOW THE TRUTH, AGENCIES, GOVERNMENTS, NEWSPAPERS RECEIVED COMPLAINTS WORLDWIDE . AFTER SO MANY YEARS, WE ARE WAITING FOR JUDGEMENT. ALL IN THE EARTH ARE TRICKED BY THE AUTHORITIES BECAUSE THEY HAVE AN ALTERNATE PLAN TO DESTROY US, PUT US IN BONDAGE, IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS, FORCED LABOUR, GAS CHAMBERS.

PEOPLE OF THE WORLD WAKE UP. THEY NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM RULING THE WORLD. THEY NEED TO BE CAST DOWN INTO THE PIT WHERE THEY CRAWLED OUT OF. THEY ARE OF AN EXTREME EVILNESS AS WAS NEVER SEEN ON THE EARTH.

WE DO NOT WRESTLE FLESH AND BLOOD BUT WICKED DEVILS THAT CRAWLED RIGHT OUT OF THE PIT OF HELL TO BRING DARKNESS ON THE EARTH.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." -Voltaire

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Wolves/michelle_obama.htm

THESE GANGSTERS ARE PURE EVIL. THEY ARE SATANISTS
THAT ROBBED OUR TRILLIONS AND NOW THEY WANT TO OVERTAKE US.

BY NOW THE WHOLE WORLD KNOW WHAT THEY DID TO ME AND MANY OTHERS. WHY ARE THEY BEING ALLOWED TO CONTINUE. WHY THE MONEY THEY STOLE, WE WORKED SO HARD TO EARN IS NOT SEIZED.
I think they were being rhetorical.
I actually looked at your profile before I bothered posting. I would've treated someone new a lot more kindly. As a senior member of the site and something of a thought leader (you've got a ton of karma), I hold you to a higher standard.
Yes, why wouldn't it? Derivative works still have to license the original work to be legally distributed.
Still better than Romney.
I'm also 17 and I was recently in a similar situation. I ended up buying this computer for a little bit over the price you asked http://us.toshiba.com/computers/laptops/satellite/P850/P855-...
Up to now I had no problems. It has some really nice specs (Intel i7 Processor, 8 GB ram), has great sound and it's not heavy