skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"but his views on SICP are a bit idiosyncratic, don't you think?"

I'll say!

I can't believe he wrote this.

"SICP (as it is often referred to) has its own agenda: convincing the reader that the most important thing computers can do is interpreting computer programs. This agenda has arguably caused the proliferation of Scheme implementations and indoctrinated many young minds with certain ideas about how to design and implement programming languages."

"indoctrinate" and "agenda" sound very harsh to me. I've read and worked through SICP and never felt it was an "indoctrination" attempt. Imagine this were a comment on HN - such a pathetic claim would be downvoted to oblivion. Just shows you can be very bright and still have blind spots.

"But personally, I recommend you go straight to the source. After all these years, there is still no substitute for Knuth"

I see TAOCP and SICP as complementary books not substitutes.
I fail to see how one can be substituted for the other as a "learn to program" choice.
It's insane when you consider what AIR applications actually do. The Facebook AIR client polls your newsfeed for updates and displays them in a rich text widget - 150M resident on this Windows PC after a few hours use. To put that into perspective I have a Tcl/Tk app that does more things (not FB, internal data feeds) running in 7M resident, no leaks.

I don't see AIR as being usable for any "real" applications which are often left running for days at a time, and are far more complex. Still, hats off to Adobe for inventing something more ridiculously overblown than Java desktop apps.
The Next Layer Of The Social Media Stack
> I take it you also object to laws that prevent you using the gun you've purchased to shoot someone

Well it depends on the context but your example is wrong in any context. I would object to a law prohibiting me to use a gun I bought (as if I could, seeing how I live in Spain) as a hammer for example. Or to paint it pink (as if I would). All stretched counterexamples, I agree, but there is an underlying trend.

> using the lighter you've bought to start a fire

Wrong kind of analogy again. I object to being forbidden from engraving my zippo. Or braking it to pieces.

> driving the car you've bought over a pet dog

Wrong kind of analogy again. I (would) object to being forbidden from repainting the car. Or cutting it in half. Or reselling it to someone else.

I could go on with the reactor (oh please), the printing press (you're trying to hard), the stereo and so on but it's useless because they are all dishonest analogies. They put the focus on forbidden actions for witch the owned items are mere tools. Objections to DRM are generally focused on forbidden actions to witch the owned items are subjects. Like transposing a DVD to watch it on my PMP. Huge difference. And I think you knew that difference already.
Challenging convention
Original blub code should look like that:
frame.addKeyListener(new KeyListener() {
public void keyTyped(KeyEvent event) {
switch (event.getKeyChar()) {
case 'j': drop(); break;
case 'h': move(-1); break;
case 'k': move(1); break;
case 'u': rotate(); break;
}
}

public void keyPressed(KeyEvent event) {
}

public void keyReleased(KeyEvent event) {
}
});

About Arc code:

(on-key-press frame
'u (rotate-shape)
'j (drop-shape)
'h (move-shape -1)
'k (move-shape 1))

Is this code ADDS NEW key event handler OR OVERRIDES old one? When it is invoked - when key is PRESSED or when key is TYPED?
"'This stuff is huge in Japan, in all of Asia,' Lunning says"

Does this mean that anyone from Japan or "all of Asia" who reads these comics is subject to arrest when they visit the United States with one of these comics in their backpack?
I like this PG quote from slide 24 a lot:

"One way to design a language is to just write down the program you'd
like to be able to write, regardless of whether there is a compiler that
can translate it or hardware that can run it."

Test driven really works, even for language development.
I sure hope this is overturned. It's a ridiculous law - as per the "anyone with sense can see that this is wrong" definition of ridiculous.
I live in Baltimore. Hopefully the next meetup is in Maryland.
There's an interesting discussion in there somewhere about pornography -- as I understand it even drawing stick figures on a napkin can break the law -- but with rhetorical hand-grenades like that it's impossible to have it.

I'm usually good at thinking that all sorts of things can be HN, but heck if I can justify this one. There's no technology angle, there's no hacker angle. I can't even extrapolate the general principles into something resembling a startup angle. It seems designed just to incite pointless argument.

Was this just copied from one of the more free-for-all boards like Reddit?
I am not sure if I understood you correctly, so let me check: Did you mean that stupidlyExpensiveCalculation() will be always executed, regardless if debugging is enabled?

Seems to me you say this like it's a good thing. Or I am misunderstanding...
Every AIX admin has used SMIT in a similar way (tho' it is curses rather than a full GUI).
> “He was a prolific collector,” says the lawyer. “He did not focus on this type of manga. He collected everything that was out there that he could get his hands on. I think this makes a huge difference.”

This is probably worse. This means the next guy without the same collection will be sentenced based on what he is, not on what he does.
I check the new page. But I only upvote a link if I think I will need to refer to it again. There are lots of links that were interesting to read but I don't upvote, because they are more disposable.
LateRooms.com founder offers start-up tips
Using iSCSI On Fedora 10 (Initiator And Target)
Have to agree with the latter two points - stick with it and look out for the business lessons to be learned.
Beware Using Internal Encryption as an IT Security Blanket
Killer Landing Pages - Real World Lessons
MS Project 2007, Project Management Scheduling Software
MS Project 2007: It provides you with a wealth of information on project management methodologies, tools like Microsoft Project 2007 as well as tips
and tricks, through a variety of rich content designed to help you enhance your knowledge of the project management domain.
Couldn't disagree more. The world already has enough von-Neumann-style languages and people working on them; we need to explore different ways.
Does it matter if immutable data is slow?
You're subject to arrest if you bring one of them into Japan. Importing pornography/obscenity is illegal.

They have signs at the airports mentioning so. Your chance of getting caught is probably pretty low and most of the time when they catch someone with a Playboy they just confiscate it and destroy it, but the Ministry of Justice does not consider evenhanded ignoring of the law to be a priority.
code reviews welcome :)
eyeabetes?

Or as Wilford Brimley might say, "eyeabeetus."
When you write down your thoughts you try to make them digestible. Sometimes, I find that my ideas weren't that good or the point is not powerful enough. Then I refrain from posting the comment.
"The world already has enough von-Neumann-style languages and people working on them"

I believe mahmud was being ironic.
Ask HN: Help me to chose a mobile plattform for development
Hi,

I am looking for more information, opinions, strategic analysis on which mobile plattform one should focus his attention and efforts.

While all the hype is around the iPhone and Android, Nokia, BlackBerry and Palm seem viable options as well. Of course it depends what you are planning to do, but let's assume that you want to start a company (a small Italian restaurant to use the words of DHH) working solely on mobile applications, what aspects should one keep in mind when deciding which plattform to develop for?

I am not looking for a definite answer but rather pointers to other sources and your opinions to better understand the current situation.

On which platform are you betting?
Ask HN: Do you use PHPMyAdmin as an alternative to your app admin?
Just curious if any of you substitute PHPMyAdmin for constructing an admin interface for your MySQL based application. Is it a recommended practice NOT to use PHPMyAdmin or other database scaffolds for administrating the application?
fail to reject h0.
'Chrome' is the Google branded officially released version of 'Chromium' - which, as you pointed out, is the open source base on which 'Chrome' built. There is currently no 'Chrome' release for Linux, only nightly builds of 'Chromium' - which can be had here, if you're using Ubuntu:

http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu
Shapeways: Printing Goes 3-D
Yes. Sometimes I don't want my ramblings on public record, or I may think it's way off topic.
I agree with this but also think the OPs sample size may be a bit small :) , look at the timeline for an example.
"that one could create a new site leveraging these features and ignore the IE users"

good luck.
Talent increases. Resourcefulness decreases. Are you sustainable?
Quality Control - Website Monitoring Support
Website monitoring can monitor for us the performance of a website and remotely check at defined times on the up time of our website. It also report any downtime to us immediately and run protocol tests that will ensure that customers are able to reach our site.
Marc Liyanage - Links
What's the famous Mark Twain quote? "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

Unfortunately, at only 20%, I'm really good at removing doubt. : )
Microsoft's Magic Wand patent application
Also, to generalize the point, All the actions that you cited are actions that are generally forbidden regardless of the means used. That's fine. The problem is that they were cited as counter examples to actions generally permitted but forbidden if done a certain way. Or more precisely only permitted in certain ways. That's not fine. I'm expected to shell the money but only enjoy a movie DVD at home (no transposing please, or else), in the "right" part of the world (no region free players please, or else), with the "right" kind of equipment.
Do the dead celebrities follow you back? I have a sudden urge to recruit an undead Twitter army.
No. I resist the temptation to not submit them. Even on this one.
I believe this is correct. I worked at T J Watson during this famous match and if I recall the consensus in the halls was that these CMU grads had some interesting hardware hacks but the program was essentially the classic heuristic search with evaluation function. I think computers also have been used to work out some end game solutions
This post, and the comments on it, are a good reason _not_ to ban TechCrunch, as I've seen a few calls to do.
Portuguese saddle
Probably the most interesting Portuguese horse tack is the Portuguese saddle. This saddle is handmade in Portugal following the Portuguese tradition on saddle making. You will be able to ask for a customized size so the Portuguese saddle will fit well the horse and the rider.
It would seem that is the case. The factor image is within a few percent of the sbcl lisp image. Nonetheless, the energy is contagious.
My Free Email Course about Advertising with AdWord Ads.
His key point:

After that discussion, a more realistic mapping would seem to be:

* Create = PUT iff you are sending the full content of the specified resource (URL).

* Create = POST if you are sending a command to the server to create a subordinate of the specified resource, using some server-side algorithm.

* Retrieve = GET.

* Update = PUT iff you are updating the full content of the specified resource.

* Update = POST if you are requesting the server to update one or more subordinates of the specified resource.

* Delete = DELETE.

I am not sure about "Update = POST if you are requesting the server to update one or more subordinates of the specified resource" - seems to me that if the subordinate updates are idempotent - then this can be PUT, why not. But going a bit further - of all the server side algorithms used for Create calls the most used one is computing the primary keys for auto increment columns. So if you are not using some special database functions - a Create needs to be POST if the primary key is auto-increment and can be PUT otherwise.
Can You Copyright a Tweet?
It really depends. There are some scenarios where it's impossible to administrate an application by fiddling with the database - for instance in cases where the application uses caching of any kind.

My revelation regarding administration interfaces came when I realized that my admin interfaces do not have to be polished, AJAX gems of perfection because they are not meant to be used by the clients. They just have to expose some amount of the application's innards to the tech staff.
I don't think you're correct, although I upvoted you before I thought that because you seemed to be explaining the problem I had with the article. However, reading the article's comments it becomes clear that there's 81 locked boxes, one for every cell in the Sudoku grid. The key Victor chooses from the 28 Paula proffers will open nine of the 81 boxes. Those nine have to be consistent amongst themselves, i.e. a permutation of 1-9, despite Paula not know which of the 28 keys would be chosen.

Charlie doesn't exist, nor does he need to.
If by Windows you mean the platform that is still so dominant that many regard it as a monopoly then you just could be right. I'd say it could be like the 80s all over again were Android does indeed represent Microsoft / IBM compats and the iPhone is the Mac.
Scala in One Day
The Jython/Scala stack revisited
I feel devastated. Everyone keeps writing articles about how now is the best time to start a business (this must be the third of fourth I've read in the last month).

But I've already started my business a couple of years ago! If now is the time to start a business, as everyone keeps repeating over and over again, should I kill my current business and start a new one?

After all, if my current business succeeds, I will not be able to get the accolade that it was started in a recession. Does that impact my business's chances of becoming a GE or Coca-Cola? After all, my current business was started just before a recession, so it probably doesn't count.

All in all, I'm extremely confused by all this advice about it being the best time to start a business now. Were any successful businesses started outside of recessions? Did anyone do some statistical analysis to figure out whether they'd have had a better chance if they had waited for a recession to start?

Perhaps everyone should optimise their business starting time to find the best time to start a business.

Or maybe the question of whether there is a recession when you start your business has very little correlation with whether or not your business will be successful. Just maybe. In which case, what are all these "best time to start a business" people trying to sell us?
The Point of Pattern Matching in Scala
I wonder. If it were only limited to the ratio of time required to type it, maybe.

But I think during the writing of the program, you type the code, review the code, look at some other code, come back to that code, so you are writing/editing/modifying a particular piece of code multiple times.

I have a superstition that there is an element of polynomial effect on the size of the resulting program on the time to get it working or to parse code written by another person.
Slava's very smart, but I think that the basic idea of a 'stack based language' is simply not a great one, because keeping track of the stack in your head is a pain in the ass. So I'd say that mahmud is right on. Worth learning for fun, but it just doesn't strike me as practical.
Nursery Admissions
Information about Nursery Admissions in New Delhi, India.Nursery Admissions List,Nursery Admissions criteria, Nursery Admission Policy, Nursery Admission Dates, Nursery Admission Forms, and? All Information of? Schools in Delhi and Ncr in India
If you use aptitude/APT (I haven't looked at the deb in dpkg), the chromium-browser package doesn't install msttcorefonts/ttf-mscorefonts-installer. chromium-testsuite depends on them, so you might not want to install that.
How To Put Invite Codes on Business Cards
I am curious what you mean about "easily manipulate environments" for the functions to be evaluated in.
The Goals of Scala's Design
Probably, something similar to JavaScript's call() and apply() is meant here.

Though classical Lisps all have funcall and apply (not sure about Arc).
Best Buy to launch internet fund
I guess it's not clear to me how you rank popularity by number of bytes (or LOC). I really do like this information though! Thanks!
I'm using it right now. It's quite a bit faster than FF 3.5b4 on my machine. Options aren't implemented, yet it imported all of my Firefox stuff without a hitch (I've yet to see this work on Windows for me).
Cool - what sources.list are you using? Maybe that was the problem.
lol, ops.

I was thinking [kelvin = Celsius] - 273 as in they are on the same scale once you subtract 273 from kelvin, but that's not what I wrote.
Ask HN: What's up with Red Bull's pricing strategy?
Foreword: hopefully this relates to HN as it is business/price-setting related, which could be related to startups.

Well, a 4-pack of 250 ml Red Bull cans costs around five dollars (at Walmart). That is an average price of $1.25/can.

A 24-pack of 250 ml Red Bull cans costs around 42 dollars (http://www.amazon.com/Red-Bull-Energy-Drink-Sugarfree/dp/B000MTM0WK). That means 42/24 = $1.75/can.

At Walmart also, a 12 pack of 250 ml Red Bull cans costs 20 bucks. That is 20/12=1.66 per 250 ml can.

So, 1.25 (4-pack) < 1.66(12-pack) <1.75(24-pack).

The question is: WHY?

Shouldn't a properly run pricing strategy encourage customers to buy more, not discourage them? What's going on exactly?
They weren't cited as counterexamples to anything -- the original poster didn't give any examples, just said that he wouldn't hold with laws that limited him over his possessions.

I see the distinction you're now drawing in yr comment above, but I don't think it was there in the original. Even if it were, it's still not valid -- I can't paint my car to look like a police car, can't alter my gun to look like a toy (concealed weapons laws prohibit it), and the printing press analogy is closer than you admit.

But the whole "legally purchased" line is entirely the wrong way to go about this. For example, in the case of Apple, the licence specifically prohibits purchasers from installing on a non-Apple machine. Breaking that means using the software in a way that it isn't purchased for, and the whole argument collapses.

The problem with the DCMA and laws like it aren't that they "limit us doing things with stuff we've legally purchased" -- the transfer of cash does not imbue us with special protections. The problems with those laws are that they infringe upon our other rights, such as fair use.

This distinction matters a lot, because by allowing this to be set in terms of purchases and contracts, we're getting caught up in licences and property law, when the argument should be much larger. Time-shifting recording is legal for TV and Radio -- why isn't it also for Spotify or last.fm radio? There are no purchases there, so the earlier arguments are irrelevant, but the same ultimate principle is at stake.

OS X is Apple's property: there's no outcome of playing with property law that lets you install it on any machine you want, DCMA or no. But cast in other terms that aren't nearly as well explored yet, it might be possible. What does "fair use" mean in the context of software?

IP laws depend on our behaving as if these were physical properties we were talking about. They aren't, it's an analogy that only loosely fits, and by accepting their definitions and playing on their turf we are handicapping ourselves.
I generally like to use frameworks that take care of the admin interface for me so that I don't have to worry about it. Django is a good example of this.
Can't do much without batteries.
Maybe we should have an RSS feed only for the new stories for people to upvote..
If you drink a lot of that junk, you need something like this:

http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/10/17/programmer-fuel

I think I paid 2 euro for that whole bottle. Wow was I wired that day...
Perhaps Red Bull takes into account some discrete pricing jumps that people might have. For example, suppose a single can of Red Bull costs $1.50 (you haven't given that price, but I think it's important) and I go in and see that 4 cans cost $5. So I see that it's a good deal and it's just a five dollar bill.

But when I get to 24 packs I'm in a whole different league and not thinking of an individual note. Now we're talking serious money.

Or perhaps Red Bull buyers can't do arithmetic.
Less than one percent of the gold on the earth has been mined.

However:

The total amount of gold that has ever been mined has been estimated at around 142,000 tonnes.[12] Assuming a gold price of US$1,000 per ounce, or $32,500 per kilogram, the total value of all the gold ever mined would be around $4.5 trillion. This is less than the value of circulating money in the U.S. alone, where more than $8.3 trillion is in circulation or in deposit (M2).[13] Therefore, a return to the gold standard, if also combined with a mandated end to fractional reserve banking, would result in a significant increase in the current value of gold, which may limit its use in current applications.
> does it mean anyone who doesn't agree with you that Windows works well enough?

Well I think that the fact they they still are by far the dominant OS would at least mean that somebody with any sense of balance wouldn't use them as an example of failure. I think you have to be pretty closed off from the real world to think that is a reasonable argument.

If you look at the history of personal and business computing it is clear that OS's that work with multiple hardware vendors have predominated. People who see several years of success by the iPhone and assume that everything about it must be the future of computing are in my view deluded.
I'm using Ubuntu Jaunty, so I added

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

to my sources.list, then added their key using

$ sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xfbef0d696de1c72ba5a835fe5a9bf3bb4e5e17b5

'sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install chromium-browser' should do it for you.
Windows 7 will bring the 'touch' interface to the masses. Be prepared
I think it's impossible to have any kind of meaningful conversation about language design when one side is just writing off everything they don't like as "blub". It's incredibly condescending, no better than people reflexively writing off Lisp users as "lisp weenies".
I do not think this is the case. If you follow chess and the matches where a top GM plays a computer you will find most of the time it is a draw. There was an article on chessbase many years ago that showed that chess program rating had stopped growing as fast and they were leveling out just as player ratings level out.
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1292
Haystack - Search for Django
and I bet productivity plummeted :P

Top Tip - stimulants like that (and I include coffee there) dont work twell at all: try orange juice instead, it will work much better and for longer. Follow it up with plenty of water (even minor dehydration makes you tired).

One glass of OJ every half hr plus lots of water will keep you awake longer than a can of Red Bull etc. :)
Excellent! I guess I was getting it from the wrong place. That one works great on intrepid too (well, changing jaunty to intrepid).
Montessori Toys, Melissa and Doug Toys, Maxim Toys, Lead-Free Toys
Melissa & Doug Toys, Montessori toys, traditional wooden toys, floor puzzles, pretend play food, plush toys, stuffed animals, Bearington Bears Collection,
Jobs sounds 'healthy' says Apple co-founder
Really, where's it going? I read the text of the law and it seems pretty clear to me. I don't have a problem with outlawing this material at all.