skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I joined MENSA for the card. When I went to Kinko's to laminate it, I didn't read the instructions on the wall, and the laminate melted to the machine. I had to get the Kinko's guy to open the machine for me, but by then the card was bubbling. When he scraped it out and saw what it was, he laughed. He laughed so hard.

Is it worth joining MENSA? If you want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.
Well, he said it would be "regional", so I guess it could just as easily be in New Jersey.
Is this a true story? Either way, it's one of the biggest laughs I have in a while.
Please identify whether a "sweetheart municipal franchise agreement" is a "natural monopoly" or a "coercive monopoly."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coercive_monopoly

[Edited]
Nasty, nasty pun.
There is nothing natural about a monopoly (or in this case, oligopoly) ordained by government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

And that is the problem that should be addressed directly. Current government policies create an absurd amount of artificial spectrum scarcity.

Liberalizing spectrum allocation policy -- or opening the airwaves to anarchy -- wouldn't solve the problem that wireless telecoms is a very strong natural monopoly.
The idea that there's some monolithic "government" is juvenile at best.

Thank you. It should, however, be noted that as Goldman Sachs rehires, the government will get bigger. Oh wait, I forgot that I'm not Matt Taibbi, so scratch that last sentence.
Yes. It's so in character that I'm not even able to be ashamed of it anymore.
Pwnie Award Winners
Both. The first market entrant has "... an overwhelming cost advantage over other actual or potential competitors".

Municipalities also have natural incentives to provide sweet-heart franchise agreements -- it's generally too expensive to do otherwise once the infrastructure is in place, often partially subsidized.
Sir -

I have considered nominating your post above for 'flag' status, insofar as it fails to fulfil the stated criteria of constituting news by virtue of its publication over 44 years ago.

Upon reflection, however, it is plain to me that your actions are motivated by a childish enjoyment of witty and amusing remarks, and to nominate it as flagworthy would grant unworthy importance to what may be justifiably labeled a mere bagatelle.

I adjure you, however, not to mistake my forbearance in this matter for some kind of implicit approval, and request that you henceforth adopt a more sober and rigorous attitude, and set aside your pursuit of so-called 'fun'.

Yours,

Brigadier E. J. Thribb (retired)
Traditionally (and even now in most unices) hard links to directories were not allowed, in order to prevent endless recursive cases. Apple added the feature to HFS+ in 10.5 so that Time Machine could make use of the optimization you describe. There are rules about directory hard links so that pathological recursion still cannot happen: http://lists.apple.com/archives/darwin-dev/2007/Dec/msg00029...
On the other hand, the average person tends to enjoy watching something bad happen to some other person. Especially when they "violated the law".

This, I think, is why the prisons in the US are so inhumane. "Those criminials deserve to be tortured."
I didn't have to read the Wikipedia page. I linked to it for your benefit because you were degrading someone's comment when they were using a term that anyone with any exposure to economics would be familiar with.
First, you said an upward trend - I submit that any meaningful upward trend in single core performance has ceased. Further, it has backslided in many cases. In order to increase the number of cores per processor, each core is getting simpler by reducing or eliminating single-threaded optimizations like branch prediction and out-of-order execution.
No one is forcing Apple to develop for public airwaves, either.
Monopoly? Last I checked there were multiple competing mobile carriers. You do have to put a lot of capital at risk though to be a national carrier. Which is exactly the point, really. Someone put a lot of capital at risk, and now that their bet has worked out, the regulators want to step in and tell them how to run their business and (in many cases) how much return is fair for them to get from their investment.

Regulation of this sort is the same as partial nationalization, and has the same effect to a measured degree. When people anticipate that the returns on their winning bets will be 'moderated,' or that they will have to set business policies for the 'greater good,' they will in the future make less risky bets or put less capital at risk.
Wouldn't a jail term be less life destroying than this? I guess America's judiciary is no more intelligent than any other out there.
Aren't you helpful? Your little, seemingly harmless comment may cost me $50. :)
Can someone explain to me what happens now? Does he just declare bankruptcy and move on? My guess is, as a college student, he has little assets so a $20,000 or $675,000 judgement would be the same to him (=bankruptcy).

Am I wrong? Are damages like this equivalent to student loans(ie. bankruptcy does not erase them)?

Please help me understand this. Thanks!
I don't want to quibble about this forever, but you're still missing my point. I said there wasn't anything natural about a government-granted monopoly because government-granted monopolies are not "natural monopolies" (in the academic economic sense of the phrase). I asked if you read the WP page because I felt that if you had, and had read my comment as well, that it would be clear to you that was my point.
Over there An 8 mile high distraction made of posh chocolate
Apple and AT&T should have every right to be as opaque as they want.

Um, no, not with government-administered public airwaves, they don't.
Given the "noprocrast" feature on HN, I think that's not uncommon.
As a student that essentially eliminates his future as he will most likely be expelled from his university and have trouble gaining admission at another university. Bad luck that he has to take the fall for 30 songs, as there are many university students who pirate thousands.
I see no reason why Apple and AT&T - who are corporations, not people - should have the right to do as they please. Our government grants corporations the ability to exist because doing so is beneficial to society. If a corporation is doing something that is harmful to consumers - and potentially society as a whole - then I want the government to step in.
It was inevitable that the feds will step in. If MS would have controlled any software running on Windows then how good would have Windows be? But that would have never fly!

Same here once you release a software product that carries an API you policing it can result in an unwanted results!
Apple made the choice to have Time Machine operate with little CPU burden.

I don't know why, given that my CPU is a sunk cost. (Also, I suspect that Apple chose hard links instead of deltas for ease of implementation, not to save CPU cycles.)

last I checked, Venti didn't support recovering the space from deleted items, except by way of making a new copy of the file system.

I think the state of the art has moved on since Venti; Cumulus (and probably tarsnap) implements garbage collection to recover space. http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~mvrable/cumulus/
Try writing the software for a piece of hardware that is still being developed without everyone in the same place. it would be hell!

Language barriers, misunderstandings, the fact some things are just plain difficult to express, slow turn arounds, having incomplete specs and expressing which parts are subject to change, maintainability after delivery, accountability and international law, the need for regular contact between hardware and software guys, points of contact - if things go dark in russia, how can i get in contact? Config issues- the software doesn't work on my pc...licensing issues, source code availability and ownership, ability and cost of making mods to the code years later, unknown skill/professionalism of offshore programmers, etc etc. But hey, it could be cheaper...right?
Not to mention that suddenly going missing from the international geopolitical stage would be much worse than a slow graceful retreat.
Hey, I said nothing about those unworthies at 420chan. Also, guilty lulz.
Go grep yourself troll.
You need to go read the section under Regulation. Often natural monopolies do arise in participation with the government.
There are also a couple of YC funded ventures that offer time management tools: 8aweek and RescueTime
This looks very interesting.

Since I use Emacs, I feel obliged to say everything it does could be turned into a major mode with a couple modules, but then it would be no surprise. After all, Emacs is a very nice OS.

I think I will give it a try ;-)

No. Not writing a major mode for Emacs. I will try this editor.
The section you reference deals with regulation as a solution to mitigating the perceived harms of an existing natural monopoly.
The drugs, sex and money part sounds quite good though.
I would say NASA is woefully underfunded, especially compared to the seemingly infinite budget for national defense. The defense budget for the US for FY2009 was $515.4 BILLION (from Wikipedia) compared to NASA's FY2010 REQUEST for $18.686 BILLION (Official Press Release). To add a little more perspective, you can take just a couple of projects that the DoD works on and make it == NASA's ENTIRE budget!

Missile Defense - $8.8 Bil.

F-22 Raptor - $4.6 Bil.

V-22 Osprey - $2.6 Bil.

DDG 1000 Destroyer - $3.5 Bil.

This comes out to $19.5 BILLION! All of the projects listed above are in my opinion relics from the cold war arms race, combined with the military complex's deep hooks in government. Also, these are just the projects that we KNOW OF, how much money do you think all of the black projects take up?

If we took away these projects and gave most of the money to NASA (effectively doubling their budget), I think that we would see lots of great work and scientific achievements, along with a increase in patriotism.

On the topic of whether we should go back to the Moon, I believe that we should. I feel this way not because I think it would be cool, or even that me might learn some new things (we would), but mainly because it would be a stepping stone to Mars. We could use the Moon to build and launch our manned ships to Mars and other planets and their moons. We could also more safely store nuclear reactors and materials on the moon, allowing us to build advanced nuclear engines just like the 'mad scientists' dreamed up back in the olden days. If anything, the ISS has been a waste of time, I think we should have built an extensive base on the moon, instead of putting some tinker-toys together in orbit.
Yes, but they are allowed to continue to exist under government scrutiny. Most local utilities are set up this way. If you're the first there, you usually get to be the only supplier.
Monopoly? Last I checked there were multiple competing mobile carriers. You do have to put a lot of capital at risk though to be a national carrier. Which is exactly the point, really. Someone put a lot of capital at risk, and now that their bet has worked out, the regulators want to step in and tell them how to run their business and (in many cases) how much return is fair for them to get from their investment.

Natural monopoly. Not the same thing.

The cellular industry has seen massive consolidation and reduction in consumer choice over the past 15 years -- the existing 5 national wireless carriers (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular) are comprised of literally hundreds (if not thousands) of formerly independent regional carriers. Cingular itself started as a conglomeration of 100+ regional carriers, before a few more mergers made Cingular into the new AT&T.

This is not a particularly strong testament to consumer choice and competition in the face of a natural monopoly.
Every time I've conducted informal polls of my readers, the results have been about 50/50 on this topic. It's not as cut and dried as the article suggests. Many users even prefer same-domain links to open in a new window automatically.
Nokia 5800 Themes : S60
I think he/she modeled it after the Minute Maid can (see below). It's a good point though: people outside Minute Maid's end markets may not identify with the logo.

http://www.freshdirect.com/media/images/product/frozen/fro_m...
Web addresses exceed world's population
We're quibbling about terms, and I always fear at this point in a thread that the need to be right might overwhelm continued reading comprehension. But in economic parlance, if (let's say) a power company came to be a dominant monopoly in a given area without government support, that would be a natural monopoly. If the government then stepped in to regulate the power company as a utility and simultaneously excluded competitors by government force, the power company becomes a coercive monopoly. Is it still a natural monopoly? It's hard to say, because conditions change, but the government grant of exclusivity remains constant. Maybe a new technological innovation would have let a competitor emerge, breaking the natural monopoly. But we would never know as long as the government continued to exclude competitors by force of law.

We may just be disagreeing to disagree at this point. I'll let you have the last word here.
Well they sold 50m+ Wiis and 100m+ DS's, how many more do they expect they are going to ship? Also the Wii is kind of lacking good games at the moment and Nintendos announcements at the E3 for this years titles wasn't that exciting either.
IANAL, but this is not a fine, is it?
My guess is that this guy will declare bankruptcy if he doesn't get this ruling overturned on appeal. Of course there are other secondary financial consequences for him like more than likely getting kicked out of school and having trouble securing a decent job in the future.
The End of Big Law
The fact is that as much as everyone likes to complain about parameter order, the only case I've seen with the needle/haystack order flipped is the in_array() method, which in that context the flipped order just makes sense.

And I'm not sure what you mean by "weird scoping."

The real beef most people have with PHP -- and is hard to defend -- is its type coercion. But PHP is not alone here, any implicit coercions are bound to make somebody unhappy some of the time.

In summary, you're jumping on a bandwagon without any merit. Say that you can make better applications and in less time in another language. Say that you can find more talented programmers for less money. But of all the things to whine about you chose the namespace operator? Really?
But we would never know as long as the government enforced the coercive monopoly.

This is a one-sided description and a false dichotomy. A non-regulated natural monopoly can be just as suppressive as a government enforced-coercive monopoly. A regulated natural monopoly does not also require the creation of a government-enforced coercive monopoly.
IANAL either, but I doubt the framers of the constitution meant their definition of "fine" to exclude a case like this.

Even if it isn't a "fine" in esoteric legal jargon it fits the definition of "cruel and unusual punishment". After all, $2 million is more than the expected lifetime earnings of an American individual. $2 million is essentially a monetary life sentence.

edit: I did some research and you're correct that this doesn't fit the modern legal definition of a "fine". Apparently fines are for criminal offenses and in civil cases like this they're called "penalties" instead. Again, however, I don't think this necessarily applies to the eighth amendment.

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/fine
Please provide an example of where this has ever been the case. That is, where a company without a government grant of exclusivity (or other sorts of government favoritism) in a market has been able to 1) sustain that monopoly for more than a few years, and 2) to leave their customers worse off than if the business had never existed in the first place.
Ever heard of vanity? ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly#Historical_exa...
You're right about reading comprehension degrading. So I'll spell this out simply. When Local Power Company establishes a regional power grid, they are the largest by virtue of being the first. Economies of scale prevent other firms from coming into the market. They would have to build an entirely separate, but redundant, power grid without any indication that customers, who need power to begin with, would purchase from them. This means they have, as the Wikipedia page reads, "an overwhelming cost advantage over other actual or POTENTIAL competitors." (Emphasis mine) This is why the government often steps in and legalizes the natural monopoly.
I know that this is probably not very comme il fait to say on HN, but really, I don't see what all the righteous indignation at AT&T / Apple is about.

You signed up for a highly proprietary and controlled walled garden when you got an iPhone. I did too. When you ran into some limitations you didn't like, you jailbroke it and loaded some things Apple and/or AT&T didn't want you to load.

If you don't like this whole paradigm, why get an iPhone? Why not get an Android or something else? For that matter, why does Google bother releasing an iPhone app; why not build the Android into a handset that is tightly coupled/integrated with Google Voice? Seems like that would be a fine marketing coup for the former.

I'm just not sure what there is to whine about here. Of course enhanced voice application services aren't going to be allowed on the phone because they are perceived as encroaching on possible or actual carrier revenue streams. Of course you can't put applications on it that make a "dumb pipe" of the carrier's data network in order to deliver voice. If you don't like this set of circumstances, pursue a solution by competitive means, not legislating it; vote with your feet and quit buying iPhones until the exclusive distribution contract with AT&T expires, and thusly encourage Apple to diversify its retail blend to include other network operators with more liberal approaches.

Really - what, do you expect that a de facto contractually sanctioned monopoly (AT&T) is going to act in the spirit of the public welfare or consumer choice when it perceives a conflict of interest? Seriously?

Neither the courts nor the FCC should be looking at this. Consumers just need to take their wallet elsewhere.

EDIT: I very much concur with the poster above who speculated that AT&T's 3G network doesn't have the bandwidth to handle a large amount of relatively constant (at a certain baseline) voice traffic generated by something as popular as GV. Anybody who deals with mobile issues routinely can tell you that AT&T's 3G network is positively the worst in the land, and oversubscription in many MSAs is unbearably high. You want 3G bandwidth, go with Sprint, or maybe T-Mobile.
The legal issues aside -- from a hacker point of view what are the pros and cons of working as an employee versus a contractor? One benefit of being a contractor, especially with short-term contracts, seems to be that the hacker gets exposure to many different technologies and corporate cultures. Serendipity seems more likely. In the course of the contracts he might see a problem/opportunity that could lead to a profitable venture.
Typing does matter to me, but it's only one of the many reasons I favor expressiveness and terseness.
Here is an example of an ambiguous case:

// classes.php /////

namespace foo::bar;

function baz() {}

namespace foo;

class bar { static function baz() {} }

// someotherfile.php /////

include('classes.php');

foo::bar::baz(); // Ambiguity

/////

A proposed work around for the ambiguity was being explicit about ambiguous cases.

The internals team wanted to do ::, they did ::, and they convinced themselves otherwise (and suffered through a lot of pain in the process).

[17:00:05] <@CelloG> I am the strongest advocate for :: - every patch I have made up to this one was designed to preserve it, and I am convinced it just isn't technically possible to use it

http://wiki.php.net/rfc/backslashnamespaces#resolution_of_t_...
That example discusses a naturally competitive situation and how that wasn't apparently optimal. No one was worse off for the companies existing, and they weren't even monopolies, making it irrelevant to our discussion here. The example claims society was better off when the government established monopolies that could be profitable. The government could have done that at any time -- the existing private companies didn't provide any impediment to that. So that's all fine and good, but how does that answer my question? I'll let you have the last word.
That's awfully risky for the defendant. If I was the one on the stand I don't think I'd permit my lawyers to risk sticking me with a $2 million fine just so they could set precedent, even if they were from Harvard.
Sure, but what's more interesting is that he credits what he knows about biology as the inspiration for Smalltalk and its particular flavor of OO.
Clearly you didn't read it closely enough. They were worse off for the lack of an affordable water supply leading to a lack of sanitation and epidemic.

The inefficient private solution stayed the adoption of a publicly administered one.
Political Chart Wars: Health-Care Reform Obfuscated by Infographics
Sleep, perchance to code
No Need to Change It
By comparison:

On September 24, 2001, the case was partially settled.
Napster agreed to pay music creators and copyright
owners a $26 million settlement for past, unauthorized
uses of music.

So by this case's logic, Napster was only guilty of stealing 1155 songs.
Somebody please take PHP, fork it, fix all the annoyances and inconsistencies, rename it as PHX and I'll drop old PHP like a herpetic whore.
Here's a relevant article on the subject. Sounds like it comes down to the shifting legal definition of "willful and malicious", but it may be dischargeable in bankruptcy.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10269251-93.html
8aweek bit the dust a while ago, and RescueTime is too analytics-oriented. This app might be just the thing!
About your edit footnote, what do you mean by GV voice traffic? GV is not a VOIP solution, it calls your phone which uses your subscription minutes. Usage might increase a bit because international rates are lower, but I fail to see how that could overload AT&T's bandwidth.
I agree. The web has changed a lot even since 2005 (when the article was written).
Unemployment skyrocketing in Silicon Valley - go entrepreneurs
> I really don't know why people harbor this mystical belief that a shiny piece of metal is somehow immune to well-understood economic principles.

Because thinking is hard.
I actually think you're wrong, sadly. People in the real world, people that are likely to download songs, are not digital cognoscenti like members of HN. They read about this (or watch it on TV, most likely) and think "Shit! Tell Johnny to stop downloading!". Fear tactics do work. So, i would bet that the RIAA is very happy about the message they are sending.
Here's a question: can you be extradited and imprisoned for failing to pay damages from a civil trial? If these damages are not dischargeable in bankruptcy, seems like your best option might be to just leave the country, rather than spend your entire life in financial slavery.