skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Which makes "I'm going to develop for Android" sound an awful lot like "I want more of the same"."

I don't believe that's true. You can distribute Android applications outside of the Android Market. That means the cellular service providers would have to use network-based control mechanisms, which are safe and easy to circumvent (as opposed to jailbreaking, which requires you to be on constant alert regarding OS updates and when you can safely install them).

Moreover, after the Comcast-net neutrality fiasco, the FCC may be willing to rule against the service providers for implementing such restrictions. Congress is already looking into antitrust violations by the service providers (& the FCC into the banning of Google Voice on the iPhone), so I don't think such a move would be tolerated.
Your fist paragraph reminds me of the gaming industry. It's exactly the same situation, only much more closed.

That doesn't stop people from doing whatever they want with their consoles (or their computers for that matter).

Sure it's a minority, but I suspect some day it will be the majority, as people stop letting companies get away with this kind of crap.
Ask HN: Please review Epic Beard, a community-powered site
I pointed out the San are a rare exception. You were trying to make a general case from this. The other ethnographies and historical accounts show high meat consumption. I also suspect the san you are talking about are stunted and trying to get by on marginal land without much game, and so not a good sample.

It bears repeating the simple fact that most places don't have wild plant food for most of the year. Pick up the army survival manual. It's mostly about how to fish and trap in many different ecosystems, because, as it explains, there isn't much wild plant food out there most of the time.
Growing up, my best friend was always one of the smartest and successful kids in the class. But he also had an annoying habit of going around making offhand remarks about how he hadn't cracked a book until 10 minutes before the finals and still aced it, etc...

Although I shouldn't have let it get to me, it definitely did since we were always competitive. And it took quite a few years before I realized how stupid it was to believe that he could possibly be relying on innate intelligence to know things like obscure Gettysburg lieutenants or isotope neutron counts, whatever.

Anyways, as it turns out, we became roommates after college and I finally got to see the man behind the curtain. The kid's a workhorse! Sure he's still brilliant, but I had no idea how intense his work ethic was. His job requires all sorts of certification exams, and he would be locked in his room 10 hours a day for weeks at a time just memorizing, memorizing, memorizing...

Anyways, I'm sure Einstein wouldn't have wanted people to know that he used flashcards either :)
I'd rather have something that can work out what I've already uploaded (and ideally with partial file resume) so that I don't have to keep track of everything myself. I probably won't always have good enough upload bandwidth to be able to always catch up in one session, so just organising by date isn't ideal. But it's not too much hassle to just keep Uploaded/NotUploaded folders locally and move things when done, so this is probably the fallback position.

What's a good SCP/FTP-over-SSH client for Windows? Filezilla seems to work OK, but is a little clunky (on the Mac, anyhow. I don't have a windows machine to hand to test it on)
Well we're at risk of defining what is right or fair. I loved my first year philosophy course just as much as the other guy but that's a damn slippery slope to go down :) I will say one thing on this matter though. Companies are amoral. The App Store may prove to be unpalatable, but don't think that some other company is more moral than another because when it comes down to it, morals are irrelevant to companies. It's why I believe in a strong regulatory government to keep companies in check, but again I'm at risk of getting this thread off on a tangent :)

Additionally, Apple has always remained consistent on their position on both revocation and refunds. It is public in that developers are told about this and must agree to the terms before joining. That's about as public as is necessary in my books.

So this should not be news to the developer. Let me bring up the relevant parts of the contract. I've skipped most of the examples because the last one is so broad as to cover the rest.

iPhone Developer Program License Agreement

8. Revocation

You understand and agree that Apple may cease distribution of Your Licensed Application(s) and/or Licensed Application information or revoke the digital certificate of any of Your Applications at any time. By way of example only, Apple might choose to do this if at any time:

.

.

.

(l) Apple has reason to believe that such action is prudent or necessary.

Also, Schedule 1, and 2 (which I believe is unique on a per-country basis) outlines the legal obligations for refunds.

EXHIBIT A (to Schedule 1)

4. Warranty: You must be solely responsible for any product warranties, whether express or implied by law, to the extent not effectively disclaimed. The EULA must provide that, in the event of any failure of the Licensed Application to conform to any applicable warranty, the end-user may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price for the Licensed Application to that end-user: and that, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Apple will have no other warranty obligation whatsoever with respect to the Licensed Application, and any other claims, losses, liabilities, damages, costs or expenses attributable to any failure to conform to any warranty will be Your sole responsibility.
One option that I think hasn't been explored enough yet, and may be much more prevalent in the future, is micro-payment. Definitely the biggest initial barrier is the submission of payment info. But after that, I think that charging small amounts for certain special actions could be viable if those actions are deemed very valuable by the user -- "feel fair".

Examples would be offering free uploads of images up to X megs per month but charging X cents per image after. Or the ability to create more than X number of interest groups. Micro-payments advantage also is that the service can charge strategically to offset some of the higher serving costs of certain functionality, eg., storage.

The advantage of micro-payments over freemium is that with freemium the user may be very hesitatant to lock into $10 a month -- but might be willing to pay more ad hoc for enhanced functionality that over time they really want to use. The key of course is the network must be very smart about pricing and what actions are charged, and still provide an exceptional experience for free.

The system is working well in various online games (buying powers) and cell phone networks ... could it work well in a social network? I expect to see more attempts for sure.
"Moreover, after the Comcast-net neutrality fiasco, the FCC may be willing to rule against the service providers for implementing such restrictions."

At which point the things that would dissuade people from developing for the iPhone will be outlawed. Which was kinda my point: Apple and AT&T aren't the only companies pulling stupid crap, and unless/until the landscape changes in a big way you're not going to be able to avoid stupid crap by switching carriers/platforms.
I'm now recommending people develop and put the app in the AppStore for free with advertising or "paypal" donations that let you collect revenue for it outside of the absurd Apple contract.
That's not the issue here. As jacquesm points out in another comment: the issue here is that these are quasiparticles, which are fundamentally different from 'real' particles like electrons or photons. Whether or not the latter 'actually exist' is irrelevant for that distinction.

A quasiparticle is nothing more than the name given to an emergent phenomenon. Only in a system like a nanowire can spinons and holons emerge. Only in such a system can you make it seem as if an electron has been split. An isolated electron still cannot be split in a spin carrying part and a charge carrying part.
Would you also fire a developer for creating a Windows-only desktop app, even if Windows is the operating system mandated by the organization?
A really interesting read and very much echoes some of the reasons I chose not to pursue a career in academia. When you realise you're at a fork in the road, and down one route lies being a supervisor's paper-churning-out slave, researching something that doesn't even interest you so the department can get more funding...grnnnh.

Edit: To clarify, this was my problem, as a PhD student with a PhD supervisor (not sure what the US term is; adviser?) who was forcing me to do the wrong thing all in the name of academia.
http://mmonit.com/monit/
The most essential characteristic of life is the drive to replicate. That's the only reason why it still exists and will keep existing. Everything else is secondary to that.
We’re little annoying things that don’t scale well when we can’t be handled perfectly algorithmically like all the world’s information (TM)

That's exactly the way I feel about Google too. 'Nuff said.
I would love to see all international suffixes included.

And options for results weighting towards shorter names.

Also - ajaxy - real-time search would be nice a la domai.nr.

Nice work so far.
Heh. I already have a Flickr Pro account that I use actively, and hadn't thought of that :)

I wouldn't want to pollute my normal stream with the 95% of dross that I'll doubtless take, but setting the default visibility to private could work well.

ISTR that flickr does some processing of the images as you upload them though, and don't really like the idea of losing the originals, but perhaps that only impacts the lower res versions, and the original always stays intact. Must investigate further...
"At which point the things that would dissuade people from developing for the iPhone will be outlawed."

You misunderstand. While the network restrictions may be made illegal (on net neutrality principles), I don't see how anyone can force Apple to open up their App Store. As long as installing applications from sources outside of the App Store is not officially sanctioned, the iPhone will be at a disadvantage.

We saw how people reacted to AT&T's (legitimate) temporary block of img.4chan.org. If cellular service providers began blocking sites, there would be an enormous uproar. OTOH, everybody has accepted Apple's restrictions on the App Store (though that may partially be because of the RDF; if Microsoft had done something similar, I imagine that there would've been a much more negative reaction).
And there won't be, until... developers start developing for something else.

If just ten independent developers with interesting apps ported to another platform (doesn't have to be to Android, but of course I'd prefer that) in a coordinated fashion, they'd get immense press and have some real impact.
FileZilla on the USB hard drive (http://filezilla-project.org/)

It doesn't need to be installed, you can just run it from the drive, and it can transfer via FTP or SSH to a cheap slicehost or dreamhost. I even think it supports syncing directories, so you can just resume where you left off.
I'd like to see Apple respond to this "crisis" with adjustments, but it seems they feel no need to.

My biggest concern here is Apple being upfront. I can potentially accept the imposition of barriers to products that compete with features on the phone but they need to be completely spelled out in advance. Developers wasting lives developing apps that get rejected without precedence is truly wrong.
You seem to be trying to have it both ways here. If you believe in a strong regulatory government than you believe companies do need to have some morality. Because the very intention of laws is to uphold the moral standard society has set. In other words a company should ideally not break the law meaning if you believe there should be strong regulations you in turn believe companies should have to operate within the bounds of some kind of moral standard.

Moreover, I’m very libertarian leaning. I DON’T believe in a strong regulatory government. All I’m asking for is the most basic of protections. I don’t have a problem with Apple setting whatever terms they want but they have to (a) lay out the terms and (b) enforce them consistently.

Also, on the warranty, I'd argue the quote you used doesn't apply to the situation in the article. The language specifically says...

"The EULA must provide that, in the event of any failure of the Licensed Application to conform to any applicable warranty, the end-user may notify Apple, and Apple will refund the purchase price for the Licensed Application to that end-user"

But this wasn't a "failure of the Licensed Application" in that the application continued to work fine and had met Apple's requirements to the best of the developers ability to do so.

But again, the question is not “what is legal now” it’s “now that this new concept exists what should we as a society require of it”. That’s the discussion being had. Is what Apple’s doing right and should society allow it and if not what standards should be set so that our future isn’t bogged down by companies acting in the same way Apple does.
Society recognizes the fact that some things are simply too morally wrong to be allowed.

I don't know what society you live in. But my society has Wal-Mart in it.

You think those Wal-Mart folks would hesitate to drop your product from their shelves without giving you a reason? You think they are shy about making their suppliers sign a scary one-sided contract and then holding them to it?

And the App Store is not made from Soylent Green. In the grand list of potentially unfair business practices I doubt this even rates. Compared to what the music industry does to bands every single day, this contract is sunshine and birdsong.

Alas, if you don't like Apple's contract terms you're stuck doing business with their competitors. Fortunately, they're easy to find. One of them is probably clinging to your leg right now.
I have no intention of asking for a refund. I have no intention of deleting my GV Mobile app.
That was very interesting.

I live in what you'd call a 3d world country (Mexico), and this stuff makes me think about why empires fall and others rise...

The rising stars get to watch how an empire falls ;-)

One of my dreams is to open a school that's much better than most of the schools in Mexico, using the good and bad examples of schools in countries like the US and the UK. My 2 cents to leave to the world.
I don't buy the "People buy the iPhone because it has the app store".

The app store is a nice value add, but it's hardly instrumental in the iPhone success story.
The problem is that we can't ask questions that begin with "Should NASA", even though we keep pretending that we can.

NASA is political, and is deeply entangled with dozens of key politicians. There is no one mission, and there won't be one any time soon.

NASA's only problem now should be reducing cost-to-orbit through the use of progressive prizes that keep increasing in value each year until a solution is found. This would be a much better use of taxpayer dollars because as cost to LEO is decreased, everything else gets easier too. Trying to push science first is getting the cart in front of the horse.
Not sure if your comment was updated or I was just too quick to reply the first time, but as to the points you made in your final paragraph, I'm on the same page. I think the right courses of action here are:

1. Call Apple out on the contract clauses. See how they will respond. This specific case points out a derivative scenario they may not have accounted for. When they revoke an app because they feel it is "prudent" to do so, and the developer is left footing the bill.

2. Small iPhone developers should band together and form a guild or union. This guild, like the Writer's Guild, can yield considerable clout. Right now the problem is that most developers cannot afford to pay a lawyer to fight these matters. By teaming up, they could form a unified front and not only deal with Apple via lawyers, but possibly deal with them directly. It's easier for Apple to deal with one spokesperson on behalf of say, 5000 independent developers, than for them to try to deal with even a dozen ad-hoc cases.
Just buy more SD cards. They are cheap and you can pack a lot of them into the space taken by HDD. And you won't have to look for a PC with internet.
Considering all the error's I am getting on the page, I hope he isn't paying for adwords traffic.

Couldn't write to: /var/www/kalzumeus.com/wp-content/cache/wp-cache-c35bfed8135767fe63f5725b08629444.html
Warning: fopen(/var/www/kalzumeus.com/wp-content/cache/wp-cache-c35bfed8135767fe63f5725b08629444.meta) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /var/www/kalzumeus.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-cache/wp-cache-phase2.php on line 240
The best SCP/FTP-over-SSH client for Windows I've encountered is WinSCP (http://winscp.net/eng/index.php).

It comes in a standalone install-nothing flavour and lets you choose, when copying a group of files from A to B, to only copy files that have changed.

I'm not aware of what algorithm is used to determine when a file has changed. I've always assumed this is based on file modification time so this might not be clever enough to spot a partially-uploaded file and either re-copy or start from where it left off.

You can certainly pause file transfers and subsequently resume but only during a session.
Certainly, there's loads of stupid "research" in academia—cranking out papers that interest no one, in order to justify tenure and more grants.

However, "90% of everything is crap". The relevant question, before you throw out the entire institution, is: Are there real opportunities to do good work?

Good work takes two main forms in academia: research and teaching. Is good research work being done? Is good teaching being done?
To be fair to the time, in 1999, there was the dot-com bubble going on and a lot of students were going into CS for the wrong reasons so there could have been more at play than government objectives. I suspect there were a lot of CS students who did not enjoy programming in such programs, thus accounting for seniors who couldn't do projects. I know CS and programming are not the same, but I liken it to studying Shakespeare and not enjoying reading or writing.

Our school (UWaterloo) noticed a huge drop in CS enrollment soon after that, between 2002 and 2004 (roughly). At which point business programs saw a spike in enrollment. I wonder if this professor had stuck around whether he would have noticed an improvement once the stories of 24 year old billionaires were removed from the headlines.
"Talk of the Town" articles in the New Yorker are typically this short.
Now Is The Time To Haggle
Here's a simple task you can't do in CSS2: Create a multi-line form where the labels are right-aligned to the fields, the fields all line up, and everything expands to fill the contents.
Your 'Big Idea' Sucks
Are you a John Mayer fan? I ask because that “Waiting for the World To Change” song has always bugged the heck out of me. I mean, DUDE, you’re a 30 year old millionaire celebrity whining about how you’re powerless to do anything? Come on.

Society is what we make of it and the worst possible excuse for letting an injustice go is because “it’s not like there aren’t other injustices in the world” Also, I think you are unfair to Walmart. I’ve heard of Walmart making almost unreal requirements of their vendors (include little tools with things that need to be assembled, adopt RFID without a price increase, etc…) But in each of those cases they actually MADE A DEMAND. Apple’s not even making demands here they’re just kicking apps to the curb with no explanation.

(You’re probably also being a little unfair to the record companies but that would lead to a debate of what they actually provide to artists and this really isn’t the place)
I keep the blog off the business server precisely to avoid the business croaking when I make a poorly thought-out chmod decision at 2:30 in the morning when troubleshooting traffic issues.

(They want me to make my whole wp-content directory writable? Really?)
Grab the Nagios plugins tarball, build it on linux, and find the check_tcp program. Wrap a little shell program around check_tcp that will either do nothing, or fire off your script depending on the return code of check_tcp. Run this once a minute out of cron. Make sure these scripts won't stack up, by either setting check_tcp's socket timeout to less than 60 seconds, or have the script initially check to make sure no other of its kind are running.
One thing I found interesting was that those with no children seemed to work considerably less. Perhaps it's an age/career-centric thing. Also to note, those with children spend quite some time in "Family Care" which to me sounds like maintenance moreso than leisure.
And here we have the reason why just about every single CS department in the US teaches Java instead of C or Scheme.
"Developing iPhone apps now means postponing a better and more capable web"
I wouldn't say that is an entirely accurate characterization. I don't know anyone in my department doing research that doesn't interest them. Students generally love the research they are doing and are probably a bit more autonomous than your comment seems to imply. I've taken both directions (industry then academia) and in industry I was a code-churning-out slave working on something that barely interested me. Now I work on my own on a topic that really interests me!
I disagree. I know LOT's of people with an iPod touch that want an iPhone just because they want their apps to access the 'net everywhere, not just wi-fi spots. The iPhone is a game changer, and the app store is absolutely instrumental in the story of it's success.

If it isn't, why is the iPhone tagline "there's an app for that?"
If a company can subsidize a product or service (shipping, free maps so you make money off ads, etc) at a loss, this is anti-competitive. I'm not saying it is illegal or immoral. But it most certainly can be an effective anticompetitive approach. It is reasonable for people/companies/government to ask if society or their economy has crossed a line in terms of disabling competition. This is nothing new. The U.S. has/had anti-dumping laws, they just aren't used these days. Maybe the pendulum will swing back the other way, who knows.

So when you say "It can't be good for innovation when you can sue your competitors simply for offering better value." Well it depends. What is value here? Subsidizing shipping can be seen as both offering value as well as using capital reserves to kill off competition.
OpenAFS Distributed Filesystem
My experience developing for iPhone has been great. The income from the few apps I've made easily covers the phone, the contract, and the developer program. I plan to develop on the iPhone exclusively for now. Once some of the other mobile platforms take off I'll make my apps available in the corresponding marketplaces
Outstandical!
This was posted more than two years ago, but I never read it unil today.
I must have misinterpreted some piece of text somewhere then, I remembered it that way, apologies.
9 Useful Open source content management system(CMS)
The comments are interesting. My favorite:

I don’t think I can name any female SEOs…

Should I be ashamed?
I couldn't agree more with the core concept here, which is: if customers haven't told you they'd pay for it (either when asked directly or in the form of giving you money), there's a good chance they're not going to.
The reason Jordan will always be better than Kobe, according to Phil Jackson: Jordan's hands are insanely large and allow him to do things later than Kobe because he can grip the ball at any position.
how is prophet mohamed islam can you answer me?