skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The predominant sentiment here seems to be Obama is a bad guy. I'm not saying he deserves the peace prize, but he didn't ask for it, nor, I'm sure, do anything he has done in pursuit of it. He didn't "push a catchy slogan of change" to get elected, at least, not the way you portray it. He adopted his "change" mantra from his earliest days as a politician, actually as a community group organizer. He sympathized with the disconnect he saw with poverty stricken blacks in Chicago contrasted with the wealth, indifference, and apparent self-interest of high level American politics. That's why he has repeatedly reminded fellow politicians of a duty to actually serve the people, and done things like put limits on staff salaries. The "change" message was coincidentally on time, and took on new meaning in light of Bush's performance, but not something he cooked up at the last minute.

Edit: for those voting me down would you please delineate which of my points you disagree with? I'm genuinely curious.
Veganism ??

That's about as non-violent as it gets!

Even the eggs are safe from vegans.
Nobel stunner: Obama wins Peace Prize
I also have this problem.
Oh shit! Have fun with those forgery charges..
>>Good point, so maybe upgrade the US prisons to Guantanamo Bay standards ?

That was as an answer to your original description of Guantanamo as equally shocking as the mass murders of Jews/Gypsies in WW II.

I would, without doing a Devil's Advocate, describe that position as lacking a sense of proportions.

>>But it isn't a war.

It is not a war in Afghanistan? Please inform the media.

>>So either they're civilians that have been arrested for crimes or they're prisoners of war.

But I just did a Devil's Advocate argument that the prisoners aren't treated worse than normal US' prisoners (which is horrible, but still much better than most any 3rd world prison system).

I thought the Red Cross had access to Guantanamo?

Edit: Grammar, sigh.

Edit: Historically, all countries I know of with terror problems (USA, Germany, Israel, Italy, Great Britain, etc) has played loose with human rights interpretations. I don't see a reason to judge the US harsher than others.
10 most unusual Wedding rings
I can imagine ways in which these services will be spammed to death.

BTW is there anything useful in these services?
key 'rings' aren't meant to be worn on a finger. They are for organizing your keys in your pocket. http://www.namifiers.com/Products/Item.aspx?itemID=SPLITKEYR...
It's not like he had a whole lot of choice there, the missile shield was one of the biggest and stupidest mistakes of GWB (outside of invading Iraq and squandering the world wide ocean of goodwill the US could tap from after 9/11).

Recipe for getting a nobel prize:

Undo your predecessors stupidity.

We should be getting to parity first, then we should improve beyond where we were roughly 9 years ago, then some time needs to pass to figure in the side effects of all the good intentions. If it still stands you can have your prize.

Less than a year into a presidency that has already lost a lot of its luster is premature by any standards.

I'm not saying he doesn't deserve one, I'm simply saying that he has to earn it and has not earned it yet. By far.

Well, apparently he has, but after this I can't see anybody taking winning the Nobel Prize for Peace as a real achievement.

If there was really nobody deserving it more than Obama this year then maybe they should have simply skipped a year.

Makes you wonder who the other nominees were. Is there a list of that ?
From the secretary of the peace prize committee: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ibu-kfROlV...

_ Myth: The prize is awarded to recognize efforts for peace, human rights and democracy only after they have proven successful.
More often, the prize is awarded to encourage those who receive it to see the effort through, sometimes at critical moments.

Posted by AP 6 hours ago. Clearly they knew this would create controversy.
Wow, you really are trying your best to turn this thread into a full-on flame war. :/

You are acting like a child and at this point, I'm truly shocked by how pathetic and capricious you're acting in response to a stranger's statement about his experience with computer programming. I'll respond to this and then I'm done.

I wasn't going to bring this up, but ...

But of course you're gonna. Keep it classy.

... since you're playing the role of the civilized martyr ...

No martyrs here, just someone pointing out how intellectually nonsensical your reaction was.

why don't you tell everyone how your first reaction was to send me an email calling me a "dickhead" for what I wrote?

First off, you're taking that way out of context. Second, e-mailing you was far from my first reaction. My first reaction was to flame you back in this thread. I realized that wasn't contributing to the thread in any positive way, so I rewrote my response in a more constructive way, and added the little note "edited for tone and temper." I did that because I respect Hacker News.

Then I e-mailed you out of band to tell you (1) you misread my post, (2) you flamed me personally without provocation, so I thought it merited a personal response, (3) you seem like a smart guy, I have no problem with you beyond this little incident, and I really respect your work but (4) your vitriolic, misinformed flame unnecessarily made you look like a "defensive dickhead."

So writing you personally to address a personal issue was actually my third or fourth reaction and I thought it was quite appropriate to take personal sentiments outside of the thread here. Lest it descend to the flame war which you seem so intent on having.

You have a funny way of "respecting" people.

Now who's the martyr? I said that respect is my default. You coming out of the woodwork to flame me and call me "stupid" chips away at it. And you, hours later, still upset over nothing and choosing to bring up a personal communication out of context pretty much voids it.

And what you call "guts" I call absolutely pathetic. You've got a Ph.D. in Computational Biology and you're letting your feelings get hurt that someone, somewhere on the internet might think you're just an ok coder. And all that based on a completely innocuous statement not even directed at you. Not to mention, you go out of your way to attack someone personally and call them names based on this imagined slight, and then get sanctimonious when they call out your actions in a less than complimentary manner.

Your behavior here is bizarre and, to be frank, a little scary. You can flame on all you want, but I've got no interest in interacting with you or the thread further. The funny part is, I am actually sorry. I must have really hit a nerve and hurt your feelings to provoke this kind of response. Good luck to you and take care.
OMGICU: Its Like Stalking Celebrities Via Twitter
Besides entertainment?
Somewhat stable Solid State ('Enterprise' SSDs)
> Most property investors (myself included) are mindful that equity
> growth in real estate, when it happens, is normally only a few %
> points above inflation - it's profitable because you leverage a
> bank's money - you only put in a small amount of cash, so those few
> % points are pretty good against your investment.

Appreciate the reply. Very useful to read how you calculate your ROI when making real estate investments.
Suntouch floor warming mats
Suntouch mats offer you a completely different type of heating system. Unlike traditional heating systems, Suntouch mats do not rely on overheating any system component. This means that these products maintain a comfortable, affordable heat throughout the day.
Exactly. I wonder whether he would have won the price if he was the successor of, say, Clinton instead of Bush.
Dell Adamo XPS To Be The Thinnest Laptop in The World
Yahoo’s $3.65 Billion Mistake: Yahoo Closes GeoCities
"Please, a more credible source and better context too. I have hard time believing Ambedkar actually said that."

Ok, Here goes.

"Abandoning all these sober considerations Mr. Gandhi came out as an, open enemy of the Untouchables. How can the Untouchables regard such a man as their friend and ally?"

http://www.ambedkar.org/ambcd/41K.What%20Congress%20and%20Ga...

"Thus ended the efforts by the Minorities Committee to bring about a solution of the communal problem. The discussion in the Committee threw Mr. Gandhi's attitude to the Untouchables in relief. Everybody felt that Mr. Gandhi was the most determined enemy of the Untouchables."

http://www.ambedkar.org/ambcd/41D.What%20Congress%20and%20Ga...

Not literally the same statement, but similar in sentiment. Google is your friend.

That Ambedkar regarded Gandhi is a pious fraud and hypocrite is well known to students of Indian History. That doesn't make Gandhi an "enemy of the untouchables" , but yes Ambedkar thought so at times, and said so at times.
NetCat tutorial for Linux & Windows, HOWTO, nc
If agile means "iterative and incremental projects", it is just a new name for what has long been put forward as a good way to develop software.

In 1996, the Jolt award winning book was Rapid Development by Steve McConnell. Some of the practices that the advocates are evolutionary delivery, designing for change, and timebox development. These are the same practices that appear to be what some here believe are what is called agile.

As far as I know, the term agile really only became associated with software development in 2001 because of the agile manifesto. Because the manifesto itself is the origin and source for the whole agile movement it seems logical to me that it should be taken as the defining basis for what it means to be agile.

To me, agile doesn't mean the same thing as good - therefore I don't feel like I need to some how remake agile in my image. I am reasonably comfortable being closer to being a duct-tape programmer than I am to being an agileista.

Allowing the leaders of the agile movement to define what agile is, doesn't have to mean that you agree with everything, or even anything they are saying or doing. There is a difference between talking about what the definition of something is, and talking about whether you agree with that something.
That's pretty much the intuitive conclusion too. I've never quite bought the "TDD makes you faster all the time" mentality. There is an initial slow-down.
Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=870921
Looks like George Bush is the "inspiration" for quite a few prizes
To be honest, I hope these guys are going to jail.

You must be a fool to believe that they don't own the pirate bay anymore, or are not associated with the keyman islands shell company running the company.

Alone mininova disclosed making > 1 million of profit a year, piratebay's profit must be much bigger, all from the copyrighted works of others.

Most of you wouldn't support piratebay anymore if your program/source code showed up there, except if it's opensource.
Hacker refused extradition appeal
Huge collection of letters written by van Gogh.
> an unrepentant terrorist in 1994

It's either 3 of them or none. Be fair.
CSScaffold – Using PHP to Extend the Abilities of CSS
The Great WebKit Comparison Table
except that source code couldn't possibly show on piratebay.
I'm sure you have a point to make, but I downvoted you because it is very poorly made and just seems like some kind of bad sarcasm. Please expand on your statement...
yup i have this problem too. i got accepted, was able to RSVP and did. now checking the confirmation link again, it says application was rejected. glitch?
Thanks for chiming in. Since we are somewhat comparing and contrasting big publisher vs. small/mid publisher, do you think that a bigger company (like O'Reilly for example) would have done it differently? If so, how?

I've not published through O-Reilly so I can't really speculate.
There are two problems with what you say. First, a large number of posts with a small number of upvotes is still valued more by HN than a small number of well-respected comments. Second, moderation systems tend to be inflationary, which means that the point value of a given comment has more to do with how many people read the thread than anything else.

Slashdot's point cap is the obvious solution, but even there comments tend to lean heavily towards +5 on well read threads.
Building a Scorecard for Open Source
I'd like to see a study that compares TDD not with "nothing" but with other methods of achieving quality. I had a very good experience with code revisions. Assertions seem to be demonstrably helpful too.
MySQL Connector/Python is a pure-Python implementation of the MySQL client protocol - I presume it uses sockets, in which case the gevent monkey-patching might get it to work transparently.

https://launchpad.net/myconnpy
> That was as an answer to your original description of Guantanamo as of an equal shocking standard as the mass murders of Jews/Gypsies in WW II.
> I would, without doing a Devil's Advocate, describe that position as lacking a sense of proportions.

I wasn't comparing them on an objective level (which I think was pretty obvious), merely stating that they are all things that will be with those respective countries for a long time.

> It is not a war in Afghanistan? Please inform the media.

From the wikipedia article on the 'war' in Afghanistan:

"The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) did not authorize the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom). There is some debate as to whether UNSC authorization was required, centered around the question of whether the invasion was an act of collective self-defense provided for under Article 51 of the UN Charter, or an act of aggression.[42]

The U.S. Administration did not declare war, and labeled Taliban troops and supporters terrorists rather than soldiers, denying them the protections of the Geneva Convention and due process of law. This position has been successfully challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court[43] and questioned even by military lawyers responsible for prosecuting affected prisoners"

And:

http://www.hrw.org/en/node/79295

So, to call it war is not clear cut. A war is something that is declared between nation states and the conflict in Afghanistan misses quite a few of the pre-requisites.

For the people in the region the difference is much less important, but in international law such things do matter.

> But I just did a Devil's Advocate argument that the prisoners aren't treated worse than normal US' prisoners (which is horrible, but still much better than most any 3rd world prison system).

So, do you waterboard people in your US prisons ? Do you torture them ? Desecrate their religious objects ? And far worse than that ?

> I thought the Red Cross had access to Guantanamo?

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/01/30/letter-obama-asking-ac...

http://ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/leaked-guant%C...

Apparently they were allowed to visit off-and-on during the Bush years, and then restricted in all kinds of ways, since Obama came to power this has changed but it is unclear whether they now have full access to the facility, I can't find any evidence of that.
Wow, another step in turning him into the next Jimmy Carter.
I usually just flag the spam, but instead I'll comment.

I installed this exact system a couple of years ago when I was remodeling my kitchen. The Suntouch floor warming mat is a waste of money, IMO.

Very costly to run (it's electric, so I had reasonable expectations, but still made a very noticeable jump in my electric bill), and the wall controller actually caught fire at one point. I was running the controller at about 1/2 it's rated capacity, BTW, and have installed TONS of high and low-voltage gear.

My recommendation is to avoid the Suntouch electric floor warmers because I feel the Suntouch electric floor warmers are overpriced garbage.
And I didn't mean "the Nobel peace prize was awarded to the person who struggled the most in his childhood"
I was surprised (and pissed off) and wanted to check who the contenders were and this is what the website had to say:

Proposals received for the award of a prize, and investigations and opinions concerning the award of a prize, may not be divulged. A prize-awarding body may, however, after due consideration in each individual case, permit access to material which formed the basis for the evaluation and decision concerning a prize, for purposes of research in intellectual history. Such permission may not, however, be granted until at least 50 years have elapsed after the date on which the decision in question was made.
This is so hilarious, I'm absoutely loving it.

The amount of raw, undistilled incompetence boggles the mind.

Fighting a lost case and losing the case is one thing.
Forging court documents and losing everything: PRICELESS.

It also speaks volumes about the mental capabilities of the individuals at work here. How absurdly stupid do you have to be to forge a document that can be trivially cross-checked with a phone-call at the issuing agency? This is not something where you can weasel out later with an "oops, didn't mean to". It's plain out fraud and I don't think judges have much humor in that regard.

Anyways, I think I'm gonna forge me a nice tax-return statement now and sue my state over it...
So these products were made better by space research but of course that's no justification for the program because we're only seeing what is seen while ignoring what's unseen here-the things that the money would have been used for instead.

Several of those enhancements have rather dubious value to society as well.
LCROSS Impact on NASA Channel - I was dissapointed
I got up early to watch it and they didn't show anything from the impact! Couldn't they at least have shown it from the view of a telescope on earth?

And how could we have had clear, live video from the moon landings decades ago but we can put a video camera on the probe and send back video?

Sorry, kinda frusterated.
Nobel prize recipients are called beforehand and asked if they'll accept before being announced publicly. Actually, most major awards are these days, as it removes the, "Thanks but no thanks, your cause is bankrupt" responses which tend to be embarrassing.
I've rarely seen 6 words that reflect the entrepreneurial spirit so well as this post.
By tainting the Nobel Peace Prize the others get devalued as well, it is one institution.

So, I really did mean the Nobel Prize as such and I'm really sorry they did that.

From the wikipedia article on the Nobel Prize:

"The interval between the accomplishment of the achievement being recognized and the awarding of the Nobel Prize for it varies from discipline to discipline. The prizes in Literature are typically awarded to recognize a cumulative lifetime body of work rather than a single achievement. In this case the notion of "lag" does not directly apply. The prizes in Peace, on the other hand, are often awarded within a few years of the events they recognize. For instance, Kofi Annan was awarded the 2001 Peace Prize just four years after becoming the Secretary-General of the United Nations."

So, maybe this is a case of prescience or something ?

I really think this was dreadfully misguided and that it devalues the whole of the Nobel Prize, of course there is absolutely no way they could ever do anything about it now but the Nobel Prize is now synonymous with 'has the potential to do great things, some day. We hope.'
There is a place for politics on HN after all
Same here. Will come along as well!
Also:

_ Myth: Candidates can be nominated until the last minute.

The nomination deadline is eight months before the announcement, with a strictly enforced deadline of Feb. 1.

Wow! So Obama was president for only 11 days before he was nominated.
Does this count?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aiiu...
Some will say there is no place for politics on HN, on one hand it is right it is likely the technological site but on the other all the stuff we do has so much influence on the society that we can stay apolitical.
Who Is She?
person sees a girl and fantasize about her, he is curious to know WHO IS SHE?
While the discussion quality is high, does this really belong on HN?
> Did the Palestinians stop slaughtering Israelis and vice-versa?

AFAIK, yes - Israel completely obliterated Palestine during Christmas bombing.
Kissinger, Begin, and Sadat all won it in the 70s. It's had zero credibility since then.

Which is a pity, because the clear purpose is to encourage rather than necessarily always to reward, and Obama's intentions definitely seem to be good.
Gary McKinnon loses High Court fight against extradition
It's an achievement, of sorts.
"The predominant sentiment here seems to be Obama is a bad guy"

You got this wrong. Most of them are only questioning the thought-process of the nobel committee (in awarding the prize to Obama) and not of Obama, the person.
Why, in your opinion, does the space program require justification? Is it the expense?

I would counter that the expense of a thing should not be the overwhelming factor in its consideration. Just because something is expensive, does not mean it is not worth doing. Otherwise, we would all be huddling in mud huts and carting around cow dung for a living.
Are you sure it's not some random search? How can I really know it's from the last person who did a search?
Ask HN: What was the worst bug you've ever solved ?
What is the worst bug (the software kind) that you've encountered in your hacking career ?
Especially since the Nobel Peace Price is awarded by a committee of five people elected by the Norwegian Parliament. All other comittees are Swedish. Alfred Nobel's intention with this was to improve Sweden-Norway relations.
You mention that apress lets other authors release open version of their books. Did these authors release their books for free initially or have they been with apress since the beginning?
I think your post sums it up. I can't imagine someone wanting to actually hire one-dimensional droids except for this.
That is correct, we have not closed the prison camp at Guantanamo, nor have we ceased extraordinary renditions, nor apparently have we ceased to commit torture as a matter of policy. While the Nobel Peace Prize is by it's very nature a political tool intended to promote the political goal it is named for; in this case it feels rather premature.

It does seem like an award that was directed more against his predecessor than one that he is inherently deserving of.

Edit: for correction.
Restoring Spring to iPhone/iPod Touch Springboard
It devalued already a few years ago. This is indeed sad, even for Barack Obama, who may one day deserve a "real" Nobel Prize.
Yes it's really the last person who did a search.
In my personal opinion is devalued when they gave it to Al-Gore for making a scare-tactic film on global warming :) (Im not commenting on global warming at all BTW - that is another issue - but the film was pure scare tactic bullshit, which devalued the issue more than raising any awareness. Stuff like that shouldn't be awarded :()

I do agree; the only thing I can think is that Obama has achieved quite a bit so far (getting elected in the first place for example). But your right - at least wait till hes had his term(s) and then consider...

All the reports quote a Nobel guy saying they are doing it to support his ideas/ideals - so it looks like a political move.
My understanding is that Google will only turn over email with a court order, not just because the secret police want to go on a fishing expedition through ALL the email accounts to line up candidates for torture and extra-judicial killings.
Not to mention Al Gore; that one will look really stupid RSN, given how people are starting to understand what a hoax "global warming" is.
I'm hopeful that this prize provides a needed boost to his efforts. Obama has made great progress in restoring America's role in the world. He has the opportunity to make great progress on world peace and this prize is a strong vote of confidence in those efforts.

Well done! I'll be curious to see where he donates the money, though he's not a wealthy man financially, he might want to keep some of it.
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