skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> the smiley should tell you this ^ is not a serious complaint.

Then why put the link at all?
Weird multitouch mouse studies by Microsoft
Our launch experience: beta to DEMO to post-revenue
That right there, the perfect use case for fork. Spinning a task off to do its thing in isolation.
and the more we forget how much RMS did. People lose respect to him, I even heard people saying: "and what did he write? Emacs? nobody use that sh*t", the fact is, a lot of todays innovation is built on top of Stallman's work.
Wow, that's quick. I thought it typically took years to get a file out of the FBI.
In striking martial arts, they teach you to aim your strikes at a point beyond the real point where your strike will end.
More Proof Dual-Screen Laptops Are Coming
Sure, you get football players that comment on politics, movie stars that tell you how to run a business (or a state or a country for that matter).

No offense to Brian Eno, he's a pretty smart guy and has a lot of stuff to say that makes sense, also outside his domain. (and makes interesting music, 'the pearl' is my favorite music to code by).

But it doesn't generalize.
What about a convincing fat-suit? You could make one of those without metal components, and you'd need to require people to remove clothing, or have trained personnel pat down every passenger to detect that. And you could easily conceal about 100 pounds of explosive in that fashion. (Making it proof against chemical sniffers would be problematic, though.)
Thanks for pointing that out. I'll get it fixed.
For anyone that wants to know more about what a null-prefix cert is:

http://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2009/08/12/curl-fooled-by-null-pr...
> Saying employment is essentially a form of slavery is making light of slavery.

Well said. I would also add that slavery in the history of the U.S. was especially dark. Slaves were not only robbed of their freedom, but also treated as less than human in many cases enduring the whip, beatings, rape and general mistreatment.
That's a logical fallacy. It doesn't matter how much he did, if he says or does stuff today that doesn't hold water he should be called on it.

If all the software that deIcaza and Stallman helped produce would be removed from your average Ubuntu box it would probably not get into booting, let alone do something useful. That doesn't give either of them the right to pretend to speak for everybody or to try to carve up the world of software in to camps.
Well, yeah, and those fees they're missing out on indirectly fund that sysadmin's department.
Congressional leaders fight against posting bills online
One man's hell is another man's heaven.
That's still going to be muffled by the body, unless they whip it out first. So, what's next, are we going to outlaw women in skirts?
Anyone remember the joy of using VB4 or Turbo Pascal 2.0? I'm feeling nostalgic. Podcast featuring early Turbo Pascal history via the original authors of the Wildcat BBS (visit to Ander Hejlsberg's house). Listening to this now..

http://blogs.teamb.com/craigstuntz/2009/05/14/38310/
I guess it did. Remember Pownce was very popular back in 2007 and they added more features than Twitter had at that time.

The matter was people didn't wanna write thing twice, one in twitter and one in pownce, and since twitter had more users than Pownce (don't know how many more), it "won the race".
That works, too!

The reason I like using _obj is because "this" is notoriously hard to work with in JS. If, inside foo(), you have an iterator that you pass a function to, "this" takes on a different meaning inside that function.

Some people are really good at working out what "this" refers to, but I'm not. So I assign the main object to _obj just to be safe.
I'll have to admit I'm a big fan of James Coglan. Checkout his "Scheme in 15 minutes" screencast: http://blog.jcoglan.com/2009/05/19/talk-writing-a-language-i...
I would imagine that if you designed it to look like a near full-term pregnancy, that you could get it close enough to the masses of people in the security lines for sure.

To have a massively disruptive attack, you don't need to bring down an airliner; you only need to kill and injure a whole bunch of people, such as those conveniently massed outside the security screening areas. You could probably accomplish the same thing much more easily by just packing a stroller full of explosives and detonating THAT in the security line.
Miguel is not an explorer. He and Microsoft are land grabbers.
I imagine parent's thinking of fake pregnancy, not a flashlight sized/shaped device. (I made that as vanilla-sounding as I could...)
"Wave loves bandwidth. If you're not on a fast broadband connection, don't bother trying to use it."

One of the big downsides of using XMPP.
That's exactly opposite of what I think is actually going on. I don't want to get into a GPL vs BSD argument, but he does say people should not use commercial software, thus limiting their options to often less useful free software equivalents. And corporations do give you choice in usage as you can always opt to not buy software from them. A well-regulated commercial market is all about choice.
Firefox 3.6 beta set to ship next week
Unique design handbags online : GoArticles.com
That you didn't look @ even last year's laureates before mouthing off with a preformed opinion?
Maybe slavery is too strong a word but sometimes employment feels like a form of indenture:

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

A good reason to start own business.
Anybody making that comparison should go and study what slavery meant (and unfortunately still means) for a while.

I really find it unbelievable that someone would even contemplate such a comparison and think it a meaningful one.

Your employer does not own you, you can switch employers whenever you want - or you can stop working all together.

Nobody is going to come after you to murder you or haul you back if you run away.

No employer is going to sell you to any other, or take physical advantage of you.

You are not born into employment.

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

Is word play, it relates to being 'forced', but in reality nobody is really forced. It's just that if you want to take part in society you are expected to pull your weight, and that means either getting a job or doing your own thing (being self employed).
You're saying it's a stark difference of degree. But in many cases, it is just a difference of degree.

Many of the employment conditions of the 19th century that eventually led to various laws and labor unions were nowhere near as bad as the dark parts of slaver you allude to, but they were no picnic either.

The US practice of tying health care to employment still smacks of something unsavory to me.
Who is Migheul de Icaza? I mean, pardon my ignorance, why what he says is important?
Oracle OpenWorld 2009 - Oracle Wiki
Introducing the Doctor Who logo 2010
Supercharge Your GNU Screen With A Power "Taskbar" And Never Feel Lost Again
KDDI shows latest prototype phone based on fuel cell
To be clear: this is a two-part hack.

Part 1: The null-prefix cert bug is still in the Windows SSL stack. Any browser that uses the Windows SSL libs will take this cert, issued to CN=www.paypal.com\0someoneelse.es, and use it for CN=www.paypal.com.

Part 2: The certificate has already been revoked by its issuer, but a man-in-the-middle attack will prevent the client from discovering that. Moxie Marlinspike's sslsniff + arp spoofing can be run anywhere within the layer 2 broadcast domain in order to deceive the client when it tries to verify the cert.
The whole point of the phrase FUD is that it's an emotional response. People use it to try to overwhelm someone's rational thought process with Fear.

I think you SHOULD use past performance of a corporation as part of a rational thought process in deciding whether to use software. But FUD is never justified because emotion has no place in rational decisions.
Online car sales: Bricks-and-mortar middlemen continue to call the shots
Not done is nothing
An oldie, but a goodie. His articles are forever destined to resurface randomly on hacker news...
Most people don't have the courage of conviction. To stake out a position with a mental framework that supports it, and to live by what that position implies, is difficult.

I don't think one can say that RMS didn't achieve much. He supplied the seed, directly or indirectly, to many free and open software accomplishments. I don't think that would have happened if he'd been wishy-washy, flexible, easy-going guy. He'd certainly have been easier to like, but probably not as effective.

And to reiterate, I don't subscribe to rms's opinion, or think he's right on everything, or anything in particular without further investigation. But I do think lack of compromise is harder than it looks.
Miguel de Icaza (born c. 1972) is a Mexican free software programmer, best known for starting the GNOME and Mono projects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza
This mashup involves official crime data from the Chicago PD:

http://chicago.everyblock.com/crime/

Maps, charts, etc. ... but I don't see how it's monetized. They've expanded to other cities recently (see list at bottom)
i need an invite.
I didn't. But when PACER went down they announced they were launching an investigation into who did it.
21-year-old computer geek makes £1m with online game (Torn)
What is more fundamental: Physics or Computer Science?
He started gnome and mono projects, created ximian (now part of novell). IMHO that classifies him as important.
I'd say that it's very likely that if he hadn't done it, others would have.

(I'm firmly in the "This man is completely insane" camp).
Brian Behlendorf, Founding Member of the Apache Software Foundation
Alexa ranks Facebook #2 website worldwide (Google #1, Yahoo #3)
Why is the US still using imperal units?
You might argue that employment is optional, but this is not the case in practice especially if you have a family to support.

Does that mean you'd consider being a parent to be "slavery"? Were cavemen "slaves" because they had to hunt to feed their family?

Quit flamebaiting. This isn't "intellectually curious."
Thanks, my take is slightly different, I'm looking at lettings users report crime anonymously, as opposed to aggregating official data.
Don't Go to College to Learn
I agree, MikeD... typical big government thinking: expensive, intrusive, & ineffective...

"For bloggers who review products, this means that the days of an unimpeded flow of giveaways may be over."

Really? Does anyone actually think bloggers who review products PAY for the stuff they review? Did Kirstie Alley pay to enrol in Jenny Craig? Does Roger Ebert pay to see movies? C'mon...

I'd rather see the FTC spending taxpayers money to teach people about naivety: "And remember, when someone blogs about their breakfast and tells you that 'Super Sugary Maple Pops are part of a well balanced diet' you might want to question their motives."

What's next? Maybe the FTC should tackle Buzz marketing.. When a stranger strikes up a "random" conversation about "these new shoes that stimulate your chakras as you walk," should the FTC be monitoring the conversation? Good luck (and good night).

O - one last rhetorical Q: what was the FTC doing when this stuff happened?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_administration_payment_of_...
Many men/women are reluctant to look for another partner, since they might own a home or have kids together.

And even if they do find another partner, they might turn out to be worse than the one they left.

Therefore, being in a relationship is, by your yardstick, "slavery."
So gentlemen our plan is simple.
We study computer graphics for 10years, get PhDs, develop a system that gets headlined at siggraph, become famous and - then we release a binary that the HN readers will download.

World domination is in our sights <evil laugh>
Lawyers.

edit: hey downmodders, seriously, the answer is lawyers.

The legal mess that would ensue from having to switch the land measurements to metric is one of the biggest stumbling blocks, the lawyers would have endless causes to bicker over the exact location of property boundaries.

Never mind that the inch is defined as 0.0254 meters.
> A good reason to start own business.

And become indentured to your customers.
But that's a very different point. Stallman sees proprietary software as a violation of fundamental freedoms, like slavery is a violation of fundamental freedoms.

Linus also seems like a much happier guy.

Judging an idea based on how happy those who believe it are seems like a dangerous heuristic.
Basically he's a guy that's responsible for some quite big open source software projects (GNOME,gnumeric,mono) used by quite a lot of people.

He has also received the Free Software Foundation award for the Advancement of Free Software, which is why it is kind of a big deal when RMS turns around and calls him a traitor.
You mean, having money is not optional. Employment is optional in the sense that you generally have several choices of where you can work, at least.
I think that savvy organizations are going to bury these disclosures in their Terms & Conditions (or perhaps a new "Disclosures" page will become common?) along with everything else they don't care if you read, but still want you to be 'notified of' and bound by.
Original link: http://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2009/10/unboxing-you-won-see-...
In the systems programming languages of old, fork is just easier than threading.

Fork model:

Step 1: Write a program to accept a single connection to a single TCP socket, then handle the request.

Step 2: Judiciously place a fork() call at the time of the new connection coming into the socket.

Step 3: Add an "if" statement to wait for another request if you happen to be the parent process after the fork.

You're done!

You just wrote a program capable of handling thousands of concurrent requests, with none of the concurrency nightmares that keep sensible men up at night. Going from the simplest case to the finished version was a two-line code change.
Good enough for display on TV news or a newspaper ?

Get me a picture of the president, put a girl in a red dress in his eye-line.
Get me a picture of evil dictator - add some WMD in the background.

At the moment you need an intern to do this be much better when you can do it yourself.
Are coming? Are here: http://jkontherun.com/2009/01/22/quick-impressions-of-the-le...
It is not your boss that requires you to fill your belly with food. It is reality. It is not your culture that requires you to drink water. It is reality.

That we choose to associate such that we are not all individually responsible for every requirement that reality imposes on us is not slavery. It is simply the universe.

Further, it is not your boss that requires you to buy a new car. It is your choice. Nobody is holding a gun to your head and ordering you to go out to eat instead of eating lentil soup. It is your choice.

You want to avoid "wage slavery?" It is simple. SPEND LESS, and you will not need to make as much. The actual bottom of what you are required to spend is quite low and can be very feasibly picked up in odd jobs, transient employment, and judicious use of public services; you don't even need to go "Mountain Man". But it is not slavery. You have chosen this. If you feel you have no choice but to choose civilization and employment, that is because (free) civilization is a fucking good deal! I only wish there were more like it! Stop whining and enjoy it. Or man up, pay the piper, and disconnect. But don't come whining to me about the consequences.

Slavery is when you are told to do nasty work, and you will be shot if you don't. Or raped, regardless of your gender. It's not even remotely the same.
You might argue that employment is optional, but this is not the case in practice especially if you have a family to support.

OK so let's engage in a thought experiment - we make employment optional, so you don't have to work even if you have a family to support. But now, in order to get the resources to support your family, you have to force someone else to do something they don't want to do.

So protecting you from the "slavery" of employment necessarily implies some degree of slavery for some third party, because the resources needed to support your family don't come from nowhere. That's really not fair to the third party, don't you think?
I dont think any married man would argue with that perspective!

(joking)
I know this is an old-ish article, but this is a topic that severely annoys me. I was taught both systems of measurement, beginning in grade school. But I still have to calculate feet and inches. I have to buy twice as many tools for my garage, because that bolt could be 3/4" or 17mm. NASA can't even manage to build the space shuttle replacement using the metric standard? wtf?
> Linux also seems like a much happier guy

RMS doing the soulja boy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C6r6fG4k40

> Everything else

I agree. If you're doing free software, you're writing it for free, so make it a fun thing. You can only "fight to take down the man" for so long.
No. Your message sends all end up going to the same place where you pass in (a) the target of the send (b) and the message you were sending. This handles dispatch to wherever that's supposed to end up. Objective-C itself handles it this way using objc_msgSend.

In fact... since MacRuby is built entirely on top of Cocoa primitives, it wouldn't surprise me if they've translated all Ruby messages into Objective-C messages and just use objc_msgSend for all of this sort of dispatch.

For an interesting exploration of this particular call, check out this blog post: http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/archives/2005/08/01/objc_msgs...
What about the fundamental freedom to do what you please with your own creation? Stallman never talks about that freedom.
With regards to how the disclosure should be made, the FCC are leaving it quite open ended, but it has to be, and I forget what the exact word is in the FCC document but it's something like, "prominent."
Just let them whoever they want to be. Causing unnecessary commotion is no way of leading a community.
>> "Stallman sees proprietary software as a violation of fundamental freedoms, like slavery is a violation of fundamental freedoms."

See this is the insane part. How can anyone believe that? No one forces you to use their proprietary software. If you don't like proprietary software, write your own equivalent software and use that. (Of course these days it's sometimes hard to get your own software onto devices, but rarely is it impossible).
As a married man, I do appreciate the joke ;-) That said, for anyone who seriously thinks this, just remember that unless you're being locked in a cellar, you can walk out that door any time you want without being forced to go back. Servants can't.
If you have experience with bureaucracies the response confirms the original article. My favorite line was, Currently over 40% of our students participate in our Gifted and Talented program offerings across all grades. Which tells me that their definition of "Gifted and Talented" is so broad as to be meaningless. And certainly doesn't have any room to understand truly extraordinary kids.
The opposite of slavery is not laziness or slacking.
"In Torn players earn points and status by carrying out muggings, murders and heists in an imaginary city.

"But Joe claims the game is about 'meeting people' not committing crimes and revealed one couple have even married because of Torn."

Hilarious! What's next? Torn-dating.com? Stay tuned...
I wonder if it's also because people name their apps with made-up words.
> sometimes I do the teaching, when I am in the flow, other times it does, when I am debugging.

Poetry :)
Zamunda.NET
Yea but I had heard somewhere that the linux clone was based on Plan 9 rfork.

"FreeBSD's rfork(2) and Linux's clone(2) system calls are modeled on Plan 9's rfork(2)"

source - http://catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/plan9.html
I'm with you most of the way, I think that most of us on HN have more freedom than what alot of people would consider slaves, but I think you're ignoring the coercive factors of economy and society.

I think that people can be placed in compromising positions by economies and cultures that they're a part of. A concrete and probably relevant example could be student loans: a student incurs a tremendous debt for their education, only to be obligated to work in order to service that debt.

Also, your last sentence irks me. Contributing to your community does not mean to have a job. There are plenty of ways to 'pull your weight' that don't involve making money. Building community spaces, plain talking to people, working on a neighborhood watch are all beneficial but are often unpaid. Paying taxes does not necessarily make for a successful community.
How do you propose to solve regulatory capture with more regulations? Or more regulators? Given the obvious failure of regulation, why is the only answer that anyone can conceive of "more regulations"? Like trying to quench a fire by adding more fuel, oxygen, and heat.

And in light of the inability of regulators to enforce the regulations and the plain failure of them to do so, who cares what the regulations actually said anyhow?
How Twitter Got an App Store: The Oneforty Story
Huge respect for both Miguel and RMS. Everyone knows RMS says stupid ridiculous things (like his anti-procreation posts on usenet). Seems good enough to disregard him as a nut on some issues, and a genius on others.

That said, I don't think I'll ever understand the Mono project. As a former C# coder (back in 2004), the project was doomed to failure from the getgo. No .NET developer in their right mind would use it as it'll always be lacking in features compared to Microsoft's implementation.

It's such a sad project because Microsoft gives it no love, yet has no problem using it as an example of how "open" their platform is. Seems like a complete waste of talent to me.
The design goals and implementation of a hosted spam filtering solution
Palm revises webOS app policy - much more freedom for developers
Sounds right, but until a friend of you sends a .doc or .ppt file as an attachment.
Filming in Trafalgar Square - Only if you don't look Pro
My position on unit testing is, "Have you tried it?", followed by, "No, seriously, have you actually tried to use it for a period of time, not just played with it for an hour?", which I will then follow by... wishing the programmer well regardless of how they now feel about it, because now they've at least got some experience.

Unit testing is a big deal. Everybody should try it. Ideally, you should try it with the next project you start from scratch (or subproject as the case may be) because trying to retrofit an existing code base does not give accurate impressions. I'd also point out that some things are easier to test than others, but that once you have a bit of experience sometimes even the hard ones turn out to be feasible. (For example, you shouldn't go straight to UI testing, but there are many other good testing starting points, like parsing or network communication.) You really should stick with it at least long enough for it to detect at least one bug that is a total surprise to you, because that will happen, it's only a matter of time. But once you've tried it, I respect your opinion after that.

I've also tried TDD, which I just could not get into, whereas unit tests I love.
Tcl would have far better than Java as a web plugin, but I guess they went with Java rather than Tcl at Sun and the rest is history.