adammarkey

Although I'm not in Beijing, it's amazing that Hacker News hasn't been blocked by the "Great Firewall".

Any bets on how long it will take before the Chinese government shuts this out of China too?

Pronouncing "Java" like "Yava" is definitely a Dutch thing - I was building a Java based financial system for a bank in the Netherlands and it took a while to get used to the way they pronounce it too :)

Unfortunately the Hero looks like it has some "lag" issues when navigating around the screen in the production models out in Europe right now. I hope it's a software fix to make it better, but I imagine we're going to have to wait for a faster processor to take advantage of that slick UI it has.

Also, T-mobile said that they won't be carrying the Hero because they are releasing the "myTouch" that Arrington was talking about in that article.

Let's hope someone gets on the ball in the US and gives the iPhone a run for it's money with Android. I think it will eventually happen, but we're probably going to have to wait another year.

Being a large company doesn't mean you can "easily replicate" things. The major reason startups can wiggle their way into a market and become a player is because large companies can't react in time to what an agile startup is doing in their space.

I honestly think healthcare / health insurance is a major reason.

It's hard to be "ramen AND medical bills profitable" if you or one of your founders has an urgent medical issue when you're trying to bootstrap yourselves with no insurance.

The Obama administration should look at this issue and provide significantly reduced healthcare to bootstrapped startups.

Link bait title. I had my hopes up for something juicy only to find out something I already knew... government employees build crappy software.

HTML 5 is part of the death-recipe for these native RIA technologies, but there is one other major missing piece at the moment - a fast and dependable javascript engine that can be assumed to exist on client machines.

HTML 5 just provides the UI / Drawing capabilities, but it will have to rely on Javascript perform the processing logic that is necessary in most Rich Internet Applications.

So, when it can be assumed that HTML 5 is fully implemented AND there is a fast enough Javascript engine to rival native code (similar to .NET in silverlight, actionscript in Flash, and Java in JavaFX) - then then open web will truely take over.

And personally, I cannot wait for that day.

As we all know, XML is just another word for Productivity! One less thing to compile and throw those pesky errors before we put it straight into production.

I can't wait to show this to the IT guys... if they ever get back from their 4 hour lunch break.

Awesome mullet BTW!

Thanks!

"Photo-slide shows" on the web need to die, anytime I see one, I never click on it. These ad-spam on these things is nearing the annoyance levels of most porn sites..

My hard drive is already filled with MILFS and performs quite well for my requirements.

/me ducks and covers

I think optimism is an essential core value (or characteristic) of a successful company even though it might inhibit the "fail fast" methodology you speak of.

Optimism when kept in check can be the fuel for passion in you and your co-founders.

Totally agree with you.

I for one don't want my browser knowing "who I am" - I prefer to let the applications I use know that.

I disagree, it should be a "killer" because flash uses a closed source for-profit runtime from adobe. The javascript standard is free to use and implement and doesn't require me to have any browser plugins to view great looking websites.

The heavyweight category needs to be split up.

Technologies like flex / silverlight / javafx / open laszlo use compiled binaries to run their applications via a browser plugin (flash, java vm, silverlight vm).

The other products in the heavyweight category utilize HTML / Javascript and don't require plugins. That's a big difference that this person seemed to miss...

Since Flash is being threatened by Javascript, it looks like Adobe is being forced to band together with another threatened company (Facebook being threatened by Twitter).

I'm on the side of twitter + javascript to win this one - but overall it will make an interesting tag team match.

Unless there's a joke that I'm not getting with this link, how did this article end up on the front page?

Hans Reiser ended up a murderer too. Be careful not to follow his path too closely :)

Looks like facebook just upped their ante in it's game to squash twitter.

The color contrast on the non-bolded blue text seems off and tends to hurt my eyes in FF3.

Otherwise it's pretty easy to figure out what the site is supposed to do.

Maybe Oracle will buy this now too.

Yeah and because they are a "virtual" office, where do they put the ping pong table?

What are they going to do to pass the time!?

Oh wait...

Frankly I don't care about its w3c standards and fast JS - those are problems people are working on, and it's not the interesting part about this browser. It's not meant to be a "production" browser that you will be using tomorrow to surf to facebook.

It's about applying the principles of operating system design to better use the browser as the next platform for applications to be built on. Google started this with chrome, and Gazelle takes it to the next level. Hopefully a major browser will utilize these principles for their next generation browsers.

Agreed. It's a great example of the saying:

"It takes one to know one."

Did that strip mall happen to be in Canton, Ohio?

I was there too!!

Preparing for war? Sound like FUD to me.

Being prepared in the event a war happens is more likely.

I would tell them a couple things:

1) Get involved in communities (like HN, and local CS interest groups) - getting involved while young can lead to many opportunities that "just having a CS degree" wont lead you to.

2) Most university CS programs stick to 1 or 2 languages at the core (java or c/c++) - tell them to try and implement some of their homework in ruby / python / or even things like Scala to learn the similarities and differences between programming languages. This will only be more helpful as you progress into higher level courses.

Not only does Wolf3d run beautifully on the iPhone, the controls (and options for modifying them) actually make the iPhone a viable platform for 2.5 dimensional FPS games.

I'd like to see what he can come up with for Quake (a fully 3D shooter - which adds aiming up and down)

While there may be a couple decisions that may be put on hold until this IBM / Sun thing is completed, I don't think the fundamental reasons behind choosing Java or .NET will change.

Java will still have the community, open libraries, and developer availability that will ensure it's viability in the market. IBM contributes to many great open source projects (Eclipse, Dojo foundation) because they understand the importance of a community of developers that don't pay license fees directly to them.

Now when Twitter goes down today, we know who to thank :)

In all seriousness - Excellent work. Posterous rocks.

I feel your pain with java serialization.

The fact that you cant serialize exceptions to notify systems connected to a JVM that something blew up is just insane.

All objects should be able to be serialized (in binary) from one system to another as long as JVM versions and class libraries match... end of story.