rawr

Oooh, look out! A bunch of companies with no established user bases are going to boycott you!

This will get the grannies to upgrade their computer machines for sure.

I want a solution to a^3 + b^3 = c^3 where a,b,c are positive integers.

Oh man, your wife is going to be pissed when she finds out you disintegrated her engagement ring for your little computer machine.

Thank you for trivializing a war my grandfather fought in and died. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Just kidding. I'm still trying to figure out who Japan would be..

Pirated games come largely from China.

Most companies do endorse fluid working hours.

It's just a balancing act between wanting everyone to be accessible when you need then and wanting employees to have flexibility in their schedules.

The end of the article was amazing. Nothing better than bitching about your work being stolen and then finding out that your communications director endorses the process by tipping off Gawker. Oh the irony..

I mean, technically it has meaning even without a restricted time frame. Some nonzero percentage of all businesses ever started have never failed.

That being said, it's nothing like 20% so clearly there is an implicit time frame.

Did Slashdot actually beat HN to a story for once?

My head just exploded.

I'm sorry, how is that the story of Mac vs. PC?

Let's play a game. It's called "don't link to sites which have popup balloons when you hover over links". Here's how you play..

While Python is always a safe choice, another strategy would be to investigate what the new programmer is trying to accomplish. Most people aren't like "I'm going to learn a programming language as an academic exercise!", they want to actually do something.

If they are interested in writing web apps you might suggest Flash. If they are interested in writing a 2D video game you might suggest Python. If they are interested in performing numerical analysis of math functions you might suggest getting a girlfriend.

Best technique for reducing complexity: don't use Perl.

TechCrunch: summarizing corporate press releases since 2005

I like how a hefty fraction of the algorithms use neural networks so that they get better as they watch humans play.

The reason for this, of course, is that the developers just want a reason to play Mario :-)

My favorite Slashdot comment on this subject matter was:

"Every developer wants to think of themselves like House, M.D. where if they left the company it would fall apart. In reality, everyone is replaceable and if you got hit by a bus today in three months the company will have completely recovered."

>> "When programmers develop 'for fun' we write documentation."

That's because they get something out of it. Namely, people won't use undocumented software and the authors want their software to be used.

In a corporate situation we don't document our software if we don't have to because we don't care (usually) whether or not people use it. If the company cares, it will force engineers to write documentation and we will do it because we don't want to get fired.

I was expecting this to be about digital signatures and was slightly disappointed when I found out it wasn't the case.

Silly me for assuming a technical issue would be addressed on Hacker News.

What have we learned?

Activism is pointless!

"Since we’re spending so much time and money to promote this phrase, we just want to make sure someone doesn’t say we can’t use it."

That seems like a reasonable argument. Also, IANAL but if I'm not mistaken just because somebody has a trademark for something doesn't mean that it's necessary enforceable.

I was going to read your article, but the picture of a blowup doll makes it hard to do so during work.

I am very pleased to see a legitimate post about hacking on Hacker News. Well played, sir.

I have similar feelings about Detours. Microsoft Research is in their own little world sometimes.

I see they are using the alternate definition of the word "catch" meaning "did not catch". Interesting.

I think that all articles should have a mandatory cars-on-a-bridge analogy.

You forgot "apparently enough things happen to justify a news site dedicated solely to domain names"

I concur. With the title of your blog.

I think this is spot-on.

From a student's perspective, taking notes in class in Word is the de facto standard at this point. The outlining mode is intuitive and efficient.

Now let's say we were to replace this with MediaWiki. When I tab and shift-tab it won't indent and un-indent properly. While I'm sure there is Wiki markup to do outlining, there is no way you'd be able to do it fast enough in class while you're trying to get down everything the professor says.

The author, as parent points out, makes the common mistake of assuming what is true for one in a group is true for the entire group.

Take this message back to Sammael. Every death he has caused since waking, I lay at his feet and call due. Every murder he has ever done or caused, I lay at his feet and call due. He escaped justice in the Rorn M’doi, and at Nol Caimaine, and Sohadra. More of Lews Therin’s memories, but the pain of what had been done there, the agony of what Lews Therin’s eyes had seen, burned across the Void as if Rand’s. But I will see justice done now. Tell him, no truce with the Forsaken. No truce with the Shadow.

Oh fuck off. How can people read this stuff? They're like romance novels for nerds.

Because it's hard.

This is sure to revolutionize all communications done at 460 degrees below zero Fahrenheit!