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So this is "Hacker News"? i.e. site for HACKERS to hang out?

Where stories about weight loss, Hollywood-grade entertainment industry rumors and get-rich-quick speculators routinely get voted up to the top, while kick-ass Rails API documentation site I submitted yesterday was not even noticed.

What's next? Britney's next pregnancy prediction?

Yes, making an OS with pre-emptive multi-tasking with a modern graphical UI that could be installed (and be fast) on an affordable family PC with just 4MB of RAM, is "software mediocrity". The stories of "old glory days" should be reserved strictly to true geniuses who wouldn't touch anything cheaper than 10K UNIX workstations.

I used to work under a CTO who's been in OS/2 kernel group at the time of their cooperation with MS. He's still claiming them all idiots and arrogant pricks, only "their" OS/2 eventually worked out, but "his" OS/2 silently died.

You can't beat at the same time the mighty gorilla (IBM) and ambitious uprising young startup (Apple) on marketing or luck alone, you'd need an engineering arm slightly above mediocre level.

So... I call BS on your comment. I bet Microsoft in the 80s was more exciting place to be than Google is today.

emacs and vim are so different from "desktop apps" that you won't notice the difference.

Well... gVim is pretty nicely integrated into Gnome, picks up theme/colors/icons, etc. I like it a lot.

Thank you for replying BTW: I will definitely install 4.1 myself. If FF and Gimp experience won't suffer, I may actually consider switching.

Why do we need to "save music industry"? The entire "industry" was a byproduct of inventing a way to record sound. Someone with money and equipment (the aforementioned "industry") suddenly was able to record something and make a profit on those who could not.

Soon, however, we invented ways to record sound cheaply, thus one didn't have to spend as much on recording/reproducing hardware, giving people ability to do it themselves, and the "industry" started to bitch about VCRs and cassette recorders.

Now we've come up with even cheaper way to record, copy and even manipulate (!) sound. And a way to distribute it for free.

The "industry" is clearly not needed anymore, there is no "product" behind it, just a bunch of useless "distributors" and "promoters". Why would we want to save THAT?

Nothing is going to happen to music, the music has been around for thousands of years, long before all these inventions took place, and the best musical creations happened without any help from the "industry".

We (engineers) gave them (the industry) an exclusive monopoly to charge for a short-lived privilege of storing and transporting sound, now we're taking it back. In that sense everything goes back to normal: nothing to be saved here.

So... what's the point of KDE then? I don't think I've ever seen KDE ports of vim or emacs (only GTK), and FireFox is also GTK... Then there is Gimp, how can you do without it...

The only KDE app that is worth using compared to GTK counterparts that comes to mind is probably Amarok [and I still prefer Rythmobx].

Am I missing something here?

Hm... I look at this as a history lesson. I jumped on Linux wagon fairly late, in 2006. Since then I had to install it on 4 laptops and 3 desktops, with minor hiccups related to wireless and video: nothing that Google couldn't solve.

And I never had to recompile the kernel. In fact, the only software I ever had to compile on Linux was mine (I did compile my own builds of a few apps, but only because I wanted to enable some "experimental" features not available in standard repositories).

An isomorphic Windows comic would be about computer virus eating your cat or a pop-ups window bumping your grandma in the forehead.

How do Gnome Apps look like on KDE 4.x? I really dig their improvements, but nearly all applications I use are GTK-based [Firefox, gVim, SqlBrowser]. Do they get the same window look/feel? Font settings? How well are they integrated into KDE desktop overall?

How pathetic. (you, not cuil). Go and make fun of Facebook instead. It's a fucking MESSAGE BOARD WRITTEN IN PHP. At least Cuil is trying to build something not trivial and useless, facing real competition and going after real money.

They need to hurry up, otherwise there won't be any developers left to try the new thingie out, only 60+ old ex-taxi drivers who position their monitors facing a corner, fire up an anti-virus in "perpetual disk scan mode" and fall asleep in front of "SQL Query Designer" inside of Visual Studio awaiting for 5:00PM to go home.

1.9 will introduce native threads, which aren't much better.

What? They're not only "better", they're actually _threads_, i.e. are able to run in parallel, you know? What are Ruby 1.8 threads good for, except for sitting on sockets?

I don't get it. We aren't building any new highways (easy to check) yet our expenses are going up. WTF?!

I upmodded you because I share your wish, but unfortunately what you're asking for is impossible.

Both of my parents have been railroad engineers all their lifes, and the main thing I learned was this: railroads are not economical at transporting passengers. Nearly all countries with "decent train systems" use government subsidies to effectively sponsor passenger railroad transport. Even subways can't make any profit.

And I am against paying more taxes. Period. Therefore, no government subsidies to Amtrak from me.

My wife is a wedding photographer and I must say that projectwedding.com was a brilliant idea.

I think I am giving up on this "hacker" thing, there are just too many possible meanings and different people perceive it differently, thus it makes no sense to use the word in real life anymore.

The original, true meaning has been lost: nobody I know uses this word it in's original context. A "hacker" these days means one of these three:

1. Programmer (or a manager) who prefers quick&dirty hacks that can't be maintained and, after accumulating into a critical mass, tend to bring the overall project progress to a halt.

2. Someone who breaks into other people computers, steals their personal porn, collection of cat photos and, of course, credit card numbers.

3. The other, non-business type of founders of "Internet Startups". Often not having an MBA, or simply a possession of "Python in 21 days" automatically qualifies you as a "hacker".

And since majority of people use the word in one of those contexts, I figured why bother... BTW my cat is a hacker too: his portfolio of hacks is growing every day.

Does Ruby 1.9 have a web page or something? Ruby's site has very little information on how's the project going, and I am not too involved to follow the mailing lists.

Questions like: when Rails support is coming? Or will native threads be supported?

HUGE thanks! BTW, I've been experimenting with web-based software running on a desktop with XUL/WebKit-based clients that run their own in-process HTTP server (I've used CherryPy) and I like this approach: HTML-based UIs are way easier to create than typical UI widgets.

I've been looking for something like this for a while: currently I use Tomboy on Linux but the UI is too basic. I love your attention to detail: Ctrl+B makes my selection bold - fantastic.

Are you going to open the code? I'm sure you've used tons of other people's work: come on, contribute some back!

I'd love to run it on my laptop: since the software is truly personal, without any sharing/collaboration benefits, why would I want to keep it in the "cloud", which often is unavailable?

So... where is the code? I saw "download" feature, but it gives me HTML, not the software.

Daniel, the stories regarding Russian corruption are greatly exaggerated in US media [which, of course, doesn't mean there isn't any]. The book by Phillips explains why: this isn't about anti-Russian/anti-American politics, there are real and valid business reasons behind this.

Also, do not dismiss Phillips as "one of those" authors. Far from it.

Following your logic we shouldn't be building factories in China (because they're commies) and we shouldn't be investing in Iraq (because they're crazy Muslims).

American economy, and the super-power status that comes with it, had been built on two things: exploration of oil as a new energy medium and devastating world wars in Europe that crippled competitors, namely UK. But we aren't #1 oil producer anymore, soon we won't be #2 as well, meanwhile the world oil production has stopped growing 2 years ago, thus we need something else.

We've tried at least one "new thing", look at our attempt to become the center of world's finance, but failed. Why not become the global dominating power at computation and information processing? Why not take advantage of American universities, cheap Russian electricity, whatever it takes, to find something, besides oil and finance, to power US economy for years to come?

His nick implies, at least statistically speaking, that he lives in a informational isolation and has no access to news, unless he knows more than one language [and uses it].

For English speakers the only source of information about international affairs, IMO, is books: Internet and TV are useless. For Daniel I'd recommend "Bad Money" by Kevin Phillips.

200ms is very slow. I wouldn't put my business on anything slower than 100ms, I manage servers at three different US data centers and ping is within 50..70ms range for all of them, including cheap slicehost.

I belive that just like WallStreet was driving/encouraging increase in housing prices and spending habits of Americans, Silicon Valley VCs of late have been encouraging build-to-flip ventures.

Yeah, shadows.com tried the same thing, and they had plugins for IE/FF, are they still around?

TV programming is junk, it's anti-Internet, it's old. What's the point of watching whatever someone else pre-selected for you? Netflix is obsolete too: these funky plastic disks are so last century.

If I can't download a video, I don't care for it. iTunes HD rentals are ok, but selection is small. Amazon's offering is Windows-only... What a weird choice of a target market... I thought only unemployed still use Windows at home since it comes standard on $299 laptops.

On the one hand, you have to admit this is revolutionary.

#1 No it isn't. Remember Microsoft Passport?

The web will be transformed from the still (somewhat) closed system it is today, to a massively social experience

No it wont. See #1.

There is another knol out there, it's called "about.com", and all 3 points the author is making (including high pagerank) isn't working for them.

Most of content on about.com is utter junk: a bunch of bored housewives trying to make a buck are desperate to write something, anything.

No, they aren't. The former suppresses competition because it relies on existence of "big gorillas" to come over and buy you, therefore no new gorillas can emerge. Meanwhile, most often than not, big gorillas simply put their new toys on the shelf, thus suppressing innovation.

In that regard, entrepreneurs who build to flip are no different from real estate speculators: they make a few people richer, but in the end you'll end up with the same lot of aging houses.

Not to mention that "build to flip" companies simply suck. Their products are jokes built overnight as parasites on shoulders of open source excellence, and in the end they don't reward financially anyone but investors and (but not always) founders: it's statistically stupid decision to work long hours as a regular programmer for a startup whose goal is to sell out for $50M after 3 rounds of funding.

I like Paul a lot, but his patronage and encouragement (!) of build-and-flip projects is the worst part of "PG culture" that I have the biggest problem with. Especially when he blames VCs for not funding the "next Google". The Google wouldn't has happened if S&L landed on YC.news some day in 99: they'd sell out to Yahoo for $10M instead.

Dell charges $1-2 per crapware install, but sometimes those are free if Dell feels like they add value. Vista Basic, OEM edition, is probably $50 (I am guessing about this one). This requires 20-25 cases of infection with useless shit to offset Microsoft tax.

This still can't explain how come Ubuntu-based machines are more expensive.

I think that Dell simply rides the demand train: they're the only big-name brand that sells Ubuntu-powered machines (very few know that Lenovo sells SUSE) and they're enjoying higher profit margins on them.

With laptops, there are 3 things to be worried about: video, wireless and suspend/resume.

Video: Always Intel integrated. Wifi : Anything from Intel Suspend/Resume: Thinkpads

"Desktop" is too broad of a definition. Gnome/Nautilus already kick Finder's ass, but is it enough to recommend Ubuntu over OSX to my parents? No.

What Linux needs, is PC manufacturer's support. I am not talking about drivers here, I'm talking about quality pre-installs done at the factory. Once suppliers see this, they'll provide quality Linux drivers in order to compete. And for users stuff "will just work".

ThinkPad T61 running Ubuntu is in many ways superior to MBP/OSX (and 30% cheaper), but only because I deliberately configured it with only Linux-compatible components and spent a weekend tuning it upon arrival.

What I don't get is why aren't housing prices falling even further? In my recent memory (I moved to US in 2000) house prices rose by 200-400% and they haven't fallen nearly as much lately.

A decent houses/condos in all interesting US metro areas are still in $400K+ range, which is absolutely insane, considering median family incomes.

Even most financial planning books/sites will tell you that it's "normal" to spend about 30% of your after-tax income on housing. WTF? Since when it's been "normal"?