AF

Smalltalk is a really excellent language. Very minimal (yet attractive and understandable syntax), and the use of blocks make very cool things possible.

Ruby is about 75% there. Unfortunately Smalltalk suffers from the same problem Common Lisp does; poor marketing/popularity and so-so implementations (compared to say Python).

I've had my share of bad experiences with Apple products/computers. You are just trading one corporation for another - I think you should seriously consider getting a decent piece of hardware from any PC manufacturer and install Ubuntu on it.

Ubuntu really isn't difficult to setup at all on most PCs.

Speaking of Rails, there are other options in the Python world besides Django.

Pylons is a very Rails-y framework with the difference being that it is made to be easy to customize. In Rails if you don't like something you are going to have a hard time changing it out unless you are a good hacker. In Pylons that is easy, and you've got access to Python's vastly better platform (speed, Unicode support) and libraries.

If you are an absolute beginning programmer it might be kind of hard to pick up, but if you've programmed a bit or you've used one or two web frameworks (especially Rails) Pylons won't be hard to learn.

http://pylonshq.com/

One problem with this: people expect to do that in video games. They are spending lots of time to be entertained. For web apps they just want the full functionality right there. They don't want to have to 'work' to get it. I'm not so sure such a model would work well for the web, but it is an interesting idea nonetheless.

The issue is EFI. The new Intel-based Macs do not use BIOS.

Heh, well if you are building YouTube, Dreamhost isn't going to do much good either. :)

Hey guys...

I own an Apple and have been trying to get Ubuntu running on it. I got it to work but there's just a lot of small issues and it just doesn't feel solid.

What I'm looking for is a laptop which is somewhat attractive like Apple's stuff but will run Linux. I think Dell hardware is atrocious (and by this I mean it looks very ugly) so I'm looking for whatever else is out there. The Lenovos seem kind of nice. Does anyone have experience with them?

Thanks for any suggestions.

I just wanted to say that if you ever plan on running Linux on your machine, don't get a Mac.

Ubuntu in particular works, but there's a lot of hacking to get it to do so and little issues abound (at least that's my experience).

Please tell me what is wrong with my statement.

I don't think it of respectful users, I think it of Digg users, which have never been shown to be intelligent or respectful of either the web site they use or anyone else for that matter.

I'm fairly certain it isn't revolutionary, it just shows the rampant immaturity of Digg's user base and their mob justice that has no respect and knows no bounds. It isn't the first time they've done this; it is the first time they've done it directly to Digg.

Seriously, is this what social media is about? Complete chaos?

The general idea is interesting and possibly even right, but bloggers tend to overvalue and exaggerate blogging's reach.

Paul just how much impact do you think that Reddit being initially implemented in Lisp had?

I mean, sure, relative numbers of Lisp users might have been pretty small, but the very fact that it was written in Lisp may have gotten fans and detractors to at least hear about the site (probably the hardest thing to do), and then once they checked it out start using it.

So how important do you think that was to initial popularity? Is implementing a site in an obscure yet much-discussed language worth it just for publicity reasons?

Never. Think about what you are asking. The probability of anyone's startup succeeding is miniscule. And if doesn't succeed and you've sacrificed friends and who you are, what have you become? Miserable.

Don't let a business and money consume your life.

If the original poster has his service out when he does this, it could end up being both very bad PR for her and very good PR for him.

In fact, her ripping off his idea could end up being better publicity than he would've gotten anywhere else.

So basically Digg does what everyone else does?

I've always wondered if Digg was written using Python or another language instead of PHP, if they could squeeze better performance out of it.

Is it? I think the documentation on the actual site is more complete. It will be nice when they just get one set of complete documentation.

Also keep in mind that Python has much better (quantity and quality) libraries.

Compare, for example, SQLAlchemy to ActiveRecord. Not even close. Heck, you could even compare Django's ORM or SQLObject to AR and they too tend to be more impressive.

In my mind a beginning programmer benefits as much if not more from quality libraries than a veteran programmer.

What is wrong with just voting up stories you like? Isn't that the entire point of voting?

Sorry...double post.

Seems pretty silly. Why wouldn't people just pop open their web browser and use Google?

I'm not a huge fan of it, but my immediate thought was 'emacs'.

I'll be perfectly honest: what is popular on Digg is in no way something to be proud of.

Digg is a complete waste of time. The community is one of the most immature you can find online, the content is very poor, and I am disgusted when I see the little 'lynch mobs' that they form up every once in awhile when they feel like vigilante justice is appropriate.

Digg is junk, and I have absolutely no respect for it. Scribd might want to worry if they are becoming popular on Digg...do they really want that audience to be using their site?

"Yes, but what you forget Paul backspace backspace backspace, Paul, is that Microsoft Vista has voice recognition. I don't think that google has voice recognition. At least in that respect, voice recognition will be very hard for all when based service to do. You'd really need a desktop application such as the built in each recognition in Microsoft Windows vista to catch up to the future of the Internet -- voice dictation. For example, this polls is written entirely in Microsoft backspace now delete that in speech recognition."

I honestly can't tell if you are just trying to be clever...

If your post really is written in MS voice recognition, it is hardly an endorsement.

I think there's a major problem with this, and it is that discussions come in all shapes and sizes across the web.

Think about it. Some blogs don't have comments. Some sites require you to register to comment. Some sites use flat threading so they are horrible for long discussions. Some of the best discussions are from mailing lists. Is the usual reader going to sign up for that?

No...the current aggregators have it right because they make it easy to discuss content. The problem isn't the medium of discussion, it is the people involved.

I think the idea behind a 'web OS' is horrible. Web apps are good for certain things: mainly presenting and manipulating text. Once you get outside of that small domain, you need much richer interfaces, and the web just doesn't present that. In fact I'm not sure it should.

The browser is a great platform for certain things, but everything doesn't belong inside of it. It shouldn't be an OS. Web OSs aren't that attractive to the consumer - they can just as easily visit multiple websites in several windows, and they aren't that attractive to developers - web development is relatively easy, and you lose a lot of power once you start developing on some web OS API vs doing it yourself.

I just can't see these services catching on.

This article doesn't make too much sense to me.

First of all, as Sam mentioned, the companies aren't that much different in size. GoDaddy is not a startup, it is now a pretty large company and anyone who has money to throw around on Super Bowl commercials certainly isn't a little guy.

Second, GoDaddy and SalesGenie have nothing to do with each other. GoDaddy sells domain names, SalesGenie deals with businesses needing sales leads. While it is silly that they didn't test in Firefox, their market probably doesn't use Firefox that much. I'm willing to bet that 99% of their customers use IE so it really doesn't matter that much.

Third, the number of people who actually know who Kevin Rose is or can recognize him is very small relatively. So while including him in their commercial might get a lot of webbies talking about it, it won't have any effect on the vast majority of their potential customers.

This article made a lot of apples to oranges comparisons.