T-R

And emulators with touch screen controls are an even smaller niche. I play my fair share of classic games, but the iOS/Android emulators never struck me as compelling - Megaman, for example, is just not playable without actual buttons, and I'd happily pay for RPGs (even remakes) that have touch interfaces as opposed to simulated buttons.

The sunburn one is a cool concept, but most of the data I put in tells me that sunburn is unlikely in Phoenix, AZ.

I second the idea of a controversy indicator - it's a significant piece of information that gets lost whenever the bandwagon jumps on, even with scores displayed.

I mostly see this in the form of low quality or offensive comments that get lots of up-votes from people who agree with the poster's opinion - usually if a good comment gets down-voted because the majority disagrees, someone says "why the down-votes? its' a legitimate point", and it gets boosted back to positive.

> "When someone comes to you and says I need a few hundred million dollars to make a movie about 10 foot tall blue people on another planet, that's not an easy decision to make. But if you do make that decision and it does turn out to be Avatar, then you'd like to be compensated."

This seems to imply that 20th Century Fox feels entitled to making the kind of profits that would support such exorbitant investments. I liked Avatar as much as the next guy, but the concept of making that much money off of something like music or film is a relatively recent phenomenon, dependent upon the combination of wide distribution with artificial scarcity. Even if Avatar couldn't be made without the kinds of conditions that allow for those kinds of profits, I'm pretty sure I'd trade it for all of the direct and indirect casualties of the recording and film industries; but really, I'm just thoroughly unconvinced that high quality work can't be motivated by more reasonable profits and other less tangible benefits.

Regardless of opinions on naming names and whatnot, we shouldn't discourage someone from blogging about it. We only have anecdotes, so we don't have enough information to prove one way or another whether this is a broader issue with our community or just with the individuals, but we shouldn't deny someone their right to raise awareness of it. I think we can agree that it's unacceptable behavior; discouraging people from raising awareness of it (by blogging or otherwise), or broadly categorizing any attempt at discussion as misandry and a waste of time, has a danger of coming off as tacit acceptance, which, if there is a broader problem, would exacerbate it.

- I'm not aware of any similar websites, but then, I'm not their target demographic, so I probably wouldn't.

- Keep at it with the programming, it'll click eventually. Start simple and give yourself lots of little goals. I'm a Python fan, but I'd suggest sticking with Ruby+Rails: Ruby's a good choice for your task, and learning both won't help you accomplish it as much as learning one well.

- Help people help you - People are less likely to read walls of text, especially if most of the information is extraneous: try to be concise.

- Don't dissuade people from helping you - You're more likely to be taken seriously, especially on HN, if you use proper capitalization, punctuation, etc., and avoid non-standard abbreviations.

This article doesn't offer any new information since the launch, and the only support for the idea that they've bungled the launch is one negative review - there have been several positive ones, as well.

Moreover, I have a hard time swallowing that "the bully at the table was Google", given that the article's only support for this is the recording industry's claim that "The discussions were confused by Google ... adjusting how Music would actually work in ways that fundamentally changed how the labels thought about their IP, and thus how to license it", particularly in light of BMI's insistence that one person streaming their own music constitutes public performance [1]. This sounds to me like the music industry insisted on fundamentally crippling the service, and given the choice to cut one key feature or another, Google found it in their best interest to cut the one that makes the music industry the most money. I don't see any evidence yet that that was the right or the wrong choice from a user's perspective.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2534850

Reformatted:

    PostScript      1    1.0   1.0            1.0
    Brainfuck       2    1.0   1.0            1.0
    Golfscript      2    1.0   1.0            1.0
    COBOL           1    1.0   1.0            1.0
    Octave          3    1.0   1.0            0.6666666667
    Shell           5    1.0   1.0            0.6
    dc              2    1.0   1.0            0.5
    sed             2    1.0   1.0            0.5
    R               2    1.0   1.0            0.5
    OCaml          21    1.0   1.0            0.380952381
    F#             17    1.0   0.8235294118   0.3529411765
    D               6    1.0   0.5            0.3333333333
    Prolog          3    1.0   1.0            0.3333333333
    J               3    1.0   0.6666666667   0.3333333333
    Clojure        17    1.0   0.9411764706   0.2941176471
    Haskell       118    1.0   0.906779661    0.2457627119
    C++          5700    1.0   0.9080701754   0.2022807018
    ActionScript    5    1.0   0.8            0.2
    Lua            12    1.0   0.75           0.1666666667
    Pascal        111    1.0   0.8738738739   0.1621621622
    Python       1658    1.0   0.8805790109   0.1447527141
    Ruby          259    1.0   0.8918918919   0.1351351351
    Lisp           26    1.0   0.8076923077   0.1153846154
    C             671    1.0   0.8032786885   0.1117734724
    Java         2652    1.0   0.8465309201   0.1052036199
    C#            710    1.0   0.8309859155   0.0985915493
    Perl          155    1.0   0.8258064516   0.09677419355
    MATLAB         11    1.0   0.8181818182   0.09090909091
    Scala          35    1.0   0.8            0.08571428571
    Groovy         13    1.0   1.0            0.07692307692
    Javascript     30    1.0   0.6666666667   0.06666666667
    GO             16    1.0   0.8125         0.0625
    PHP           166    1.0   0.765060241    0.05421686747
    Visual Basic   32    1.0   0.78125        0.03125
    Assembly        1    1.0   1.0           
    AWK             3    1.0   1.0           
    WRAPL           1    1.0   1.0           
    Standard ML     2    1.0   1.0           
    Objective-C     6    1.0   1.0           
    TCL             3    1.0   1.0           
    Mercury         1    1.0   1.0           
    Befunge         1    1.0   1.0           
    Fortran         2    1.0   1.0           
    Factor          2    1.0   1.0           
    CMake           1    1.0   1.0           
    LOLCODE         1    1.0   1.0           
    LOGO            1    1.0   1.0           
    Boo             1    1.0   1.0           
    Erlang          5    1.0   0.8           
    Scheme          7    1.0   0.5714285714

Have you tried applying any of this to (segments of) 68k binaries?

You mentioned that a decompiler would have been only slightly useful for older games written in C/C++; is flow analysis not helpful in practice for simplifying code that was originally hand-coded in assembly?

Edit1: Thanks for the link to the paper[1], by the way. Do you know of any other good resources?

Edit2: Nevermind, I see you have them in github[2]. Thanks again.

[1] http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~grill/decompilation_thesis.pdf [2] https://github.com/drx/ocd

You wouldn't get the impression looking at it now, but it actually was pretty similar. HilbertSpace's post came a bit later, and overwhelmed the entire conversation. You can see that some of the replies to it are from as much as 10 days later.

Stuff from Dwelling of Duels[1] (Video game covers), artists that mix classical instruments with rock/electonic (like Sarina Suno or Yoshida Brothers), or movie/show soundtracks (Hisaishi Joe) - anything with lyrics is too distracting. And that's only if I know what I'm going to write, if I need to sit and think about something, I need silence.

[1] http://dwellingofduels.net/

I'd say it's better - it's not more or less straightforward, both distributive and integrative approaches are still negotiations. You need to know your BATNA anyway, whether it's leaving or sucking it up, so doing more research just puts you in a better position, no matter which route you choose. Bluffing might get you lucky, but not likely as lucky as if you can back it up, and if they call your bluff, or it doesn't work out for some other reason, you'll have less bargaining power in the future.

It's also good to keep in mind that the best deal someone else got doesn't necessarily relate to the best deal you can get - just because someone negotiated a higher salary doesn't mean you can; it's not your BATNA unless someone makes you the offer. Also, if nothing else, distributive approaches tend to leave one or both parties feeling like they lost, which will likely sour future negotiations. Taking the integrative route means that the only losers are the companies that don't get you - assuming that's in their best interest (which it might not be, if they have a better BATNA than matching your BATNA).

Also, if the amount of effort and time that the negotiation takes is amongst your interests, then that's really on the negotiation table too (regardless of approach), it just means that you'll be negotiating away other things, like your salary, in order to satisfy that interest.

I spent a semester at a less-than-stellar school for CS - the easy 4.0 was nice, but I know what you mean. Some things I did to help myself feel better about it:

- I got ahead - I found some small projects related to the next semester's material, and had an easy time in a class that others struggled in.

- I talked to the professors - the students there weren't motivated, but the professors were nonetheless interested in their own field, and they were especially happy to find a student who was interested. This is especially key if you need recommendation letters for transferring, study abroad, or grad school.

- I found a better curriculum online. At some point it's going to come down to what you know, not where you learned it, so just do your best to reduce the gap between you and people who went someplace with a better curriculum.

- I transferred out. You don't necessarily have to go that far, though. Whether you're in a bad job, school, or situation, one of the best things you can do is to come up with a solid plan to get out of it, or to at least compensate for it. The light at the end of the tunnel gives you the motivation to do everything else.

- I took my general education classes there. When I transferred, I fought to get credit for them, and so I was able to spend more time on classes in my major and minor. Also, don't overlook your side interests - things like study abroad also look good on resumes and the like, and are useful for networking outside of your field.

Things I didn't do that I wish I had:

- Went to user groups and conferences and networked. Networking is one big thing you'll miss out on at a school that's weak in your field.

- Worked on open source projects, or smaller personal projects. My biggest mistake in college was lack of balance - I spent a lot of time reading the best material I could find (and still do), but I've got very little that's concrete to show for it. In interviews, a nice github account and some practice coding at a whiteboard goes a lot further than your college's name.

If you're worried about grad school, one thing you could try is picking a subfield that you like, and getting in contact with professors from schools that you'd like to go to who are in that field.

You can do it without hardball tactics, though - if you keep your eye out for other opportunities (i.e. have a better BATNA), then you can present it honestly as "the best move for me right now", and if they don't want to give a raise, you can discuss alternative benefits that would satisfy both parties.

On the other hand, if they're trying to screw you, they're trying to screw you.

That's the difference between distributive and integrative negotiations. The tactics listed in this post are mostly for distributive bargaining, which works more when you have some set pie that you're dividing up (it's a zero-sum game), as opposed to coming up with out-of-the-box solutions, and particularly if you don't expect to have to deal with the other person again. Part of the beginning of a negotiation is figuring out which path the negotiation is going to go down. Textbooks on negotiation cover both - distributive approaches just make for better "quick advice" and "self help" content, particularly since advice on integrative approaches is a bit less actionable.

If that's your goal, the languages need to be from different paradigms (maybe C + Assembly, Ruby/Python, and Haskell/Clojure, and then maybe Prolog and Factor).

If your goal is just to get someone to minimum competence so they can build something, it's better to stick with one language (or, at worst, just a web stack), at the very least so they don't get bogged down installing a bunch of tools for relatively little benefit. PHP and Ruby are both Algol derivatives, so having a person solve Project Euler problems in both and compare them won't likely reveal much more than trivial differences.

Also, unless they have a decent math background, 100 Project Euler problems is just going to frustrate and scare off people - some of those problems are pretty much intractable without Dynamic Programming; anyone who hasn't taken an algorithms course would probably take a long time to figure that out.

"Willing to learn as needed" needs to be reserved for things like specific frameworks, which can be picked up quickly if you understand the concepts they're built on and have done something similar. Pointers are a core concept, and in particular, they're one of the weed-out points of CS curricula.

Sure, you can get some things done without them, but they're critical for understanding bugs or performance issues that arise due to the underlying implementation, and likely to take more time to understand than things that usually fall into the category of "learning as needed on the job".

It has its uses, but W3Schools has been criticized for being inaccurate[1], and there's better documentation out there now (HTMLDog and Mozilla Developer Center have been mentioned[2][3]).

[1] http://w3fools.com/ [2] http://htmldog.com [3] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/

I run Chrome Beta in Linux on a 64bit Sony laptop, which is pretty much asking for trouble. Aside from Flash videos occasionally not playing, I haven't had any problems.

The Geohot case is, as far as we know at this point, completely unrelated to the current situation.

It's possible the case served as motivation, or that they used his code, but that's only tangentially related. From the information we have, all we know is that a weakness in PSN's security was exploited to access customer information. Geohot has stated that he is not involved, and if he were, it would be a breach of his settlement contract with Sony.

Without making a judgement on anyone's business skills, this just comes down to cost. If a business person can get a good programmer to build his idea, all the power to him, but hiring a poor programmer isn't likely to be much better than learning to build it himself, and would likely cost a decent bit more time and money. Someone who doesn't program starts with the disadvantage of having to rely on someone else from the get-go, and until there's at least a prototype, executing on the business side of things is likely to be pretty tough. Sure, it can be done, but why choose to give yourself that disadvantage?

Your objection to these questions is fair, but what suggestions would you offer for finding this kind of information?

I ask because these questions all would have thrown up a red flag at my previous company, where within 2 months I found myself trying to run a very specific old version of Eclipse (so they wouldn't have to pay for the non-free version of a plugin) on a 10 year old desktop (with a keyboard and mouse I bought myself), on completely unreasonable schedules, embarrassed to leave before 10pm, with no programmers left that I could ask any questions, and at least mildly concerned about whether the non-compete agreement would prevent me from taking another job in Japan.

Being terrible at interviews as I am, I failed to ask enough questions for fear of leaving the kind of bad impression you describe, since I saw myself as having few alternatives as a fresh grad in a bad economy, and convinced myself that the offer was a pretty good deal. There must be a way to at least get some indication that a company isn't going to make me beg for scraps without coming off as unhireable.

Jacques Mattheij's ideas list -

http://jacquesmattheij.com/My+list+of+ideas+for+when+you+are...

On this specific matter, as far as I can tell, (and I'd be happy to be corrected if I'm wrong) Apple hasn't beaten them into submission at all.

If I want to buy music from another country, I need a separate account for that country, and I need either a credit card or an imported iTunes gift card from that country. Using multiple accounts on a single iPod, while now possible, isn't exactly fun, since I have to switch accounts to even get updates for free apps, much less make purchases. All this, of course, wouldn't be an issue if the same music was available in all regions.

Don't get me wrong, I give Apple credit where it's due in getting the RIAA and MPAA on board, but as far as I can tell, they haven't done anything to fight region-based market segmentation - not that anyone else really has.

For anyone having trouble following, the article author's webpage provides a nice introduction:

http://language.psy.auckland.ac.nz/wordorder/

Particularly if it was relative to other posts in the thread, and maybe only after a certain threshold, so it doesn't serve as disincentive to posters who are just late to the party, but still allows users to quickly see the best posts.

Thanks kindly, much appreciated.

I'm admittedly having a bit of trouble parsing the first sentence of your last paragraph.

When you say "if head-first and complement-first were robust, universal features of languages", do you mean "head-first and complement-first cover the whole set of possibilities for the property 'word order'", or "all languages (within a family?) are one or the other", or something more like "a given language cannot contain both head-first and complement-first structures", or something different?

Also, with "appearances of word orders demonstrating these features are dependent on each other across language families", in what sense do you mean that the appearances would be dependent on each other?

I don't get the impression that it's refuting the generative grammar theory as a whole, though, just the assertion by (many? most?) generative linguists that grammars are governed by a set of innate constraints. Granted, I'm not familiar with how much of the basis for acceptance of generative grammar theory hangs on the concept of a universal grammar.

That is the sad, sad truth of it. At least with CSS compilers and libraries like jQuery, it's getting easier to compensate for CSS' deficiencies. I do, though, still hold onto some hope that someday we'll be able to leave it behind.