acak

I am a developer who has leaned towards .NET over the last few projects and one of the things that used to nag me is that the platform is a closed one (and the licensing fees can be a decent part of the cost). I was fairly certain I would migrate off it if the project ever took off seriously.

And after seeing the C# love on HN on the poll for favorite programming languages last week, I realized there must be many enamored .NET programmers who would use and evangelize it more but only don't due to it being a closed platform.

Also, a lot of us have great ideas to make the platform we're using better - and with Microsoft announcing they'd make Json.NET, a third party JSON library, the default JSON serializer over their home-grown DataContractJsonSerializer in the next version of ASP.NET MVC, I wondered if Microsoft was considering the unthinkable: start accepting community developed features into their platform, and perhaps open source it to make the scope for community contributions even larger.

There's a long way to go to fully realize this vision (I'd like for .NET itelf to be open source ;-] ), but this is just incredible news.

For those who want to understand which parts of the ASP.NET stack are open source, check out this diagram on Hanselman's blog that was very useful to me.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/VisualStudio11BetaInContext.as...

An interesting place to compare comments at.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=970945

On Show HN a month ago.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3557805

This may sound a bit too obvious but I'll say it anyway.

Don't quit your job without finding another one. Finding another job is tough as it is - and your bargaining position, perceived 'employability' etc are greatly diminished when you're applying without a current job.

You have an idea of what makes a great job. Go look for it. Believe that it exists - and when you really believe it exists, you will feel energized about the prospect of landing the job.

So start looking for a job right now - and whenever a prospective opening comes along, dive into it.

A lot of job seekers don't ask enough questions before taking up the job. The interviewee asking many questions is always a good sign for any sane interviewer. Make sure you know and like what you get into next.

After you've put your resume out there, sent emails to companies and are waiting to hear back, do two other things to make the immediate future better.

1 - Do what you can to make life at your job more interesting. Seek out changes and improvements to your job and for your company even if it takes convincing someone else to 'allow' you to do it.

2 - Find habits or interests outside of work. This could be activities can be added directly your resume (for example if your company works on Java, you could learn to work on node.js), or even something unrelated to your career like sky diving or visiting landmarks over the weekend (I am a programmer, and I read up on finance to take a break)

Good luck.

To the author: Is this the Ceridian you're referring to?

http://www.ceridian.com/

There is no pricing information I can find on their website and they're very clearly saying for their products (in this case, on the payroll page):

Contact a Ceridian expert today for a free payroll software analysis, and you'll find a payroll processing solution that's exactly what you need, exactly the way you need it.

He went in with $1M, odds of 50/50 and a 20% discount once the losses are over $0.5M. Lets assume for simplicity that all hands he plays are equal ($0.1M according to the article)

Because the discount kicks in at $0.5M of losses, he should plan to lose bets for $0.5M first. This is a setup.

Now he needs play to win the bets for remaining $0.5M he has.

Because the odds are 50/50, after a few rounds of playing with the $0.5M he has, he's going to have lost half the hands, and won half of them. While he gets 2x for his wins, he gives up only 0.8x for his losses.

Net = 2x - 0.8x = 1.2x. He just had to rinse and repeat with the $0.5M he was left with. Though I'm sure he brought in a lot more money once the $0.5M loss kicked in the discount.

Just note that this explanation is a simplification. 50/50 odds (technically 49.75/50.25 according to Johnson) have to be accompanied by an even performance on double-downs and splits.

One correction.

USCIS has updated the rules and clarified that a controlling interest in the company is allowed (i.e. > 50%) as long as the employee-employer relationship is maintained and a board of members exist who can control the employment and terms of the beneficiary.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-immigration-a-step...

http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f...

Specifically (quote from the page on the second link):

Q: The memorandum provides an example of when a beneficiary, who is the sole owner of the petitioner, would not establish a valid employer-employee relationship. Are there any examples of when a beneficiary, who is the sole owner of the petitioner, may be able to establish a valid employer-employee relationship?

A. Yes. In footnotes 9 and 10 of the memorandum, USCIS indicates that while a corporation may be a separate legal entity from its stockholders or sole owner, it may be difficult for that corporation to establish the requisite employer-employee relationship for purposes of an H-1B petition. However, if the facts show that there is a right to control by the petitioner over the employment of the beneficiary, then a valid employer-employee relationship may be established. For example, if the petitioner provides evidence that there is a separate Board of Directors which has the ability to hire, fire, pay, supervise or otherwise control the beneficiary, the petitioner may be able to establish an employer-employee relationship with the beneficiary.

I'd have to say the more appropriate title is India is on the trajectory to become America.

But there are several caveats.

America doesn't have huge pockets of the population isolated in illiteracy, poor sanitation, lack electricity/clean water and such like.

Societal transitions-wise, it faces many of the challenges that America did in the 50's and 60's with a few more complexities. The opportunity exists for a great story provided there is no major war or natural calamity that depletes or hijacks its course over the next couple of decades.

One thing you can be thankful for is that the democratic system, and people power, continues to thrive as proven in this weeks elections in the state of UP. Powerful governments, bullying party organizations and divisive agendas were voted out and people with the message of development and unity were voted in (of course, whether the people campaigning this way follow through is another question)

Notice I didn't mention corruption. A relevant challenge, it is another discussion for another day. Though India's corruption challenges exist starting right at the grass roots level, even America hasn't found a way to effectively take it out everywhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uttar_Pradesh_legislative_assem...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Lokpal_Bill

Thanks. I hope more providers think this way.

I must say data portability lowers the barrier for people who want to build their next app with Parse or other such providers but are worried about a virtual lock-in with a provider.

I guess the next step is to develop standards in the cloud which allows portability of the application itself from one provider to the other.

If anyone from Parse is reading this - was this a user requested feature or was it on the road map for Parse originally? Doesn't it work against your business if you let people move out of your infrastructure easily?

This article has been splashed on the front page the day RIM released their only major update in months, PlayBook OS 2.0. This is a big day for RIM and to push this as their #1 article, ahead of the article on the OS 2.0 update, is like kicking RIM when it is down.

I've heard folks on The Verge complain that RIM grants interviews only to outlets that cover them favorably (and so, not to The Verge). And now this. Is this a way of getting back at them?

The Verge is really young as a website (albeit influential), I love it to death and will continue to use it. But this sort of obvious bias makes me lose respect for them.

It may not be patentable now. But wouldn't it make IBM's patent prior art?

This is what I read in the claims section:

"What is claimed is:

1. A system for generating an electronic notification containing a portion of a day out of office notice, ..." (and then goes on to explain its implementation).

Could you please tell me how the title is misleading?

Not sure why you got down-voted.

It's entirely possible that you don't get the same search results on Google as I do if we're logged in because of what Google 'remembers' as our browsing habits and interests.

"When you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow." - All the President's Men (1976)

Article on The Verge:

http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/13/2632410/carrier-iq-says-i...

One of Sproutcore's most attractive features was the Mac like UI it was capable of - http://demo.sproutcore.com

Ember.js does not show such examples at - http://www.emberjs.com/examples

Will such examples be showcased in the future or is it not a part of Ember.js?

A great TED talk on the design of the Universe, if any one is wondering about the glass shaped picture (the 5th image) in the essay:

http://www.ted.com/talks/george_smoot_on_the_design_of_the_u...

A couple of blogs (below) give credit to Matsumoto (author of the Japanese blog):

http://obamapacman.com/2011/10/subtle-differences-of-ios-5-v...

http://usersillusions.com/post/11948201269/apple-has-made-so...

And here is a another site discussing the same images without any attribution.

http://www.ipad2iphone5.com/these-ios-5-changes-are-you-cert...

Thanks. No worries for this case, though. I just got into the one at La Madia.

The second meal in Chicago (at Dearborn st.) has no vegan options at all. I know the value is mostly from the social experience but even so having nothing that one can eat at the dinner deters someone like me from attending.

Does Grubwithus take requests to include vegan / vegetarian options?

The non-Apple equivalent of AirPlay (which planb mentioned) can, for now, be Wi-Di for PC-to-TV streaming. This can and should be integrated to Google TV - plus an AirPlay interface for beaming content from Apple's devices if Wi-Di for Apple devices is an issue.

With Apps being added to it, we might start seeing streaming content providers make apps that offer pay-per-view or subscriptions within the app and become the TV-equivalent of a cable channel.

Google TV might even make it easier to recommend (socialize) and manage subscriptions/pay per view on these apps by centralizing it in the way Game Center socializes / centralizes score-keeping on iOS devices for game apps.

Apple doesn't think so.

Their own iPad apps - the iWork suite, iMovie and Garageband are very capable in producing some pretty neat content.

iWork and iMovie are available not just for the iPad but for the iPhone as well. I've found the iPhone version of iMovie to be very competent for casual movie editing - proving that content creation can be form-factor agnostic.

Nice work.

What I would like to see is automated testing on different mobile browsers (on real devices).

Anyone have pointers for such tools? Thanks.

Original article with more info:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Jobs-questioned-authority-all-...

You're right. I just didn't include the guidance in the story title so it wouldn't sound like an ad for going long on the stock.

If you're looking for compensation information from the company's quarterly statement:

Compensation and Benefits:

The accrual for compensation and benefits expenses (including salaries, estimated year-end discretionary compensation, amortization of equity awards and other items such as benefits) was $1.58 billion for the third quarter of 2011, a 59% decline compared with the third quarter of 2010. The ratio of compensation and benefits to net revenues for the first nine months of 2011 was 44.0%. Total staff levels decreased 4% compared with the end of the second quarter of 2011.

http://www2.goldmansachs.com/media-relations/press-releases/...

For me, leader board needs to be sorted by average karma per post, with a minimum karma required to be eligible to be on the list (like 10K points).

The list would look very different with such sorting. Maybe pg or someone working on the site can change column titles to clickable headers that sort by that column. Not that it's particularly difficult to just copy paste as a table to Excel.

512MB - to retain battery life despite the new processor / chipset.

The standby time seems to have gone down over its predecessor nevertheless.

http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-4s-ram-2011-10

[Edit]

In the iFixit teardown article, step 8.

How 'bout a close-up of that Apple A5 chip. 1 GHz Dual-core processor with 512 MB of DDR2 RAM... Yowza.

How do we know it's 512 MB? Check out the marking, specifically E4E4, denoting two 2 Gb LPDDR2 die—for a total of 4 Gb—or 512 MB.

The 20% time policy that Google allows for one's own projects has probably served as a nice way to experience those "small wins" he is referring too (though the win may not be in the main line of work). I wish I had a similar policy at the place I work - I feel I could have avoided a burnout phase.

I'd be curious to know if Google revokes that policy for focus teams like the ones that worked on Wave and Google+.