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bsk

344 karma · joined May 23, 2010

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bsk··on Goldman Sachs invests in Facebook at $50 Billion valuation
If you look at the market prices of newspapers, radios, TV stations, you'll see that they depend little on their earnings. The buyer pays for influence on the public opinion.

How much do you think will FB support be worth to GS during the next bailout? In understanding what are the common fears, arguments for and against. Even now GS manages many deals, parts of the society don't like - outsourcing, green house options trade, arab and chinese investors, etc.

bsk··on Goldman Sachs invests in Facebook at $50 Billion valuation
I'm suggesting GS would buy FB stock even if FB was loosing billions every year and there was no hope for future profits. In the same way GS and company are spending who knows how much on political campaigns and lobbing.
bsk··on Goldman Sachs invests in Facebook at $50 Billion valuation
If these were $50M and not $50B your analysis would've been correct. But with such enormous amounts, it's not about money anymore, it's about power. And Facebook has the power to understand and influence what ppl think.
bsk··on Windows Phone 7 development from the perspective of an iOS developer
How much $$$ did you make?
bsk··on The first privately owned EPIC camera has already been stolen
Yeah, right. Enterprises like to check ppl history before hiring them. One can have mad skills and still be unable to find a job or business opportunity.
bsk··on How the neo-medieval 21st century will be more like the 12th century
>> Your post, on the other hand, is reductive and boring.

So mean and bad mannered ;)

This guy, Parag Khanna, have been shown in school and Hollywood movies an extremely simplified model of the 19th and 20th centuries world. A model where all events are explained through the state politics and big business is ignored. Based on that stupid assumption he is saying that now the world is different, because there are powers outside the states.

bsk··on Africa’s Rural Poor Begin Harnessing the Sun
LoL @ U

Instead of reading HN you should watch Fox News. No quotes of stupid ppl like Lenin and Trotsky there...

bsk··on Federal reserve admits it doled out trillions of tax dollars to foreign banks
Some people like to go big ;-)

So you say an audit of the Federal Reserve is not necessary?

bsk··on Why Google's Chrome notebook will succeed
So Google successfully forced content producers, distributors and TV manufactures to adopt smart TVs, capable of showing google ads and ad sense.
bsk··on Microsoft quietly shuts down Office Genuine Advantage program
Also anyone can register as student member in IEEE for $19 and get access to e-academy MSDN.
bsk··on Kevin Connolly's guide to American culture
This comment doesn't make any sense IMHO ;-)
bsk··on Fred Wilson's Nexus S Review
Don't forget to go through quidco or top cash back ;-)
bsk··on The Man Who Invented the Computer
Hmmmm, IMHO every statement here is incorrect.

Do you have a mathematical prove that ABC is not Turing Complete? I suspect that if one is sufficiently smart, he can implement a Turing machine on top of any 1930s, 1940s computer.

BTW I don't think 'General purpose computer' is used widely as equivalent of a 'Turing complete computer'.

From https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/John_Vincent_... : "In June 1941 Mauchly visited Atanasoff in Ames, Iowa for four days, staying as his houseguest. Atanasoff and Mauchly discussed the prototype ABC, examined it, and reviewed Atanasoff's design manuscript. Up to this time Mauchly had not proposed a digital computer. In September 1942 Atanasoff left Iowa State for a wartime assignment as Chief of the Acoustic Division with the Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOL) in Washington, D.C. ... Mauchly visited Atanasoff multiple times in Washington during 1943 and discussed computing theories, but did not mention that he was working on a computer project himself until early 1944.

By 1945 the U.S. Navy had decided to build a large scale computer, on the advice of John von Neumann. Atanasoff was put in charge of the project"

Sounds to me like Mauchly just tried to steal Atananasoff ideas (with some success).

bsk··on The Man Who Invented the Computer
>> So useful, in fact, every digital computer you see in front of you is a direct descendant of Mauchly's labor, not Atanasoff.

This doesn't make any sense. Atanasoff had some pretty genius ideas and together with Berry built the first electronic digital computer. Mauchly visited their lab, got a ton of information on ABC and later built another electronic digital computer - ENIAC, which was generally ABC 2.0.

bsk··on [dead]
>>Russia in particular, a backwards agrarian empire, was about the last place he thought would be ready for it. And turned out he was right.

Hmmmm, communist regime turned the agrarian empire into world's 2nd industrial power, that won the biggest battles in human history and was the 1st to send robots and humans to space.

bsk··on Worst gadget ever? Ars reviews a $99 Android tablet
It was the first cheap computer. Cheap enough for the unwashed masses in US. And tablets like this one are the first computers cheap enough for billions of ppl in Asia, Africa and Latin America. And for many, many, many other purposes.

90% of the time innovation in IT is kick-started by cheap knockoffs ;-)

bsk··on Worst gadget ever? Ars reviews a $99 Android tablet
I'd guess there were similar reviews of Altair 8800 in 1975/76 ;-)
bsk··on Ask HN: Seriously, what's wrong with HTML tables?
Here are a couple reasons:

- At one point the design becomes a nightmare to maintain. I've worked on some web apps, where we had pages with 15 levels deep tables in tables in tables ...

- Separating the semantic information in .html from the design in .css. Can help with SEO, screen readers, cashing.

bsk··on When The Speed Of Light Is Too Slow: Trading at the Edge
Interesting, what are those tricks?
bsk··on [dead]
http://weblogs.asp.net/rosherove/archive/2010/10/26/bounty-5...
bsk··on Tenacious C: Cool C IDE
Is this a port of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenacious_D ? ;-)
bsk··on ASP.NET MVC 3 Release Candidate
Hmmm, interesting idea. Lets say I have a 'change product price' task. ASP MVC will generate controllers/views for CRUD operations and a list. Those don't look very useful.
bsk··on Wherein I help you get a good job
"Work for me for a year w/o salary and I'll help you get a job." /jk

There are better routes for new programmers IMHO.

Start at http://rubyonrails.org/ and build a website you find useful.

Learn SharePoint or BizTalk, those are boring but in very high demand now.

Even more boring, sing up for a cheap 6 month Cobol course in India.

bsk··on ASP.NET MVC 3 Release Candidate
It is fast, but I have a couple of problems:

1. A technical bug - EF often fails to update SQL Server DB on model change (RecreateDatabaseIfModelChanges).

2. More general - the generated UI is completely data centric, while even MS people advocate for business centric, task based UIs.

bsk··on Symbian OS - one of the most successful failures in tech history
"That "major" announcement from Nokia - "Nokia reaffirms its commitment to the Symbian platform"
bsk··on Zero to a Million Users in 15 Days
Why did you decide not to migrate the existing users?
bsk··on UK Government plans to create a "Silicon Valley" in London
>>the bay area will always be preferred over other centers

I can guarantee that in 5 billion years from now that won't be the case ;-) In this fast moving world it will probably take a lot less time for powerful technology business centers to emerge in BRIC and elsewhere.

bsk··on UK Government plans to create a "Silicon Valley" in London
There is very little paperwork required to get a resident permit and register a limited company in UK. In the last 6 years the administration has taken measures to prevent abuse of unemployment benefits and child support by self-employed ppl (mainly immigrants from Poland). But as far as one can sustain himself and pays taxes he is trouble free.

My impression is that most of the Asian, African, Balkan, etc newcomers to London are self-employed or LTD owners. That route is far easier than getting a work permit.

bsk··on MeeGo vs Android
>>it seems that it wasn't in HTC's interest to give back those drivers

You're probably wrong, last time I checked HTC had all their Android firmware sources available for download.

bsk··on Ask HN: Is Apple repeating the same mistakes it made 25 years ago?
Steve Jobs probably has a different view on what caused Apple downfall.
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