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>Sadly, I suspect in reality it was at least partly driven by fear of association with politically toxic subjects like SOPA/PIPA. Still, a win's a win.

Well, on the bright side, SOPA/PIPA and legislation like these are actually becoming toxic and politically nonviable. Legislations like these will keep popping up like whack-a-mole until they become toxic and seems like we're on our way to achieve that.

BTW whatever happened to Spartan, the facebook-HTML5 project? I was really hoping for some good things.

Hey, I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 . Could someone guide me through what I can do to detect/prevent this from crippling my server? Thanks.

Hey,

I'm getting application error. You must be making some changes.

BTW why are you linking https for the landing page? It'd work just as well on http.

You notice ugliness everytime you use it. The beauty in UX/UI/Window Manager lies in it just being there, not distracting but complementing one when he/she is working.

That's my definition of beauty. I can go days without noticing it and if I take a step back and take in the whole experience, I find the beauty.

Ubuntu does it for me. Especially because I can take time to make it beautiful for me and I can have a free hand while doing it.

Hanlon's Razor.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

I see your potato and raise you a dead badger!

http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20040405/badger.shtml

In windows, it's easy. Press alt+<space> and then 'm' and then arrow keys till the window is in frame and finally 'enter' when you are done.

Even easier is to use Win+<arrow keys> to get window to a particular boundary of the screen, but when you restore the frame, it will still be in the 'half out of screen' position.

I propose the following solution.

R&D stays in private sector. All successful drugs are bought by the government at the cost of R&D and a sizable profit. The government, then, distributes it. Government can control the distribution and Pvt. markets can control the invention.

Government can then tie up with other govts. and allow sales of the said medicine in those countries.

It's not an ideal solution, but it has best of both capitalist and socialist ideologies.

Would you consider open-sourcing the code and let the community work on it?

Actually, twitter should not have any google indexing problem. Search engines have provided new scheme for indexing hashbang URLs with Ajax content[1]. But, maybe, not all search engines have implemented it yet.

If I had to guess, primary reason would be that server is blind as to what page needs to be loaded when you click twitter.com/#!something and an ajax request actually serves the relevant content, so it's relatively slower. Twitter's implementation was particularly slower.

[1]https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/...

Article is off base. Telling corporations to think about profit is like telling someone to think about breathing. It's always in Corporation's mind to think of profits. What differs here is the strategy. Profit in the long term compared to profit in the short term.

Apple is in a unique position to achieve one without compromising the other. But Amazon is not in that position. Majority of their business is reselling products, they need to make sure their platform is best at reselling products. Kindles are not the products they're selling, it is a platform they're using to sell products.

So, they're investing in platforms that will keep users loyal to the company and be a preferred destination for buying things. One can always analyze if this strategy is good for it's intended purpose or not, but that analysis is no part of the article. Discussion on this strategy is worthwhile.

Comparison with Walmart, to some extent, is fair. But brick and mortar sellers face very different challenges than the virtual shopping platform like Amazon.

EDIT: By "reselling product" I meant to convey "selling other people's products". Not the best choice of words.

With the ludicrous patent wars going on among the biggest tech players, increasing piracy and ever-increasing cases of countries bending over backwards to placate entertainment industries; the whole Intellectual Property paradigm is ripe for disruption. The sad part is that the prevalent political practices will make it very difficult to come to a reasonable solution, a point of stable equilibrium. Consumer advocacy and freedom rights' groups have a very feeble voice right now and this issue will take a lot of activism and rationality from the common folk before it can reach a sane conclusion. I only hope issue doesn't undo the leaps humanity took when internet was invented (and I'm not exaggerating)!

You should also send the HTML5 features supported by the browser via modernizr or something. Very easy to implement on your end and will be a huge timesaver in debugging javascript.

But how do you achieve data persistence in case of server crash? Snapshots are not reliable for that, slave db servers aren't foolproof either.

Could someone (knowledgeable) comment on his chances to win the elections? I'm not from US.

I can give you one quick suggestion: try and get into conferences, expos and meetups of hospitality industries. From what I gather, you need to expose your product to shot callers as quickly as possible.

As an added bonus, if any such conference is set up in a hotel, you can ask the hotel to set up a complimentary demo of your service. Now, you've exposed your product to a hotel as well as the attendees.

Don't be disheartened if you don't get results immediately. Success of a startup depends on networking. If you dont get any clients out of a conference, make sure you network and connect with them later.

Yeah, but "Opinion based news, short attention span, easy consumption of wide array of opinions, consumerism and the resulting sensationalist attention-grabbing behavior of companies/corporates/politicians" (and of course, social media) is making it so much easier to disorientate general population.

Rationality requires constant introspection and vigilance; the short attention span and sensationalism is making it increasingly difficult. I'm not saying "the only winning move is not to play", I'm wondering, is there a winning move (the defeatist attitude that I alluded to in the previous comment)? Maybe I'm just looking for a quick fix that never exists for any serious problem.

Edit: Sorry if it looks like I'm thinking out loud.

To put it succinctly: "Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it."

I agree with it but I'm also inclined to agree with the defeatist attitude the quote represent. Your comment does point out the problem (which is a step in the right direction), but I fear there's no "sustainable in the long run solution" for the problem.

Opinion based news, short attention span, easy consumption of wide array of opinions, consumerism and the resulting sensationalist attention-grabbing behavior of companies/corporates/politicians is disconcerting to common populace and I, very much, count myself in this population. I've been swayed by one or more of these tactics more than I'd like to admit.

Citizens used to be apathetic, will it be better/worse if they become confounded?

I cant comment on the specific case for your startup but given the wide adoption of PHP/Java/Ruby/Python compared to Haskell/Scala, it comes to a simple eq.

  No. of programmers for the former > No. of programmers for the latter

But as someone in the thread already pointed out, definition of 'good' programmer is also subjective and different in each of the languages, so that will fuzz the simplicity of the above equation.

PS: I'm very impressed with tech community in Pune in general. Very vibrant, diverse and passionate.

>Is it really so hard to take existing talent and train them to use other languages?

This will go into the costs column, and the reasons you use that particular tech. stack will go into benefit column. Weights and values are fairly subjective for each of the rows in the two columns and is very case specific.

What I wanted to point out was that there are a lot of factors to consider while choosing your tech stack, be it for academia, research, startup or enterprise. I disagree with this following statement:

>, and since you (probably) won't be working with an entrenched code base, you are free to use whatever language best suits the task at hand.

Size of the codebase is not the only criterion. (And to be fair to the author of this article, "task at hand" envelopes a lot of the other criteria).

PS: I found a good debate between Ryan Allen[1] and Michael Wales[2] debating the criteria on which to choose PHP or Ruby, a lot of them can be translated to a general tech stack choice. I've submitted it to HN here[3] and direct link here [4].

[1]http://twitter.com/ryanfaceryan

[2]http://twitter.com/walesmd

[3]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3446180

[4]http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/general/language-war-php-vs...

Sorry, if the link was already posted on HN sometime in the past.

Edit: Formatting

>In academic research and in entrepreneurship, you need to multiply your effectiveness as a programmer, and since you (probably) won't be working with an entrenched code base, you are free to use whatever language best suits the task at hand.

I disagree. If you're a startup, you're better off using a more mainstream language. I'm from India and if I start to find a good Haskell or Scala programmer I'll be looking for a long time and I'll be paying him/her a lot for those skills. Being a startup, you start small and its tempting to start using the bleeding edge technologies, but you must do a cost-benefit analysis; coders for PHP and Java are much easier to find and since the supply is more, the cost of skills will be less.

Bootstrapped startups should particularly be wary of using technologies that have a very small talent pool in their part of the world. Use new/rare technologies if the benefits of using them outweigh the hassle and expenses of maintaining and extending the team/codebase for it.

I dont know why you were downvoted, because that's what I was wondering when I read this. But unfortunately, poor areas are often "high crime areas". Lets forgo the semantics for a second and consider the implications. I wonder if this is just a first step towards "Out of sight, out of mind" approach. Lets not forget that all the 99% are not equal and if we apply Pareto principle, there is a minority that is living in dire circumstances. And considering the flow of wealth this pool will keep growing. I wonder if steps like these will contribute to the escalation of problem. I'm certainly not suggesting that people risk their safety, but 'Eloi' and 'Morlocks' keep popping in my head when I assume that steps like these will only intensify in the foreseeable future..

>I've seen far crazier religions and far less effective ways to comment on copyright.

I doubt this method is any more effective than most other methods. Primarily because religion and Intellectual property are very combustible issues on their own and the mix of two will just drown out any rational discussion on either of topics.

The discussion will deviate from religion to IP and back at the whim of the parties involved and no consensus will ever come out on either of the issues. The topic is a very fertile ground for all kinds of logical fallacies. Take your pick from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

Even if people keep level-headed and discuss the issue(s) at hand, the discussion will have no focus. This very thread can be a good yardstick. As this thread ages, count the no. of discussions regarding religion and no. of discussions regarding IP.

I would like to point out that in most of your examples, country is US and/or religion is Christianity. Since, in US muslims cant even erect a mosque without raising a public debate, I doubt Kopimism in US would get away with copyright infringement if its recognized as a religion there. (Unless/until it ages to about 2000 years or gains a majority of devouts or devise/discover a god that infringed copyrights for the good of humanity).

Point is, not all religions are treated equally in most of the countries and there's a long long way to go until this religion gains enough popular fervor to get away with piracy.

The thing about this interview process is that you'll lose those candidates who have potential and can thrive in correct environment but:

a) Currently work in a job that they don't really like and, hence, are looking to switch (because they cannot come up with a satisfactory answer for: "You can’t tell me why you like your current job")

Also, since they don't know much about your company besides second-hand information, they cant answer: "why you think this job will give you the same passion". Interview is a conversation, you'll have to tell them what your company culture is and how it can benefit potential employees.

b) Candidates who are fresh out of college / don't have much experience.

c) Candidates who are probably good enough for your job but aren't good enough to pass the, very high bar, you've set up for them.

So it depends on the profile for which you're hiring and the prerequisites you are looking for. I personally won't mind if an interviewee can't answer most of these questions but can do the job I'm giving and has done something simiiar to it in the past with reasonable success and is a good cultural fit in my organisation based on what I can deduce during the interview.

Kopimism has been recognized as a belief community and not as a religion[1][2] and as such does not give the followers of Kopimism the same umbrella of protection that is provided to mainstream religions in Sweden. More details on this discussion can be found on reddit[3]

[1]https://lagen.nu/1998:1593

[2]http://www.sweden.gov.se/content/1/c6/02/78/31/04636561.pdf (English translation of [1])

[3]http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/o2m6d/filesharing...

As for the effectiveness of this movement, I'm skeptical. If the intention is promotion of freedom of information and critique on intellectual property, there are much more effective ways to go about it; and if the intent is humor/satire, there's not much of that either. I'd avoid discussing Scientology here despite the parallels because discussions about "religion" tend to be more verbose and speculative than what is acceptable at HN.

I hadn't heard of that book and because of this post, its on my reading list. So, some people in this choir maybe wayward and would do well with sermons like these :)

When I read the title I was expecting an article about the impracticality of the Ketchup bottle design itself. For something that is so widely used, I've never been able to understand the impractical design of ketchup bottle. For such a viscous fluid, bottle design in highly inefficient and bothersome, so much so that the wikipedia page of ketchup itself, addresses the issue [1]. Admittedly, with the prolific use of squeeze bottles and sachets, the issue has been sidelined, I guess its just one of those things that have no rhyme or reason.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup#Viscosity

What I very much appreciate is that the article, rightly, gives credit to Nokia for proliferation of mobiles in developing world. I'm from India and I still remember my first phone was Nokia 3310 in 2002. I'm sure Nokia did it for the profit but that doesn't change the fact that I became loyal to nokia for making quality product and helping me better my life.

The same thing will happen to android, I hope. Nokia provided excellent hardware for me and Android will provide excellent software for the younger generation of India, Africa etc. And that is the point of the post.

Sure, Apple provided a huge boost to smartphones and industry will be indebted to Apple. But, as I'm indebted to Nokia not the company that boosted the mobile phones, future generations will be indebted to Android and not to Apple that boosted the smartphone market.