2008-12-19 front | Hacker News

Stories from December 19, 2008

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1.		Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey." (pshaw.wordpress.com)
		83 points by bprater on Dec 19, 2008 \| 142 comments
2.		It's A Dirty Job, And I Love It (forbes.com)
		62 points by IsaacSchlueter on Dec 19, 2008 \| 31 comments
3.		Evan - Twitter needs a better policy on Usernames (stevepoland.com)
		60 points by sant0sk1 on Dec 19, 2008 \| 64 comments
		geuis on Dec 19, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: Evan - Twitter needs a better policy on Usernames So someone is complaining that they registered a bunch of names they thought would be monetarily valuable at a later date, and is complaining when the company that provides the service is disallowing him from doing it? Sorry, but that just earns a big f*ck you from me. I have no sorrow for domain squatters, and that extends to people who grabbed Facebook app names, Twitter names, whatever. Twitter isn't like the DNS system. You are using a service being provided at no charge. I'll grant that there are likely to be situations where your personal Twitter account name conflicts with some big company. However, on that level if you have a long history of actively using your Twitter account as your own identity then the weight of evidence is on your side. Twitter can tell the Big Bad Company "No, pick another name". But if you've gone out and just registered 50 names, with no activity on them, only in the hopes that you'll get companies to buy them from you later, go screw yourself.
5.		A Home Office FAQ (biscade.com)
		53 points by bdfh42 on Dec 19, 2008 \| 36 comments
6.		Everybody is faking it. (thatgraph.com)
		52 points by Raphael on Dec 19, 2008 \| 42 comments
7.		Markopolous' (ignored) complaint to SEC describing Madoff's fund as Ponzi scheme (scribd.com)
		48 points by kqr2 on Dec 19, 2008 \| 32 comments
8.		Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are Expensive (codinghorror.com)
		49 points by Anon84 on Dec 19, 2008 \| 57 comments
		decode on Dec 19, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: Everybody is faking it. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone were faking it? If all you needed to excel at anything were some gumption and a ready lie? Instead, in the real world, the good people have dedication, have put in the hard work, and have been blessed with abilities and the right environment. Education and experience are a part of that. Some people know what they're talking about and others don't, and at times it's very obvious who is who (especially in highly technical fields).
10.		10 is the one (opera.com)
		41 points by luckystrike on Dec 19, 2008 \| 8 comments
11.		Ask HN: Interesting recent developments in academic computer science.
		37 points by rplevy on Dec 19, 2008 \| 32 comments
12.		Is the Internet going down? Undersea sub-cables have just broken... (timesonline.typepad.com)
		36 points by gibsonf1 on Dec 19, 2008 \| 29 comments
13.		Ask HN: Where does consciousness come from?
		35 points by jmtame on Dec 19, 2008 \| 130 comments
14.		Scribd raises $9M in Series B, hires Bebo COO, and new marketing VP (techcrunch.com)
		33 points by jasonbentley on Dec 19, 2008 \| 17 comments
15.		Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits (wsj.com)
		32 points by raju on Dec 19, 2008 \| 34 comments
		windsurfer on Dec 19, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: Is the Internet going down? Undersea sub-cables ha... The internet seems fine. I don't kn
17.		Ask HN: Writing DSL in Python
		26 points by oltmans on Dec 19, 2008 \| 29 comments
		kragen on Dec 19, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits To summarize, their new strategy is to make allegations of copyright infringement, in response to which, ISPs will voluntarily cut off people's internet access, without the music industry having to prove any copyright infringement in court. Presumably if there were a free market in ISPs, this wouldn't work; the alleged copyright infringers would simply switch to ISPs that didn't have agreements in place with the music industry. So the strategy depends on either suing the ISPs (in violation of the DMCA safe harbor clause? There's no mention of a counter-notice provision) or internet service monopolies who can be bribed. If effective, this would grant a music industry association the power to unilaterally exclude people from participating in the public sphere: no access to Google, no access to Wikipedia, no emailing your lawyer, no blogging about how the music industry is corrupt. Given their remarkable lack of precision in filing lawsuits in the past, let alone their decades-long history of criminal conspiracies and abusive business practices, it seems irresponsible to allow this to happen. I hope you folks in the US can do something about it.
		mattmaroon on Dec 19, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: IPhone Dev Spends $500k on Development, Still Not ... It's absolutely retarded to spend that kind of money developing on a platform controlled by such a capricious and arbitrary master as Apple. As soon as Android has a userbase, you'll never hear this sort of story again.
		pg on Dec 19, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: Ask HN: Where does consciousness come from? The word "consciousness" doesn't mean one single thing. To the extent it means anything definite, it seems to refer to a collection of self-referential thoughts. I'm sure everyone who studies the brain wonders very much how neuron firings correlate with these thoughts or any others. I'm equally sure everyone who studies the brain would be surprised if they weren't "based on nothing more than electrical signals firing off."
		swilliams on Dec 19, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are ... "Also, having programmers who believe that their employers actually give a damn about them is probably a good business strategy for companies that actually want to be around five or ten years from now." This is probably the most overlooked reason to get at least semi-good hardware. Part of the reason I quit my last job was because of management's stubborn refusal to get us tools that would make us be more productive.
		mlLK on Dec 19, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: It's A Dirty Job, And I Love It I picked up roadkill for two summers in a row while working for the DPW, but we never called it roadkill, we denoted the dearly departed as 'buddies'. It was sorta funny since you may wonder, "Where do all them buddies go after you get done pickin em all up?" They all went in this 12ft hole known as the buddy pit.
		mechanical_fish on Dec 19, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: Coding Horror: Hardware is Cheap, Programmers are ... If your overpaid programmers are writing O(n^2) algorithms then that cheap hardware is going to get expensive real quick. Well, that depends on the value of n, right? Not every piece of software is Google or Twitter: They don't all have a userbase that grows virally to encompass every breathing human in existence, plus animals and robots. Especially if you charge the users money.
24.		Paul Buchheit coded SUP examples on AppJet (appjet.net)
		17 points by Raphael on Dec 19, 2008 \| 4 comments
		ryanwaggoner on Dec 19, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: Everybody is faking it. In fact, if you were to ask a handful of the most successful people in this world what their secret was they would unanimously say, in one form or another, that they learned to play the system (read: fake it). Unverified. Why should I believe that random-guy-from-Internet has any credibility or perspective on what the world's most successful people would reveal as their "secret to success"?
26.		The Curse of Information Addiction (geero.net)
		21 points by andygeers on Dec 19, 2008 \| 18 comments
27.		Synthasite Buys Clickpass (techcrunch.com)
		21 points by jbenz on Dec 19, 2008 \| 5 comments
		jimbokun on Dec 19, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: It's A Dirty Job, And I Love It "I've been thinking about the first time I castrated a lamb with my teeth." Suddenly, my job satisfaction sitting here programming just went up a notch.
		sdurkin on Dec 19, 2008 \| parent \| context \| on: Intelligent soldiers most likely to die in battle ... "Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive. What they hide is vital."
30.		App Store Pricing (It's not a free market) (appcubby.com)
		20 points by pxlpshr on Dec 19, 2008 \| 28 comments
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