mpk

75 ms·

271.
by mpk 18y ago
Ok, ok, it's a classic essay. However, it's a classic. Not news. Next thing you know there'll be a front-page article recommending "Godel, Escher, Bach", a trip through the Jargon file, a link to the Scary Devil Monastery group and, hey, di
272.
by mpk 18y ago
This is awesome. Merb has become the 'go to' framework for Rails developers like myself who are unsatisfied with several Rails design choices. However, the technical differences between the two are actually not that big. A merge of Merb and
273.
by mpk 18y ago
I doubt you're going to get any answers here. I've seen GEB mentioned already and if you're a reader I highly recommend Julian Jaynes' Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Fascinating theory, but the consensus see
274.
by mpk 18y ago
Though I can (usually, ok, sometimes) appreciate Techcrunch's position as an opinionated startup news outlet, this kind of stuff reads like a juvenile pissing contest. Teenagers apparently indulge in this kind of behavior on MySpace, but I'
275.
by mpk 18y ago
That's a sensible position to have for an established company that has a lot of cash in the bank, doesn't pay its engineers very much and has a long-term view. However, if you're established but don't have cash, have low margins and expensi
276.
by mpk 18y ago
I have a lot to say about version control, but I won't get into the details here. However, on the 'switch from CVS to SVN', I'll comment and say that SVN is far superior to CVS. The whole 'changes committed to the repo up the entire repo ve
277.
by mpk 18y ago
It's also a problem with Windows itself. It really is a nasty environment for coding non-MS-based software on. If I want to support Windows I have to setup a (virtual) machine with a license code just to have any basic functionality. As s
278.
by mpk 18y ago
I disagree. Words like 'hero', 'rockstar', 'ninja' convey a certain attitude. They also imply that the applicant (if qualified and hired) can take the technology in a new direction. Basically, these words often mean a senior position, at a
279.
by mpk 18y ago
I put up a list of relevant job listing sites on my page a few months ago, mostly to point people to a starting page. They all still seem to be pretty active. http://www.moondust.dds.nl/jobs.html Disclaimer : I've posted it here before, t
280.
by mpk 18y ago
This is a silly idea for many reasons and I won't get into all them. Turning HN into an invite-only site will radically change its nature and reduce the quality of posts and variety of opinions found here. Apart from indulging in some serio
281.
by mpk 18y ago
Hm, I don't care about the color theme one way or another, but when I clicked 'Sign out' a popup appeared and said, "There is a request to the server pending. Are you sure?" I know what this means, but even then I have no idea what
282.
by mpk 18y ago
> Or, would you explain the principle argument against it, aside of the standards bit? Flash is a proprietary runtime. That means Adobe has to support whatever platform you're running at the moment. Flash support for linux has only rece
283.
by mpk 18y ago
1) I'd spend a year writing a web-app to teach mathematics and physics, open-source it, run it on my own servers and lobby to have it used in high-school education. 2) I'd put more time into promoting awareness of Humanism and showing peopl
284.
by mpk 18y ago
For anyone interested, the blog appears to have belonged to the author of Podcaster. The cached url is http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:MP2KvHTWHQMJ:almerica.b... . It doesn't contain the last post, though. I'm curious to see how this
285.
by mpk 18y ago
> How might the discoveries of the LHC experiment be applied? Why is this even a question? The results of the LHC experiments will (hopefully) give us answers about assumptions in the Standard Model of physics and a load of theoretical
286.
by mpk 18y ago
There's a list of startup jobs sites here, http://www.moondust.dds.nl/jobs.html
287.
by mpk 18y ago
You're all missing the point. IE6 only has 25% left . Yes, it's horrid and we waste a massive amount of time supporting it, but the market share is dropping. It was 90% of the market 2 years ago. Once it drops below 15% we can stop support
288.
by mpk 18y ago
You can bet they will. The V8 engine is unlikely to present much of an obstacle. We have a large JS codebase and the Opera, WebKit (Safari), Spidermonkey (Gecko/Firebird), Rhino (Spidermonkey port to Java) and JScript (IE6/7) engines are no
289.
by mpk 18y ago
Coding at night is often better for building large pieces of code because there's no interruption. Where I work you can watch the SVN commit messages in the dev channel coming by until about 5:00 AM several times a week. I'm on the dev team
290.
by mpk 18y ago
Though I find the TIOBE index interesting, the error margins are huge. The top 5 seem fairly accurate. Considering the error margins, you'll notice there's a massive drop-off after position 5. (#1 - 21%, #5 - 9% and #6 - 5%). You can safely
291.
by mpk 18y ago
Not using existing JS frameworks is a terribly stupid idea. Unless of course you're building your own framework and are willing to test it across all browsers, etc to make sure it all actually works. I have used jQuery, Dojo and Prototype/S
292.
by mpk 18y ago
Naturally we're interested. Like a fellow commenter mentions, though, the numbers seem off. Give us a little more to work with here. $300K revenue in seven days is spectacular for a startup with $100 in funding making a website about cute c
293.
by mpk 18y ago
I really don't care about being down or up voted. I make a comment every now and again - if people want to vote on it, fair enough. Go ahead, that's what the system is for. But please don't try to pretend this is anything other than an Inte
294.
by mpk 18y ago
Total hoax. There are so many holes in this I don't know where to begin. A humanoid robot with a measurable IQ of 130 would require awareness of self and environment. Programming it for servitude would be tricky, to say the least. Also, why
295.
by mpk 18y ago
Yup, here's me disagreeing. I do interviews on occasion and I usually ask for some source on the whiteboard. Generally I only do that with people interviewing for junior positions, though. I usually ask for a quick implementation of the fib
296.
by mpk 18y ago
That really depends on what you're building. Using cookies to run sessions is pretty much the norm, so trying to support stateful application behavior for people that refuse to use cookies sounds like a good way to waste a lot of time. Java
297.
by mpk 18y ago
You'll be the first true hire [...] Hired people work for salary. The kind of people who qualify either command high salaries or shares. Other than that it sounds like a nice job for a 20-year old hacker wanting to get some experience and
298.
by mpk 18y ago
Microsoft has a long history of evil. I think most of us can agree on that. Google doesn't have any history to speak of. Google went from a search company with no money to an ad-farmer with billions almost overnight. Companies, especially p
299.
by mpk 18y ago
I use Debian for servers all the time. Uptime, stability, support, etc all world-class. Well, there was that OpenSSL bit last week, but let's ignore that for now .. The packaging system is great, but you really do need to understand it or y
300.
by mpk 18y ago
I'd say that working on commercial side-projects is unethical. On the other hand, experimenting with code is exactly the thing you want your developers to be doing in their down time. When working on commercial software you're subject to de

More ›