ashr

No doubt that MS has a great opportunity now and so has Nokia. Their partnership better move fast otherwise it won't be able to benefit.

Without knowing the details of the partnership, the content in the OP sounds mostly hyperbole and opinion at best.

yes

So you probably didn't look at all. http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/15/windows-phone-7-series-ha...

I am in.

I am happy to make my contribution to the Clojure fund. I am curious though, whether this model also becomes applicable to the other Clojure libraries and how would that play out.

This sounds like market research :)

1. High quality discussions. 2. Any BS gets called out with relevant evidence

Boulder CO

Good point. That reminds me of how Programming Languages/Compiler construction courses helped me understand how high level programming languages worked.

And it is a good way to get started with problem solving. Thanks for elaborating.

Indeed that is a useful little skill to have.

I am looking for skills at a somewhat higher level than regular expressions though. For instance, like some of those mentioned in the question above.

It is the exercise and eating habits combo that works. Weight gain = Calories In - Calories out.

Exercising along with the judicious diet (not starving) is what works. I recently came across two books that throw light on the interesting and useful information about high intensity-low duration exercising to develop a great body:

1. Cardio Free Diet: http://tinyurl.com/cardiofreediet and 2. The Nautilus Bodybuilding book: ISBN: 0-8092-5815-3

I didn't know the posting titles are edited for no apparent reason. The original title was "Dubious Reporting" with link to this article: http://www.thebusinessjournal.com/index.php/the-business-jou...

This is an article where the reporter cited the latest earnings report and combined it with the old lay-off numbers from January !!! Looks like copy-paste journalism to me! Hence the original title.

With all due respect, this is where I do not agree.

Microsoft is a company with a very diverse product spectrum and $60B in revenue. One has to give them some credit for sustaining high level of revenues and profit growth. It would be only fair to consider that they do have a lot of very smart people who can perhaps tell when is a short cut (FAST, Powerset ?) a better way to success and when the sheer commitment to high level of craftsmanship is the primary way.

With the search business being so dominated by Google (and for very good reason), introducing an entirely new brand name like Bing is a LOT of work, just to get people's ears and eyeballs. To overcome such a huge startup latency because of a new brand, a $100m investment in marketing sounds perfectly reasonable. Overall, I think they are investing a total of ~$500m in the online business operating expenses for the year.

Or with Bing, for that matter :)

>>"the past - their operating system crashing and dying. It's a necessary evil for them (Until they discover linux/osx if they ever do)."

Don't intend to start a flame war but this is ridiculous. How do you explain ~95% of desktops in the world running windows? As far as discovering linux/osx is concerned, it isn't for the common computer buyer yet. It is the computer scientists/hackers who discover them. Most of the common people probably haven't even heard of linux.

All of these sound like suggestions that you just "like" OS X better than any MS OS.

"No falling behind the open-source development curve"

I agree with this one somewhat.

All others are simply not convincing enough. Malware argument is just bogus.

Definitely not into this for FUD :)

Also have no intention for starting PC brand war here. One can go visit a PC vendor's web site (say, dell) look at the notebook/desktop/workstation hardware configuration and prices and then compare with what one can find on say, Apple Store.

This year, I recently purchased a gateway laptop: http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668231.php

(17" HD display, 64 bit Intel Core 2 Duo 8400 2.26 GHz CPU, 4 GB DDR3 RAM, 320 GB 7200 rpm hard disk, NVIDIA® GeForce® 9800M GTS Graphics with 1GB of GDDR3 Discrete Video Memory).

I got this for $1270 after tax. For the same amount of money I also bought a Macbook: http://www.apple.com/macbook/specs.html (13.3" display, Intel Core 2 Duo CPU 2.0 GHz, 2 GB DDR3 RAM, 160 GB 5400 rpm hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory).

I would like to point out that I love both of these notebooks. I would give Apple extra points for build quality, fit & finish and better user experience. That said, one can very well see, item-by-item, how do the technical specs compare between the two mentioned here.

When a for profit company has to make a decision, cost of purchase becomes a big factor and that is the only point I am trying to make here.

"Mac's have fewer problems and have fewer downtime. Over 3 years we've never had a Mac desktop go down. I can't imagine a similar statement coming from a similar sized business running Windows."

In past 10 yrs I have used Unix (Solaris, IRIX, Linux and OS X on x86) as well as Windows (XP & Vista) and have never had downtime on any of those, except for explicit and deliberate OS patches/upgrades' installation time.

I have come to believe that the computer downtime is usually a function of the hardware, people managing the infrastructure and sometimes, the users.

The enterprises that are on Windows today aren’t going to move to OS X anytime soon and this is why:

There is a huge barrier for enterprises to move to OS X, it is locked into Mac hardware.

Macs are extremely overpriced as compared to their PC counterparts: 30% - 50% more!

So for cost conscious enterprises, when they compare between the cost of upgrading to Windows 7 (which has had good reviews so far) with cost of buying new Apple hardware and OS X, Windows 7 turns out to be the winner.

The point that the article makes is not a technical one.

It is a philosophical one instead. The ideas of tomorrow must look beyond what is possible today into anticipating what may be possible tomorrow.

The execution of such an idea would then hold the promise of innovation to break today's barriers.

I heard Microsoft was founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico. :)

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

I recommend watching the video on apple.com

This is an extremely myopic perspective of a feature that opens up possibilities. Like somebody said, everything can be abused. But then people have the supreme authority to reject those who do.

I was hoping to see a compact implementation of diff algorithm. However, the script seems to be relying on using the 'diff' utility already present. Not a bad thing, but I was expecting to see something else.

Spot on! Except for the hint of hacker news disdain.

How many hours a day did you put in on average?

I sure get the same impression. Start ups are for twenty somethings who are not married. If you are 30+, married and with a mortgage then forget it.

This is a great idea. Just need to make sure this feature doesn't get spammed.

Really? Make sure that is the first thing you do, otherwise people other than your friends would balk at signing up.

If there is already a clear competitive advantage then indeed the competitors are not that big of an issue. But it is very hard to ascertain that. Besides almost every company has smart people. So if there is something that can be done and it is not technologically impossible (or patented) then chances are that lot of other folks can do it too.

Those besides incumbents have about the same chance as you starting up and that is fair. The real issue is in estimating the likelihood that incumbents would dive-in too before you get traction. So what are the factors that one can look at or ensure to minimize the risk of doing something that the entrenched players would replicate. Or what are the factors based on which such an idea should be put aside?

I really appreciate all the high quality input I am getting.