hendrix

entry level MBP in the USA is 1199 + 8.6% (in WA) = $1302 in Ireland (include vat) is $1606.

Politicians can and do dictate the law these days, but they can't dictate economics. If the NSA/CIA/Government pulls too much shit the smart people and business will leave. Also, Mormonism is a cult.

I'll take the pirated 1080p version that doesn't have unskipable adverts, copy protection, and the extra commentary track. I don't care about any of the "extra features" that Hollywood seems to sprinkle into every DVD. Their business model is broken, but they are not going to go down without a fight.

This is the same company (albeit a different division?) that decided it was OK to install rootkits on users computers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootki...

Just wait until 10.8 when this is mysteriously integrated into iCal.

I was thinking mining online data to gauge the feeling of the market awhile ago, looks like someone is actually doing it.

There is no such thing as 'aging' in the traditional sense. As explained by Aubrey De Grey Sens' founder "the set of accumulated side effects from metabolism that eventually kills us" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategies_for_Engineered_Negli... sens.org

It might not work but it is a _much_ better use of our tax dollars than blowing up brown people in the middle east.

And bush is the only president so far with an MBA. Is the USA becoming socialist? [/sarcasm].

http://www.americanthinker.com/2004/02/gwb_hbs_mba.html

You can, it's called a Hackintosh.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

--Ben Franklin

Only problem is that the USA has become an even more monstrous empire than the Brits were at the time. Google can be as principled as it wants to be but at the end of the day it is still located in the USA. Btw google and facebook are more than the Nazis/Stasi/KGB could ever imagined.

Jabba the Hut just got arrested.

So Google should know everything about everyone's search/social/youtube/whatever? Combining this data creates a very complete psychological profile on someone. Since Google is based in the USA all of this data could then be acquired by the government under the patriot act and used against innocent Americans. Never mind that the FBI (who could also request Google's data) has already done this sort of thing to anti-war groups http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09....

Also, Eric Schmidt said "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place" which in my opinion is fucking crazy. If I want to search for black panthers/Jewish defense league/Aryan nations/journal articles on explosive synthesis/bacillus anthracis/obscure soviet weaponry then I sure as hell don't want Google logging everything. Never mind that I'm just curious, but it sounds like Herr Schmidt and company are ready to send the Stasi out to get me. I have since switched to ssl + duckduckgo and blocked Google in my hosts file. Time for Google to stop trying to be god.

The t400 is a tank. It survived university and being dropped more than a few times, and beer spilled all over it. MBPs are like Maserati/BMW/whatever which are sexy but require much more maintenance and care than the Honda civic of laptops aka the thinkpad T-series.

OK, I think I might have worded things a bit awkward there. Actually I agree with you completely in that technology is not moving fast enough. Having a speech enabled android tablet/phone could actually compete with siri and would be very, very cool.

The point that I disagree on is that Mark Shuttleworth & CO are releasing software every 6 months that in many cases (myself included) breaks comparability with hardware. This among other problems has IMO caused Ubuntu to fall to #2 on distrowatch, while Linux Mint which includes MATE and a much more customizable gnome 3 has risen to the top. If they can really make it against apple then more power to ‘em.

(yes I know Ubuntu does not include gnome 3 by default but both gnome 3 and unity depart from the traditional win95 style desktop)

Ubuntu 10.04LTS has gnome 2, it also had gnome-do which was awesome. Ubuntu 12.04 is going to have unity/blurify or whatever -- this is a gigantic change and what prompted me to switch back to windows 7 on my laptop. This is too much change too fast especially when Ubuntu is targeting people from windows that are accustomed to windows xp/7.

TL;DR Ubuntu is moving wayyyy too fast.

what about rapidshare/ifile?

You wouldn't download a car...

How is this different from any other warez site that has been on the Internet since the mid 90s? They [ninjavideo] were not even hosting the content, just linking to megaupload/wherever, what about filestube.com/library.nu/demonoid/usenet? Anonymous will LOVE to hear about this.

2gb would be painful for photoshop. 4gb is the way to go.

IMO reddit is 90% 4chan 10% HN/stackoverflow/mathoverflow.

There are a few including houdini/maya/mathematica/matlab/nx (old version).

That's why you use a VPN/proxy to access it. If the servers are not in the USA there's not much that the government can do, unless they want to block proxies/VPN.

make twitter.ch, problem solved.

How can the government mandating the kind of paid-leave in Sweden be good for a startup? Tell me how this sort of policy can increase a new startups short-term cash flow? You can't exactly advertize superior working conditions (Google w/ free food/massages/nerf guns/paid child-related leave) since you do not have any track-record of being the hot new startup. Even if you did have the best working conditions available having to pay out for an employee who is not producing anything would probably kill the startup.

Culture/location/talent/vc $ is what makes a company though and to some extent trumps unfavorable tax/labor laws, this is IMO why SV & California have most of the startups as compared to Arizona/Texas or why Scandinavia>Eastern Europe.

The only people that really need to worry about SOPA are the little guys with personal connections/local businesses in the USA. If the USA kills their golden goose then it is their own damn fault and business will move elsewhere.

To access the internet all you have to do is get swissvpn or a proxy and you're set. If the .gov makes VPNs/proxies illegal then the USA suddenly is more oppressive than china/saudi Arabia.

Not to be too harsh, but why would xyz cool startup hire you when they can hire someone from the usa with a degree?

count me in, skype is rjhendricks_

I use HN specifically because it is NOT monetized. If I wanted monetized I'd go to reddit/digg/facebook/tumblr.

This article is BS. Google is a for-profit public company, hence google wants to make more money for google's shareholders. If they can do that by pushing chrome (advertizing platform) or firefox (OSS platform that they want to control) then that's what they will do. It doesn't matter what browser you use, so long as you look at their ads. Never mind their horrible privacy practices (2038 cookie) and associated shenanigans.

It doesn't matter. I'm in a similar position to yourself (although i have graduated college w/ a non EECS degree) and have chosen c++ for the challenge. It depends tho; if you want to do webapps by all means learn ROR/python, if you want to do low-level suff then c/c++.