hobbs

Seriously though, to play god's advocate: check out this article from the CEO of Stardock games: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080320-pc-game-develo... (Ignore the Pirates)

Back to devil's advocate: Stardock has a good reputation among gamers for being a scrappy independent publisher, so they get some respect from would-be pirates. I don't know that a faceless megacorp like EA could play the same hand.

(Just in case someone mistakes this for seriousness, I did RTFA)

I've participated in TopCoder a couple times a while back, but didn't see much benefit in practicing up to become competitive. This article indicates that it may be different now. Is that true?

Specifically, the prizes awarded were not sufficient to compensate for the time investment required. Even bidding $10/hr for rent-a-coder gigs typically have a higher return on investment.

Seriously though, I thought about it, but then I realized that I would probably have to replace the entire paragraph, since it seems to be a key step in the original author's explanation.

Maybe I will replace it anyway, since it can't be a very good explanation if it relies on faulty logic.

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Update: Did it. Now I'm contradicting myself. Gotta' love these logic games.

To break it down into standard boolean algebra, the statement "if A then B" is logically equivalent to saying "not A or B". !A|B = B|!A = "If not B then not A".

Now back to the paradox, using boolean terms. The statement can be rephrased as !A|B: "This sentence is false or Santa Claus exists." Since we know that Santa doesn't exist, the sentence must be false: !(!A|B). That is equivalent to A&!B: "This sentence is true and Santa Claus doesn't exist." Here is where we have the paradox. We just said that the sentence must be false, but that then implies that the sentence is true.

The main mind-bender here is to realize that the negation of "If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists." is "This sentence is true and Santa Claus doesn't exist." We are not able to get rid of the statement "this sentence is true" no matter which way we toggle it.

Even if it doesn't, though, everyone knows that the trick to successful investment is to buy low and sell high. There are still plenty of opportunities to buy low - even with limited risk - in large emerging economies. The U.S. may become a low-risk capital preservation stock and China will become the higher-risk investment stock.

Does anyone know if this is the case in other industries? Does the degree make a difference to a prospective accounting clerk if she already has 5 years of work experience?

It isn't maintained anymore, though. But the LGPL'ed source is always available.

My philosophy: go to Slashdot for the news, come to HN for the commentary.

Flashblock is by far the most valuable Firefox extension that I use.

Now back to the correct answer, which is because the manholes are round - that begs the question of why manholes are round. It's probably a matter of equally distributing the sideways forces from the dirt plus a matter of being able to manufacture round tubes more easily than, say, square tubes or hexagonal tubes.

This wording, taken at face value, means that you can't deploy a Python app. Assuming that the CPython interpreter would be the "Application" that is written using the iPhone SDK, then that Application would not be permitted to launch other executable code (i.e., your .py or .pyc files).

In fact, Sun has backpedaled on its plan to port Java to the iPhone because of this restriction: http://www.ericklein.com/2008/03/btw-i-love-apple.html

"No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and builtin interpreter(s)… An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise."

>> Taken to the extreme, why have we even developed arms, legs, eyes, ears, and minds? Simple bacterial reproduction does just fine.

> I don't get what you are trying to prove here. What is your explanation for the fact that we developed those things?

Back to my point, everyone assumes that evolution simply means "survival of the fittest" or the "propagation of the gene". If that's all there is to it, there's no obvious explanation for the emergence of higher-order organisms, since bacterial reproduction provides by far the most efficient mechanism for copying genes. All this is to say that the devil is in the details and there is actually quite a bit more to evolution than what is taught in 7th grade biology.

Like I said, I only know enough to know that I can't comfortably refer to evolution to explain human nature. My point is that I doubt that most people who do reference evolution are familiar with the likes of sociobiology either.

Evolution, at its core, strives for only one thing: propagation of the species. Taken to this level, it's a wonder that everyone isn't spending their time either at drunken orgies, or fighting each other to get into the drunken orgies. Somehow, "civilization", "culture", and "society" have guided human development away from that model - and I don't presume to know how it happened.

Taken to the extreme, why have we even developed arms, legs, eyes, ears, and minds? Simple bacterial reproduction does just fine. In fact, there is so much bacteria in our gut and sinuses that 90% of the DNA molecules in our bodies are foreign. One begins to wonder, then, whose purpose our human bodies really serve.

1) You got me there. I was quite stupid to pay for an overpriced iPod when all I wanted to do was rip my CD's to an MP3 player. Unfortunately the packaging did not contain a disclaimer saying that the computer interface did not work like every other MP3 player ever sold. Apple will never fool me twice.

2) I can see if AT&T somehow subsidized the phone, the lock-in would be fair, but it doesn't. Apple got the exclusive contract only so it could get extra cash above and beyond the original purchase price. This is about as consumer-friendly as the crapware that is preinstalled on most PC's.

3) Equating Apple's practices to Microsoft's practices only strengthens my argument.

4) It has nothing to do with CPU cycles or battery life. The SDK allows any developer to waste as much battery life as they want. I was referring to the prohibition against interpreters: http://blog.mozilla.com/rob-sayre/2008/03/06/apple-bans-fire...

Their actions regarding AT&T lock-in, auto-bundling Safari in iTunes updates, and forbidding Flash or Java on iPhones have only confirmed my impression that Apple would love to abuse its monopoly position, if only it had one.

So far, we have a total of a $35/mo surcharge on your internet bill just in case you should happen to download copyrighted content. And that's not even covering the more niche copyright holders such as photographers, graphic designers, and 3D modelers.