Hacker News Reader

paradojaon Dave Winer: Why I stand up for Stallman

But were OSS? An example, please?

    Not that such a thing is not desirable for men, but its just that men won't chase it at all.

Give it time for marketing departments to do their jobs...

paradojaon Eric Schmidt criticises education in the UK

"Comment is free, but facts are sacred"

C. P. Scott http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._P._Scott

paradojaon Short array syntax finally in PHP 5.4

Well, arrays start with index 0, so if the indexes where 1 less it would be the same. Your example would be equivalent to

  [0 => [4, 5, 6], 1 => [7, 8, 9], 2 => [10, 11, 12]]

paradojaon Interview with key LulzSec hacker

He has not been arrested due to rape charges, to begin with, because said charges have not been brought up. That said, had he been arrested, he couldn't have refused to show up for any hearings.

I suppose this also speaks volumes to you.

paradojaon LulzSec supposedly claims its biggest coup yet: The entire UK 2011 Census

If you read the article or the pastebin:

We’re keeping them under lock and key though… so don’t worry about your privacy (…until we finish re-formatting them for release)

So, given they really arer LulzSec, they are hinting that they won't publish the data un-redacted.

paradojaon How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance

The library was probably burnt more than once, and there's no proof that the Muslims did it the last time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria#Arabic_so...

paradojaon Net giants challenge French data law

On Reddit there may be more insight on this: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/gkl77/hashed_pa...

paradojaon Middle Easterners Protesting for Democracy, Middle Westerners Protesting Against

Well, it could be very easily argued that (at least indirectly) the protestors in Madison protest for more (Direct) Democracy. That most people voted one thing at a time at the past does not necessarily mean that the ones who where voted should continue to decide on matters now. Maybe people should decide on things instead of choosing people to decide for them.

paradojaon "Move" — a simpler programming language as a subset of JavaScript

It is neither. It is another language which can be interpreted from JS through a library.

The difference in the semantics of «==» is an example. Also, it does not have things that JS has, and has other things JS doesn't.

paradojaon Man places his genome in public domain, on Github

The curious thing is that he uses Github... does he expect forks? Or patches?

paradojaon Why I absolutely love java

You may have a point, but I still find easier to do

         111
 948      948
 289  =>  289
 ---      ---
         1237

than

CMXLVIII plus CCLXXXIX => CMCCXLLXXXIXVIII => MCLLXXIXVIII => MCCXXXVII

but it may be that it's because what I'm used to.

paradojaon Why I absolutely love java

?!?!?!?!?!

Are you saying that Roman numerals are better for counting than Arabic numerals? I suppose you don't mean count (I, II, III, IIII, V...), but show the number of men in the army. I don't see any advantage in using Roman numerals.

Lets say we divide infantry in XXX maniples of CXX men each, supposing they are complete and you haven't lost people yet in battle. How is that better than 30 maniples of 120 men?

paradojaon If your government shuts down the internet...

I think they mean the comic "V for Vendetta".

paradojaon In Spanish, It's Not Your Fault

I am a native Spanish speaker from the Canary Islands. It's is quite clear that the author is learning mainland Spain's Spanish, as he uses "patata" for potato, instead of "papa", which I believe is used everywhere else. There, those phrases are quite common ones to use for that situations.

paradojaon "this gem is awesome".to_spanish # = "esta joya es impresionante"

It depends... most of what's translated is understandable for a native speaker, but it will be clear that it wasn't written by one. If you need to communicate with a Spanish speaker, it will work quite well. If you need to write a brochure or something formal... better get someone to translate for you.

paradojaon Taking a break from Ubuntu

Well, now it only needs to be as customisable.

paradojaon The world is socialist

Socialism is the government control of production, and it's largely dead outside of Cuba and North Korea.

Nope, not necessarily. There are many definitions of socialism, and lots of movements defined as socialists. Many of them don't involve State control of production, eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

paradojaon After correcting for demographics, US schools fare better than EU/Asian schools

That would mean, by itself, pretty little. They could be liberals due to the liberal stand on education, not the other way around.

paradojaon N.Korea says war with South would go nuclear

kill it's own people than give up broken ideals

Broken ideals? Ideals? Tyranny usually rarely have anything to do with ideals.

paradojaon Anonymous Ousted from Twitter and Facebook

Are you a government?

paradojaon Amazon Bows To US Censorship Pressure: Refuses To Host Wikileaks

-The State Department is party to spying on other countries and the UN (really? we didn't know that already? come on)

It's not the same to suspect than to have proof. And this is no little thing: it's another broken international agreement.

-More countries agree with us on Iran and North Korea than I thought (shit, maybe our state department is doing a better job than I thought)

Nope, not really. It has been a surprise (to most, maybe you know more of international politics than nearly everyone else)to know that arab countries wanted the US to go to war with Iran. Not a little thing, too.

This is not watergate. I wish we had half this much attention on other major scandals that have gone on in the last 20 years that were far more important than everything I've seen in here so far.

Let's see a bit... :

- 'Sri Lankan president responsible for massacre of Tamils' http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-sri-la...

- Berlusconi 'profited from secret deals' with Putin http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/02/wikileaks-cables...

- A bit of corruption in Russia http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-cables... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-cables... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-cable-... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-cables...

- Secret deal let Americans sidestep cluster bomb ban http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-cables...

- US involvement in Spain's national politics and "independent" justice system (with lies of Spanish ministers and all of that stuff) http://www.elpais.com/articulo/english/How/US/worked/to/get/...

And many, many more.

Yes, this is not watergate. I doubt watergate was received with people saying, "hey!, this is not big news."

paradojaon Wikileaks says it is under attack

Then it can also be said that not disclosing also puts lives in danger. Talking is cheap. There is yet no reason to beleive that Wikileaks hasn't acted responsibly.

paradojaon Wikileaks says it is under attack

Whose life has been threatened by him? Please provide sources.

paradojaon C is 38 years old. K&R V2 is 22 years old. What's the best modern C book?

Well, it doesn't cover the niceties of C99. While I own it, and it'd be the first C book i'd recommend, it could perfectly have a chapter explaining some changes in C since it was written.

paradojaon Ask HN: How do you track progress of reading technical books?

The thing is that if you don't remember later what you've read/studied, why make the effort?

Anyway, I also thing «so what?». Even if you think you've forgotten, things do stay in the head, and next time you pick up the subject everything is quicker. Not to mention when learning in one place helps you in others.

paradojaon Remind HN: Vote

One thing I don't like about the moral «obligation» to vote is that to many people, casting a ballot is all the political action they can consider. Politics seems reduced to elect one of the two big parties. It seems that the alternative is, either to vote or to not make any political action.

The truth is that many people are politically active independently of wether they vote or not.

paradojaon Remind HN: Vote

«The biggest problem with voting not being mandatory is that a lot of people don't have the opportunity because they can't get off work. If you made voting mandatory (or at least made election day a paid holiday), this impediment might be alleviated.»

An alternative, as it's done in Spain, is to give everyone the right to leave their jobs in order to vote. To alleviate things for businesses, all elections happen on Sundays.

paradojaon Remind HN: Vote

No action removes your right to complain. Many people may have their own legitimate reasons not to vote.

That said, those who don't must understand the implications of their actions (like the example you give).

paradojaon Why PHP Is Fun and Easy But Python Is Marriage Material

The «?» ending is common in (at least some implementations/variants of) Scheme.

In Common Lisp and other Lisps, on the other hand you'll usually see «-p» instead of the «?».