Stanford Open Classroom - Ruby on Rails Web Apps - <AUTHOR> http://openclassroom.stanford.edu/MainFolder/CoursePage.php?course=WebApplications

<comment><USER2> The coursework is for Rails 2.3. Things have significantly changed in the Rails framework. A lot of great info on web applications in general, including security, javascript, css, and AJAX, though.

Also, something that might escape the attention of our younger hackers: the class instructor is THE John Ousterhout, creator of Tcl and Tk.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ousterhout>

</comment><comment><USER3> Looking through a few of these, I really wish they would put some more effort into the sound quality. One of the lectures on forms was so warped, like they had hooked the mic up to a guitar amp.

The phrase "quality over quantity" really comes to mind. Lynda makes great tutorials, and TED talks are just amazing (presentation wise). The Stanford tutorials may have great content, but then again so do books...if you're going to do videos, at least do it right. There is little point publishing just for the sake of publishing.

Though I guess these lecture recordings are the equivalent of alpha software...so I might just have somewhat high expectations.

<comment><USER4> It's also a free resource so the phrase "you get what you pay for" comes to mind.

<comment><USER3> That's a terrible reason for not getting the sound right. Khan Academy is free, and they have good sound.

<comment><USER5> To the courses defense, It's in an open classroom environment, while Khan Academy is Khan sitting at his computer, so it's much easier to get the sound right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I took cs142, it was actually a web security class. It seems that the last few weeks of the class will still be devoted to security. The introduction to Rails was done solely to get students to implement safeguards against the attacks they had learned earlier in the course. The class appears to take the reverse route now, possibly due to student feedback.

<comment><USER7> Actually, CS 241 is now the web security class. This, from what I was told, was a totally different class that was focused more on web development as a whole, rather than web security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is another set of full length 'intro to C and computing' lectures by Richard Buckland of UNSW. He's a fantastic and very engaging teacher. Videos here: [http://www.youtube.com/user/UNSWelearning#g/c/6B940F08B9773B...](http://www.youtube.com/user/UNSWelearning#g/c/6B940F08B9773B9F)

</comment><comment><USER9> There's a growing number of courses, tutorials, etc online. Does anyone know any mechanism for meeting and collaborating with others who are planning on working through the same courses/tutorials. I am pretty individualistic when it comes to learning, but even I would find collaborative learning helpful at times.

Maybe a place to find partners, online or offline "study groups" etc. Maybe meetup.com would be useful, but for some reason I don't see that working. Any recommendations would be appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER10> Crash course on web apps for people of all skill levels, partitioned into nice snack-size lectures. This is a great resource. Nice find.

EDIT: Correction. It seems some of the shorter lectures are simply incomplete. =/

</comment><comment><USER11> There are tons of great Rails tutorials out there, so the focus on security is a great and important one. But anyone know any written Intro to Security for Rails tutorials?

<comment><AUTHOR> The one provided by Ruby on Rails covers quite a few basics: <http://guides.rubyonrails.org/security.html>

Not really text, but the text version of Railscast #178: <http://asciicasts.com/episodes/178-seven-security-tips>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yes. Thank you for posting. This is epic.</comment>


Filterable Virtual Private Server List - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to share all info I've gathered while looking for a VPN with you. Would you be so nice and extend this list with one about Domain Registrars?<p>#1 http://serverbear.com/ (recommended)<p>#2 http://lowendstock.com/ (budget oriented)<p>#3 http://hosting.4or6.com/ (ipv6 oriented)<p>#4 http://vps-list.cryto.net/ (configerable)<p>#5 http://dynaboot.com/<p>#6 http://www.comparevps.com/<p>#7 http://www.amazingvpshosting.com/<p>#8 http://www.findvpshost.com/<p>For those who need more pre/post VPS order info: http://vpsbible.com/hosting/vps-virtual-private-server-vs-shared-vs-dedicated/ <comment><USER2> \+ <http://www.lowendbox.com></comment>


Emacs 23 is very near - <AUTHOR> http://emacs-fu.blogspot.com/2009/07/emacs-23-is-very-near.html <comment><USER2> D-Bus support will open a whole new box of possibilities, I can't wait. Time to start hacking away writing a Pidgin <-> Emacs interface.

 _M-x butterfly_ as well.

<comment><USER3> I've been using the dbus support with the CVS snapshot for a while now - it's nice.

So far I've only been using it to control workrave and to bring up compilation messages with the system notification handler for long running compiles. Still, I've been liking it a lot.

<comment><USER4> so what does M-x butterfly do?

<comment><USER5> See <http://xkcd.com/378/> .

(Which actually says C-x M-c M-butterfly, but that doesn't make much sense.)

<comment><USER6> There's no way it actually does that. What does it _actually_ do?

<comment><USER7> [http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/lisp/misc.el...](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/lisp/misc.el#n110)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was SO eagerly waiting for anti-aliasing on emacs. Now it should be awesome.

<comment><USER9> I for one don't really like it or need it. My emacs looks great with the bitmap font I'm using - terminus.

The new packages in the standard distribution are great thought.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I'm using terminus now, too. It's awesome! I went through a great deal of pain to get emacs 23 and try out some new fonts, but then discovered terminus and now it's relatively useless :)

<comment><USER6> I personally don't like terminus, so this anti-aliasing is great for Deja Sans Mono :)

<comment><USER10> that's what I was using before ;) To be honest I switched to Terminus when I bought a new laptop with 1680x1050 on 15'' and I wanted to fit more text on the screen. Terminus is really great at small sizes. For everything else there's Deja Vu.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The development snapshots have been perfectly usable for a while now, but this is news nonetheless.

It's purdy with droid sans.

</comment><comment><USER11> "M-x butterfly (see [[%20<http://xkcd.com/378/]>[ <http://xkcd.com/378/]])>

I'm still waiting for M-x kill-it-with-fire.

<comment><USER12> How about:

        (defun kill-it-with-fire ()
          (interactive)
          (loop for b in (buffer-list) do (kill-buffer b)))

<comment><USER11> looks like a good first start, but how do we add the _fire_?

<comment><USER12>
        (with-current-buffer b
            (ignore-errors (delete-file (buffer-file-name)))
            (kill-buffer))

<comment><USER11> oh yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> No static bound variables in elisp? :(

D-Bus sounds exciting - does anyone know if there's any chance this will allow emacs to interface with firebug?

<comment><USER14> You mean lexically bound variables perhaps? There is lexical-let from 'cl, but that's not the same thing.

OTOH Guile's elisp compiler does compile lexical bindings efficiently. It's a complementary tack to the lexbind branch of Emacs proper.

<comment><USER15> Suppose the compiler is done.. what wouild be the difficulties for using it on Emacs (apart from convincing rms)?

<comment><USER14> Getting the C shims right, and ensuring that it really implements elisp as emacs does -- to the point that elisp programmers can't tell the difference. The C question is much more difficult, though.

The goal is for Guile in Emacs to be the obvious, no-brainer choice. Hopefully that will be the case, but there is some hacking yet to be done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I tried switching to emacs 23, but the vc.el integration left much to be desired, for svn and CVS, and I switched back. (Yes, I know, why am I still using CVS, but there you go.)

</comment><comment><USER17> Ooo I can't wait

<comment><USER12> Just compile the CVS version and use that, then? That's what many of us have been doing for years -- Emacs 23's exciting new features are mostly very old news :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In Emacs 22 about the largest file I can edit is 27MB. From the lack of hype I take it Emacs 23 won't improve on that. This is on 32-bit WinXP, sadly.

It's a heck of a lot easier to pore thru a huge trace file with an intelligent editor. Instead, I get to use Notepad.

<comment><USER19> I have no problems with large files - using Emacs 23 from <http://www.ourcomments.org/Emacs/EmacsW32.html>.

The file on the screenshot is ~156MB took several seconds to load but after that all operations on it are instant.

<http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/9108/emacslargefile.png>

The blacked out parts are work related - sorry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Emacs is overkill and has very poor default key bindings.

Windows has notepad++, which is an excellent free editor.

On the Mac I use Aquamacs Emacs, which is ok, but I would still prefer something like notepad++. (For coding I use the xcode editor.)

<comment><USER12> How does this relate to the article?

<comment><USER20> It's time for people to move on from Emacs. Development effort would be better spent on lightweight editors that complement modern IDE editors (e.g., the Java editor in Eclipse).

<comment><USER21> Most Emacs users love Emacs because of the amount of customization it offers, not because of the keybindings. In fact, I've never seen an Emacs user who hasn't customized his keybindings.

I don't get what you mean by "moving on". Just because people started writing Emacs 30 years ago does not mean the code is crufty and old. Both Emacs and Vim work well with all modern desktop environments on all major operating systems. I don't see why anyone should be "moving on".

You might love your IDE, but many people hate them. Some of us don't like bloated software with features we don't need or use.

(I'm a Vim user, BTW :) )

<comment><USER20> But emacs is bloated software. Eclipse at least gives you amazing functionality. Have you actually tried the Java editor in Eclipse?

<comment><USER12> Do you know anything about emacs? There is actually not that much bloat.

There is code to support each platform and windowing system emacs runs on. There is support for managing buffers, and other very primitive editor functionality like that. Then there is the Lisp VM and associated data structures ("Lisp_Object") to glue everything together. On top of that are some primitive functions ("and", "cdr", etc.), along with some primitive editing functions ("next-line") implemented in C. That's about it; the rest is all Emacs Lisp code that you can simply choose not to run. (Yes, some gets compiled right into the Emacs binary to speed startup, but you can skip that.)

Sure, you can argue that many emacs extensions (hello, Gnus) are bloat. But you can just pretend it doesn't exist; nobody is forcing you to use anything. Plain emacs is a very simple toolkit for building your own editor. Emacs with simple.el (and friends) is still a very simple, but rich, text editor. As you add packages, you add functionality and complexity... but you can choose what to add, Emacs is infinitely malleable and does not care what you do to it.

I am not too familiar with Eclipse, but I doubt that it is simpler than Emacs.

<comment><USER20> I'm interested in an editor that works the way I like with minimal customization required. Notepad++ is like that. Emacs isn't.

<comment><USER22> There's a difference between editing text files and editing text. In the former, all you need is some mechanism to type, delete, and move text. In the latter, you want to work with the contents itself in a huge number of ways.

There's no such things as an editor that works the way you like unless you only have very basic text editing needs. This is where people generally resort to Notepad or Word.

In the other case you really want a good editor that fits both your fingers and thinking, and that's where you had better write the editor yourself. It is at this stage when many people have figured out that starting with Emacs is the easiest path.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scientist who cured type I Diabetes in mice was denied funding for human trials - <AUTHOR> http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2009/01/23/scientist-revives-research <comment><USER2> I submit that there's more to this story than "pharmaceutical companies weren't interested in developing the therapy".

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation <http://www.jdrf.org/> funded $100 million dollars of research last year alone into research for juvenile diabetes (type I). Link: [http://www.jdrf.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewPage&p...](http://www.jdrf.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewPage&page_id=0B36CA86-9128-4C49-B7D8F55955507931) Funding is predominantly from individuals and families searching for a cure for diabetes. That includes people like myself and my family. We could care less what mechanism or what business model cures diabetes.

Of that research, there is significant research into stem cell therapies and cures Link: <http://onlineapps.jdfcure.org/AbstractSearchEngine.cfm> Select "stem cell therapy" from the drop down.

Lastly, the head of JDRF is a tech star. <http://www.jdrf.org/index.cfm?page_id=113971> He founded Citysearch and Overture (the originator of keyword marketing. Bought by Yahoo).

I'm a big JDRF supporter since my sister has Type 1 diabetes. For any of you that are passionate about curing Type 1 diabetes, look into JDRF. Link: <http://www.jdrf.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I always read things like this with a hefty grain of salt.

To say that all "pharmaceutical companies" blocked him on this because treatment is more profitable than cure seems rather absurd. You would think that with all the non profits out there already involved in solving this, there would be quite a few with interest in the research.

Also, as most startup people know, a short term large profit is awesome! Any company that truly finds a cure would make buku bucks in the short term and be able to bail from the market when everyone that can be cured is. Think about polio and Salk. The guy became a legend, and though it isn't talked about, decently rich.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hacker News reminds me of my first year of med school. Everyone is smart and fundamentally clueless about human pathophysiology. It's a wonderful thing, learning about the fruits of devilishly challenging science. But it's also a conspiratorial time. I suspect the reason is that first year med students suddenly feel empowered by the small amounts of knowledge that they have gained. HNers probably feel empowered for a different reason: that they are extremely good at rapidly acquiring new ideas and implementing them.

This is normally a great thing, but it opens up two risks: the blind leading the blind, and conspiratorial thinking.

The blind leading the blind is what happens when someone has an idea about a disease or treatment, finds one article in pubmed or one book by one author to support that idea, and proceeds to remain ignorant about the entire rest of the body of work on the topic. It's almost like a race: if the good information gets there first, people believe it; so too for the complete hogwash in Medical Hypotheses.

The second issue that plagues first year med students and HNers is conspiratorial thinking. This is largely a consequence of having little knowledge, and this finally brings me on topic.

This current article discusses how someone was denied funding for human trials of stem cell therapy despite the fact that it cured T1D in animal models. When I see this, I think, "Of course nobody would have funded that!" Here's why I think that:

 _Ten years ago, stem cell biology was far more limited than it is now. And I'm talking strictly about biology, not ethics or politics._

 _The first gene therapy trials resulted in the death of Jesse Geisinger; though stem cells are a different beast entirely from the viral vector used in that trial, this still cast a pall over the use of active biologics._

 _Using stem cells that do not come from the recipient may require immunosuppressive drugs. This is such a high burden to pay that it seems inconceivable that someone would take this risk. I'd rather inject insulin all day long than be on immunosuppressive therapy. Induced pluripotent stem cells did not become a possibility until Yamanaka discovered his factors._

 _There is the risk that stem cells will lead to tumor-like conditions. A woman died in 2009 from an unlicensed stem cell therapy that caused just that. Animals are the model in which we should fully understand these risks, subjecting humans to them only after we understand what the risks are, and why they might occur. Especially for T1D, which has very good, lifesaving therapeutics already. The human risk-benefit has to be there._

 _People often work on animal models for years, even a decade, before going to human trials. This fuy had a successful mouse model. So far, so good. But let's see primate work; let's see replication in other labs._

At the end if the day, this just doesn't seem like a conspiracy to me. Some small drug company would love nothing more than to completely disrupt the market for diabetes therapeutics. Sure, it might transform a $100 billion market into a $10 billion one - but they currently have 0% of the 100 billion market, and would have 100% of the 10 billion one.

Tl;dr - Stem cell biology is novel and poorly understood, especially 10 years ago. It is unsurprising that nobody wanted to fund a highly risky human trial for a disease that already has lifesaving therapeutics. I find conspiratorial thinking to be a trait shared by those early in their medical training and by HNers, and it can be frustrating to see great minds turn to those rarely- correct conspiratorial thoughts.

<comment><USER5> While I can't really disagree with you, I don't think it's crazy to think that there are many influential people and organizations that have a strong interest in seeing that we avoid potential cures for common diseases. As such, I don't think this type of reaction is necessarily based largely in ignorance.

Then again, I'm largely ignorant on this subject so I'm certainly not making any accusations in this case.

<comment><USER6> One such case is of Barry Marshall and H.Pylori, he was awarded the nobel price in 2005 for discovering the cure to ulcers, (antibiotics) but he first discovered the cure in 1983 and after about 10 years of 'trying' to convince the medical community of which (Glaxo who was dominant in that market) was making 90% of their profits from Zantac (an anti acid treatment) - (known inside as the 'Zantac years'), they were accused of thwarting his discovery. Tired of the lack of interest, in about 1992 he did a live experiment on himself by swallowing a wapping dose of H.pylori and induced an ulcer, then proceeded to cure this with a course of antibiotics. He did this in the glare of the media and thereby changed the course of treatment worldwide for ulcers... How many would do that?

However, I agree with the point though that too many HNers often seem to be naive about the larger picture which I guess we could all be accused of in some way.

<comment><USER7> Barry Marshall did not have to convince Glaxo Kline Smith. He had to convince other doctors and scientists. I don't believe that companies can often keep genies in bottles, but dogma and groupthink is another matter.

<comment><USER6> He was also ignored totally by all the main stream publications, it was later alleged they had close ties to Glaxo and the editors were fully aware of the significance the impact would have had on Glaxo.

<http://www.orc.ru/~yur77/pylori.htm>

<comment><USER7> The article claims, without evidence, that Nature and Science didn't publish Marshall because of ties with Glaxo. Even if that's true, there are a lot of other journals out there. Are they ALL in Glaxos pocket?

I doubt it. But they're all reviewed by his peers, who made a living by giving endoscopies and prescriptions to patients every year or so.

<comment><USER8> Peer review is usually by scientist peers, and not professional peers. I doubt that most academic researchers in medicine were prescribing anything, really.

<comment><USER7> MDs do research all the time. Some MDs are also phDs. Marshall himself was a doctor/researcher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I call bunk.

There are many thousands of biotech companies, the vast majority of which do _not_ sell drugs that treat chronic diabetes.

Any one of them would love to sell a diabetes drug that cures diabetes.

Either this researcher only courted a few companies that already sell diabetes treatments, who unsurprisingly didn't want to fund him (does Comcast fund startups that help you avoid buying cable? NO!) or there is something else about his research that made people not want to continue with it.

</comment><comment><USER10> A very similar story can be told about Denise Faustman's ongoing research into the cure.

She has also cured Type I in mice, although using other means.

And she also got her share of first-class controversy. Cf. [http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read/2005/05/01/4126/why- did-t...](http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read/2005/05/01/4126/why-did-the-jdrf- try-to-discredit-cure-research/) and the preceding New York Times article "I BEG TO DIFFER; A Diabetes Researcher Forges Her Own Path to a Cure" <http://bit.ly/bzUkWs> . The JDRF doens't look good in this case at all.

More information about her approach at <http://www.faustmanlab.org/>

A good overview of other immune-based therapeutic approaches from 2006 can be found at <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1868847/>

It's interesting to follow the scientific debate. The 2006 review sponsored by JDRF claims that the methods used by Faustman offer little promise, and can even be harmful. She offers a completely opposite view, claiming in a 2008 paper

      Because our findings showing potential benefits of TNF
      or TNF agonism for treating AI, it seems paradoxical
      that anti-TNF therapies are a major therapeutic class
      of drugs currently marketed for AI. TNF antagonists
      have provided clinical benefit to about half of AI   patients,
      those with rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease. Yet an
      expanding body of research in animal models on spontaneous
      autoimmunity suggests the opposite strategy may be
      warranted. Furthermore, in humans, several clinical
      observations deserve mention. First, many Crohn's and
      rheumatoid arthritis patients never respond to TNF
      antagonists. Second, long-term treatment with anti-TNF drugs
      can be accompanied by onset of new or aggravated forms of
      autoimmunity, sometimes new autoantibodies, suggesting that,
      for some AIs, anti-TNF therapy may not be the drug of choice .

(<http://www.pnas.org/content/105/36/13644.full>)

To me, the JDRF arguments sound more fishy than hers. It's a tricky business of solving puzzles like that, especially as an outsider. But it's fun to see how far one can go following the debate.

</comment><comment><USER11> He should put the project on kickstarter and let the people speak :) I'd throw in some money, as would every type-1 I know.

<comment><USER12> As the husband of a Type I, I would gladly donate a portion of my income if it would go directly to finding a cure.

<comment><USER13> BUt how do we know this is "a cure", and not just the favorite project of bitter researcher who's funding was cut off?

The stringing along of desperate people is WHY the FDA exists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Normally it's the diabetics who make such claims about the industry--- it's a surprise (a pleasant one) to hear such come from a possible solution source! As a long time type-2 diabetic, I'm still happy for ANYTHING that may someday help my fellow type-1s...

<comment><USER15> Yep, diabetes is one of the Big Three health problems in the US, along with cancer and heart disease. There are people in my family that have it as well. And supposedly it's one of the fastest growing health problems in recent decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have type I diabetes.

"Weissman implied that the pharmaceutical companies had put profit over principle, preferring to keep diabetes sufferers dependent on costly insulin than to cure them once and for all."

This is not fun.

I wonder when are we going to agree that you cant make business out of anything.

</comment><comment><USER17> Can we call it fault-lines of capitalism ?

<comment><USER16> That is exactly what it is. Voted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The great thing about the internet is now everyone can read about such scandals.

The bad thing about the internet is the noise level is so high, few will read about such scandals.

I hope in 100 years, advanced hobbyists can do sophisticated medical R&D in their garage and create small quantities of medicine for stuff that big pharma doesn't find profitable (the problem is the government will probably shut that down).

</comment><comment><USER19> Is America the only country in the world where he could get his drugs trial tested and put into market? There are umpteen number of pharma companies in the developing countries which are ready to take a working product to _their_ market. Why not use them?

<comment><USER20> Good point. I think the French are the only ones that develop any decent pharmaceuticals outside the U.S. One of the most successful French pharmaceuticals is Tianeptine.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianeptine>

It's sort of a French Prozac but with a number of unique benefits that Prozac doesn't have. It's approved in several European countries but NOT in the U.K, and is only available in the U.S on the imported pharmaceutical grey market. Once it goes out of patent, and if it has not been approved for use in the U.S, it will NEVER be approved, ever, for any use in the U.S. That's because nobody would pay the 100s of millions of dollars to approve a drug that a competitor can produce as a generic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If someone from here knows Bill Gates please forward this article to him.

</comment><comment><USER22> Hope they've at-least patented it.

</comment><comment><USER15> The article touches on one of the risks to the health care industry today, at least here in the US:

In many cases, the pharmaceutical companies are making billions by selling drugs which merely reduce undesired symptoms. But do not CURE the underlying problem. And the symptom reduction only lasts while the user continues to buy and consume the drug. Therefore, in many cases, these companies have a strong financial incentive to NOT cure a disease, instead, to prolong it and only sell palliatives. Government funding and government directed research should be one of the ways we ensure that we have people actively trying to CURE diseases. It's a classic example of an area where government can do something better than business, because there does not have to be a profit motive. Just a collective desire to reduce human suffering.

This also touches on why it's important to vote carefully in US presidential and congressional elections. Because certain political groups cater to the Big Pharma companies. A vote for them is almost certainly a vote towards a world where there are more palliatives than cures. Where even new forms of ill health can just be considered new "markets" or new ways to increase profits.

<comment><USER23> That's a classic example of an area where government can NOT do better than business, because government sucks at innovation. There are plenty of companies that are not selling insulin, so they would be interested to be able to sell diabetes cure. Assuming the chances of developing the cure are reasonably good.

<comment><USER24> Wow, massive strawman. The government sucks at innovation? Who do you think funded and developed ARPANet? You know, the network we're using to communicate right now. Upon which countless businesses have been built.

Nuclear power? Government. First electronic computer? Government.

Furthermore, when it comes to drug discovery, that 'evil government' has one advantage over businesses, because they have no profit motive. Businesses exist to make money. Period.

No business is going to destroy its market for the sake of the common good. If you're in the business of creating drugs, you aren't going to wipe out a disease with a one-time cure, because drugs are expensive to produce, and palliative treatments are way more profitable.

This is exactly an area where governments do better than businesses, because the reward (improving quality of life) means more votes and support for those in office.

<comment><USER23> Could anyone please point me to government scientific or technology accomplishments in the last 30 years? Something that noticeably improved our quality of life. Something on par with achievements by IBM (Business PC), Microsoft (OS, Office, and other software), Google (search), Apple (smartphones, music, ...), Intel (microprocessors), Pfizer (drugs).

It was surprising to see down-voting just on the basis that you disagree with the idea. Welcome to groupthink.

<comment><USER25> WWW (1989): Developed at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, a multinational, government-funded research organization.

edit: I've found your post <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1466419> in which you exclude CERN. Could you give an example for a valid organization?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> To state the obvious: there's more money in keeping people ill and in need of temporary amelioration than there is in curing them, and such is the foundation of american pharmaceutical industry.

<comment><USER27> Is this really true in this case? I mean, insulin is fairly cheap, right?

<comment><USER28> Cheap/expensive is relative. More importantly, insulin is only a tiny cost of the care of Type 1 diabetes. Diabetics need to check blood sugar levels anywhere from 3-5 times a day, sometimes more if ill or for other circumstances. Test strips can cost a patient as much as $1 per strip.

Also, insulin requires a subcutaneous injection for delivery. That means a new syringe 3-4 times per day depending on the therapy. Or, you could get an insulin pump at about $5k and pay for insets, tubing, reservoirs and other miscellaneous supplies. Those need to be swapped out every three days.

Want to add continuous glucose monitoring to your therapy? Even more supplies. Add it all up and treating T1 diabetes is nothing close to cheap no matter how deep your pockets are.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is a 27" Screen Worth It? - <AUTHOR>

Is the 27" 2560x1440 worth it when doing dev work, especially with the $700 premium compared to 1080p for ~175% more screen space?  At my work people mostly use 2 1080p screens at once + laptop.  I mostly do iphone dev work with a MacBook Pro + an extra 1080p screen and another 1080p screen with a linux box. <comment><USER2> This doesn't directly answer your question, but I'd assume the larger question is "Will adding more or bigger monitors make me more productive?"

The answer is yes. I can guarantee it. I wouldn't recommend spending a bunch of money on a single monitor though. Buy two ~22" monitors off of NewEgg. It won't feel the same as a 27" monitor, but you'll have considerably more space, pay at least half the price, and have some explicit compartmentalization going. The downside is that it's not all the same monitor, and you need hte deskspace. As well as having to buy a cable for having multiple external monitors with a Macbook Pro.

I say give it a try, and return it if isn't as comfortable as you want it to be. You'll still be able to get your money back (assuming you return the stuff in the same condition you bought it), and you can go and try the 27" monitor too.

<comment><USER3> Which cable do you use for dual external monitors on the MBP?

<comment><USER4> You need to get a Dualhead2Go from Matrox which splits a single DVI signal into two screens by emulating a double-sized display.

<http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/dh2go/>

Newer Thunderbolt MacBooks can do this by chaining displays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Compared to a single 1080p, yes. I got a 30" and it's been a great improvement. The ability to put 2 full size windows next to each other is fantastic (a utility like SizeUp helps). Having the freedom to have a bunch scattered around while seeing bits of each is great too. The productivity boost is almost certainly worth the money.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd suggest 2x24", which you can do for ~$180/each straight off of Newegg or ~$140-150 if you wait for a sale.

I recently had pretty much the same debate about upgrading my pair of 24" monitors, and wound up moving to 4x24" side-by-side in portrait mode. The extra real estate is totally worth it, but you get the added advantage of having that real estate divided up into screens, where you can maximize/tile windows more easily than on one huge display.

The cost is nice, too; the 4x24" monitors were only ~$700, so even with the extra $120 or so for a pair of decent stands off of Amazon, the damage isn't too bad.

(Just realized you're talking about an extra for a laptop, which makes the situation a bit different. Leaving this up anyhow in the hopes of provoking discussion---I'm curious what people do for multi-monitor setups.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Hm, it's not really an Apples-to-Apples comparison, b/c all the 27" 2560px displays I can think of are IPS, while 1080p's in the sub-$300 range are TN's. You'd be paying for the added display quality on top of the bigger screen + resolution.

For dev work, I'd say the nicest thing about the 27"s is the ability to put two full pages side-by-side, either a browser window + IDE, or vert. split IDE code panes. 1920px isn't _quite_ there for two panes of code.

And personally, I've had 2+ 24"s, and I've actually found it too cumbersome: having emails/IM's on a second window actually becomes distracting, and moving your mouse cursor across so many pixels was less precise than either alt- tabbing to the right program or switching spaces/virtual desktops w/ a keyboard shortcut. For me anyway, 27" is the sweet spot.

<comment><AUTHOR> A Dell U2211H is under 300 and is a 1080p IPS monitor with all of the standard goodies:

[http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&#...</a>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think resolution is quite as important as context, or rather the ease that lies within multiple monitors for switching context.

I recently switched from three 19" monitors to two 27" monitors (I'm a php / javascript / python developer). I assumed that having the same horizontal resolution with extra vertical resolution would add to my productivity.

With three monitors I had three contexts in which I merely needed to glance in a direction. Almost like doing an "alt+tab" in my mind. If I wanted to check my current code in or run unit tests, look at my left monitor and type. If I wanted to read or write code, look at my center monitor and type. If I wanted to test output or find a reference, look at right monitor and type. *

With two monitors (regardless of resolution), I have one less context. I actually have to think about window placement. Those seconds add up. More importantly the cost of switching context adds up as I get deeper into what I'm working on. If something was important, I maximized it to a screen and that's all that screen was. That is what it _meant_ to look in that direction. Now I maximize a window and... well a 27" window is pretty ridiculous unless your work involves graphics. There's less permanence and hence more to remember.

Save money on the resolution and get yourself as many decent-sized monitors as your desk / system can handle. I assume it's possible to have too many monitors, but I feel I would have done better with three slightly larger monitors (or just a fourth monitor) than I am with two that can hold more pixels than the three. I plan to find out very soon.

* By "look and type", I mean tap my mouse in that direction and click to activate the window and then type.

<comment><USER9> To me screen resolution matters...with a higher resolution you can accommodate more into the screen real estate and don't have to switch things around. I used a super high resolution 15.4" laptop at work once and even having 2 dual 24" monitors didn't come closer to the productive experience that I had with that laptop...maybe it's just me but I would prefer super high screen resolutions.

<comment><USER8> More screens also means less switching things around - at least it did for me. With three screens, I almost never switched windows around. With two larger screens, I find myself moving, resizing, and alt+tabbing all the time (or expose'ing which is "cooler" but not much better).

Regardless I think it's a matter of taking time to get used to the pros and cons of a monitor layout, and figuring out what works best for you. Personally, after about 6 months with the 2 big monitors, I still miss my 3 smaller ones and will likely switch back soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My Apple 27" Display was one of the best hw purchases I made lately.

The display is simply gorgeous and its the first time that I don't frequently wish it was bigger. I used a 24" DELL before and apart from it being extremely ugly compared to apple's, many times it was insufficiently big for my needs.

For example, when programming in vi, I have _lots_ of splits (sometimes more then 10) open in the same window. I find it more effective to see various related parts at once then to switch b/w buffers all the time.

Other times I have a vi, browser and a terminal with autotest each occupying a third of the screen (vertically).

</comment><comment><USER11> I recently picked a 27" Dell U2711 (2560x1440) over 2x24" Samsung (1920x1200) at work. The better display panel (IPS vs. TN), better resolution, better contrast and so on made it a logical choice. Can't say that I regreted it.

With the recent window tiling options in both Ubuntu and Windows it's as easy to organize windows on a single large monitor as it is with two.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't think you can ever have _too much_ screen space. Your workflow adjusts to make use of it.

I've currently got a 27" iMac with two 20" Dell monitors turned portrait either side. I keep things like IM, Twitter, Email etc in the two portrait screens and keep what I'm working on in the middle.

</comment><comment><USER13> 27" models at 2560x1440 are becoming more affordable. My brother pointed me at Hazro, which he's using in his iPhone dev shop. I've also seen a substantial fall in price for the Dell U2711.

I've been looking at this a lot recently as I consider moving away from the 2 screen setup I've had for years. My main motivation is that my laptop docking stations only have one digital output. VGA just doesn't cut it for a clear screen.

The drop in price on the 27" models has me hoping that the 30" 2560x1600 ones will also come down. I've wanted one of those for ages, though when I once used an Apple cinema screen at that size/resolution it felt kind of weird.

</comment><comment><USER14> I have a 27" 1920x1200 Dell and what I wouldn't give to have a higher resolution on it...

</comment><comment><USER15> It's hard to determine without knowing how you would actually use at 27" monitor compared to the 1080p. Is it possible to "rent" one for a week from a local retailer to test drive your use case?

My thought is that I'm staring at a monitor more than 14 hours a day. It's like the tires on a car, where the rubber meets the road. It's such an important connecting between physical and the computer, that it's worth the additional investment.

That said, I can't make these judgments for you. I still recommend trying it out for a week if you can, and then decide if you're more productive with larger screen space. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER16> We only have the new 27"'s at work. We're almost exclusively a mac shop, so sticking with just one configuration works really well with these displays.

It doesn't matter where you're sitting. Just plug in power and the display port wherever you go and that's it! I don't have to bring more than a FedEx letter-sized envelope to work every day (it conceals my macbook air).

I can't compare it to dual lcd monitors, but as other people have mentioned I find it perfect for full screen vi or tmux sessions with a lots of splits, and wouldn't want to go back to a smaller form factor. :-)

</comment><comment><USER17> Splitting a 30" display (2560x1600) in half vertically (editor|browser) for web-dev feels natural. It's 2x1280 displays, no bezel, effectively.

It does require an optimal seating position though.

I also have a cheap 1080p next to it for testing and for secondary boxes/iPad dev or dashboards. Splitting a 1920 horizontal into 2x960 displays feels cramped.

There are displays that use the same 27" panel as Apple for less dough. The economics work out a lot better there.

</comment><comment><USER18> My 27" Imac has been a real pleasure to use. I program 80% of the time, and that much screen real estate can really help you keep everything you need for a certain development task visible at a glance. I have a larger 30" 2560x1600 screen on my linux box, and the more the merrier. It is worth it.

Also, I bought mine through apple's refurb program, and it's been running perfectly. I would suggest that as a good way to save some money.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have a 17'' (1920*1080) laptop at home and a 27'' iMac at work.

For displaying the likes of Netbeans, both are comfortable. I don't display the browser in full screen on the iMac because it's ridiculously large. For watching videos however, the 27'' are impressive. I would say programmers don't need huge screens nor multiple ones but I suppose it depends on one's preferences and habits.

</comment><comment><USER20> From a highly buzzed stupor - which I will regret later - no. A dual or triple monitor setup makes more sense. Being able to maximize separate applications on individual scteens makes more sense to me.</comment>


Tree.io - Open source Project Management written in Python and Django. - <AUTHOR> http://tree.io/en/tour <comment><USER2> Nice! This seems to be well thought out and visually impressive</comment>


Ask HN: Could California sink into the Ocean in the next 60 years? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Nobody likes to talk about it, but the truth is that if we have The Big One, the whole rest of the US may shear off and fall into the Atlantic.

<comment><USER3> Haha.

The San Andreas Fault is a sliding fault (don't know the technical term), which means LA and SF will be neighbors at some point in the far future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Chances are higher that California rises into the sky.

</comment><comment><USER5> No. Why do you think it is possible?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.ocregister.com/2017/04/26/ocean-might-swallow- ca...](https://www.ocregister.com/2017/04/26/ocean-might-swallow-california- sooner-than-you-think/)

<comment><USER5> From the article:

> _A slow-moving emergency is lapping at California's shores— climate-driven > sea-level rise that experts now predict could elevate the water in coastal > areas up to 10 feet in just 70 years, gobbling up beachfront and > overwhelming low-lying cities._

There is a map that show what part will be flooded with an increase of 10 feet. It's not the whole state. Some cities will be fine. Some cities will be doomed.

> _A consensus of scientific research makes catastrophic projections that, in > the worst case, will be reality by the end of this century:_ [...] _More > than 42,000 homes in California will be under water—not merely flooded, but > with seawater over roofs._

For comparison, there are like 40 million people living in California, so a good guess is that there are 10-20 million of homes there. So 42,000 sink homes are only 0.5%-0.25%, but it's a lot if it's _your_ home.

<comment><USER6> California generally has a steep coastline, but none the less a lot of housing exists in low lying areas. That said California's policy makers are already trying to figure out what they are going to have to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Only if they let out all the hot air.

Seriously, I love California. As a geologist I can say "It's not physically possible".</comment>


Why Startup Founders Happily Give Up 90% Of Their Companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/why-founders-give-up-90-of-the-company-2014-5#ixzz31Kwaz8Fd

<comment><USER2> "Their investors know that founders are integral to the company, and they want the founders to succeed."

You are always replaceable..even if you think you aren't. I know so many founders that gave up majority control and were kicked out of their own company and replaced by a VC-picked person.

A friend of mine hired the guy that ended up booting him out of the company 6 months later. The guy he hired removed all of his powers and then claimed that he couldn't manage the project any longer (after all of his powers were taken away of course).

To get his severance, he had to sign a piece of paper filled with complete lies about his performance.

People in business aren't nice and you need to do everything in your power to protect yourself.</comment>


iCloud for Developers - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/icloud/ <comment><USER2> In the iCloud world, a user pays for his storage space directly to Apple. That will be an interesting shift for startups. There will be no backend expenses on a per user basis.

How to monetize the user is still wide open, but Apple will be covering the storage and server tab. (With money added from heavy users. Casual users needn't pay.)

The dark side of this is that there doesn't appear to be a way for a browser or non-Apple product to interact with the stored data. So you trade free backend servers for writing software only for Apple customers and even then not when they sit down at a borrowed machine.

<comment><USER3> A cloud that cannot be accessed from everywhere and everything is not a cloud

<comment><USER4> Yes it is.

It's not an open cloud. I wasn't aware there was a strict definition.

<comment><USER3> The word cloud is a crock and i'm not going to get into that.

But the general point of people providing online service based applications is that from many front ends they have one back end. Having it locked down to a platform is utterly utterly pointless and pathetically purposefully divisive.

I really am quite sure the future of modern global interpersonal communications is utterly disastrous given the state of rival networks fighting it out instead of working towards inter-operable-fault-tolerant- distributed-vendor-agnostic solutions.

Email is still the best way of doing this but as Instant Messaging has shown for the past 20 years (no standard ever caught on) without that we end up unable to communicate reliably and one logical place with everyone. The only thing even close has been SMS.

<comment><USER5> > The word cloud is a crock and i'm not going to get into that.

I can't resist slightly getting into it: it was a perfectly decent metaphor until some marketing numbskull heard a technical person use it and decided to stretch it in ways that made it meaningless.

Back when it simply meant, "look, you push your packets into the network and a bunch of routers decide how to get it to its destination without you having to worry about routing" it was fine.

<comment><USER3> There's already a name for that: An IPv4/v6 network.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, that is exactly the correct term.

But as a metaphor: I think Jon Postel might have been the first person I heard use the term. I also feel like there was such a picture in some of the early IP documents (like the internet protocol transition handbook in the early 80s) but that stuff I had on paper and it's stuck in a box someplace.

Regardless, it's been horribly abused by marketing people and does need to be dragged out back and put down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wrote an iOS app using Core Data and iCloud, and it was the worst experience I've had so far developing for the platform. From top to bottom, the Core Data concepts are simultaneously too low-level and too opaque. I found myself copying multi-page code snippets from the web and hoping they would work. Basic concepts like merging conflicts were obfuscated and brittle. Contrast that with Firebase, which has been a real pleasure to use.

So I'm hopeful that CloudKit will address these issues. Versioned schemas are great for updates but hard to get working initially. I'm sure iCloud has a lot of good ideas like that, but up till now they were simply too esoteric to get a handle on, and I think the general consensus was to avoid iCloud until it was ready for primetime.

<comment> k-mcgrady Although there's a lot of boilerplate to get CoreData working I've always found it really good to work with. My guess would be that this iCloud developer stuff builds on top of CoreData so I wouldn't expect much to change unfortunately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> They're discussing CloudKit now at WWDC. This sounds great - and could take a noticeable chunk of business from current cloud providers. This looks like a smart move from Apple. It only got about a minute and a half during the Keynote, ha.

</comment><comment><USER8> CloudKit is very exciting.Appears to have a very narrow scope , IOS only App with a simple Web service. But for those developer looking to develop only for iPhone customers, it will be great to write all code with a single language and single platform on the client and server. This desire exist out there with web platform like node.js, that seek to united the discrepancy between the client and server development in mobile applications. Will love to try this out, and if work properly , free myself from azure/amazon EC2 in simple iOS apps.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady Sounds like Parse but iOS only. It'll make things a hell of a lot easier for a lot of people though. I wonder what the procedure would be if your app takes off and you want to go cross platform.

</comment><comment><USER9> Question: who owns the data stored with iCloud? Do developers still get to own their data, or is it going to be subject to sniffing from Apple?

<comment><USER10> Unlike some other companies (FB, Dropbox, Google) Apple's business model doesn't depend on sniffing your personal information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder who as a developer really loves more and more vendor lock-in than what we already have...? Where would you store your app data for your other platforms like Android or WP?

</comment><comment><USER12> so from what I can see(and i did a very very cursory overview) , there are no web apis for icloud :( no cross platform integration i guess

</comment><comment><USER13> iOS only. Parse it is then.</comment>


SpaceX satellite fairing tested in world's largest vacuum chamber - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtI1V624vWM&feature=youtu.be

<comment><USER2> You mean fairing. SpaceX is a launch system operator, not a satellite operator.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _> Separation occurs when the rocket is traveling 4x faster then a speeding bullet._ _> Nearly 10x the speed of sound._

The captions are a little misleading. The separation occurs in the _vacuum_ so you don't have any structural or temperature problems, no nasty shockwaves. It's not a problem to travel very fast once you are up there. (I like their work, I think it's amazing, but I don't like the unrelated astonishing trivia.)</comment>


FaceApp isn't stealing your data (as far as we can tell) - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/daveyalba/what-happens-when-you-upload-faceapp-photos <comment><USER2> I never understood why the primary concern was privacy. I mean, it gets your information from Facebook doesn't it?

I'd be much more worried about what they're training their algorithm to do. Seeing your old self is fun and all, but if you helped the surveillance state or deep fake troll factories, then it would probably be preferable to just wait and see. Of course that's just speculation on my part, maybe their software will be used for something harmless.

<comment><USER3> Potentially, this means that people wanting to go "off the grid" (or who had already done so) can be identified using old photos.

If you have any old photos of yourself anywhere on the internet, or even in your offline gallery, you will be traceable.</comment></comment>


Microsoft by the Numbers - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/26/microsoft-numbers/

<comment><USER2> These numbers would've bothered me ten years ago, but they don't any more.

Because no matter how many units Microsoft continues to sell, they no longer set the agenda, and that's the important shift. 10 years ago, the entire industry had to dance around MS on tiptoe. That's over.

There is no longer a single app platform that one company controls that dominates the industry. Microsoft is continuing to milk their golden cow by copying all the best features from everyone else's products and using their sales muscle to push their products in large volumes, good for them.

But they no longer dictate the technical specifications and business models of the platforms I write for, and as long as that's true they can sell a billion smart phones for all I care.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't believe the Linux vs windows server market share numbers.

My current company has about 40 linux servers and 3 windows. My previous company had 1 windows server to 5 linux. The one before that was a similar ratio.

I'm looking around online to see how IDC collected/calculated this data but can't see anything that actually says. The only thing I can think of is if they are taking commercial unixes like redhat and suse and comparing them against windows. If that is the case these numbers are beyond worthless due to the fact that most linuxs end up being centos, debian, ubuntu or other free distros.

<comment><USER4> I was thinking the same thing; Apache has double the marketshare on the web, and all the computationally intensive plays that I know of use Linux or BSD clusters on the backend. Google alone has somewhere over a million boxes, Amazon isn't exactly tiny, neither is Facebook, and most of the banks that I know of are still Big Iron on the backend.

<comment><USER5> I think Windows Server has a large market share in medium size businesses. Note: they didn't specify "web" server. They didn't specify much. Who knows, maybe they count google as one server? Also, I sometimes think the experiences of us here may be out of touch with what most ordinary businesses do.

 _EDIT_ funfacts: Here's their source for "linux servers, 21.2%" [http://blogs.computerworld.com/15675/idc_windows_dominates_l...](http://blogs.computerworld.com/15675/idc_windows_dominates_linux_in_servers_not_just_the_desktop) which quotes: [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/behind-the-idc-data- wind...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/behind-the-idc-data-windows- still-no-1-in-server-operating-systems/5408) which in turn quotes: [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/server-sales-show-signs-of- lif...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/server-sales-show-signs-of-life-in-the- fourth-quarter-ibm-remains-top-dog/31236) which quotes this IDC press release: [http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?sessionId=&containerId=prU...](http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?sessionId=&containerId=prUS22224510&sessionId=IL5URBYDC2OK4CQJAFDCFFAKBEAVAIWD) and here's IDC's description of their information product: <http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=IDC_P348>

I couldn't see linux units mentioned there, nor their methodology, or definition of "server".

 _EDIT2_ The bottom of the press release: _includes quarterly shipments (both ISS and upgrades) and revenues (both customer and factory), segmented by vendor, family, model, region, operating system, price band, CPU type, and architecture._ Doesn't really help, but there's also a phone number and email address.

<comment><USER6> These numbers almost assuredly are based on "units shipped" which means you only count a Linux sale if someone orders a server from Dell or HP and requests a RH or Suse Linux license with it, rather than a Windows Server 2008 license or the default.

Because, as others have mentioned, the vast majority of large webhosts or Linux users "roll their own free distro" or purchase an enterprise agreement from RH or Suse, they will never be counted.

Microsoft always plays games with the numbers. They are playing a similar game with Windows 7 numbers - You can buy a Windows 7 upgrade for $99, which only gives you a single license, or you can buy a "family upgrade pack" for $99, which gives you 3 upgrade licenses.

Guess which one allows them to count 3x the number of licenses sold? Right, and they made it so that the family pack can even upgrade pirated versions of XP (I know this because I used this to bring one of my home copies up to legit status). It's a genius marketing move because for basically $33 per computer they get all the pirate computers to become fully legit, counted installs of Windows.

Never mind all the double-counting and triple-counting of licenses - MS has always been king at this. They force Dell/HP to bundle a license of Windows 7 with every computer sold knowing that corporations have Volume License Keys and wipe and reinstall Windows with their corp version. 2 copies of Windows sold for every physical computer.

What I would really like to see are the numbers of Windows computers receiving updates. That would be a legitimate number.

<comment><USER7> >What I would really like to see are the numbers of Windows computers receiving updates. That would be a legitimate number.

Actually, that number wouldn't be valid either. How many corporations block Windows Update because new versions of IE break some intranet we app?

<comment><USER6> Good point - simply take # of PCs receiving updates + number of Volume licenses sold. That = total number of operating copies of Windows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> MSFT never gets enough credit for what they've done with the Xbox. They've got the #1 machine (by games sold, the metric that counts) in their second at-bat in an industry that has historically dashed consumer electronics companies to bits. They somehow charge 23 million users for the same thing Nintendo and Sony give away for free. They've been at the forefront as far as connectivity and media consumption since the original Xbox. Despite the fact that everyone I know is already on their third or fourth unit due to Red Rings of Death, they all love it.

<comment><USER9> According to VGChartz the Wii has 490,542,492 total titles sold vs the 360 with 359,051,266.

<http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly.php>

<comment><USER10> I believe he's talking about "attach rate" - the magical metric that drives the console hardware industry (i.e., games purchased per console).

<comment><USER11> That's not such a magic number in this case. In most cases, console manufacturers make a loss on the console, and profit on the titles. Nintendo makes money on the console too, so it's not such an important figure.

<comment><USER12> Nintendo makes money on their hardware; the DS and the Wii were never sold under cost.

Sony _definitely_ loses money on every console.

Don't know about MS.

<comment><USER13> IIRC, the PS3 slim is profitable. The PS2 has also been profitable and has been a consistently good seller (with some decrease in late 2009 and early 2010 (but that's expected - the PS2 is old). Console death rate is also a problem: even if it's not replaced under warranty, it's still a loss for the 360.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The techcrunch article is full of pointless commentary, I recommend just reading the original article: [http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/06/25...](http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/06/25/microsoft- by-the-numbers.aspx)

<comment><USER13> But the original article is a selective disclosure of numbers carefully massaged for showing Microsoft as a solid company with a bright future. TC's commentary is to point this fact out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The problem with Techcrunch's implicit interpretation of the Microsoft stats is that they mostly are trailing indicators of a business model. Let's take Office as an example. Does anyone seriously think that it will still enjoy network effects five years from now? It was an exciting (at least financially) business model 15 years ago when Microsoft could basically tax the electronic exchange of business information. Now, Office documents can be at least read, if not written, without paying the tax. Word is hurt by the cultural shift away from using it as a means of generating pretty pieces of paper. Better collaboration tools are slowly eroding the Excel as database-synchronized-by- email model that dominates its use (as a percentage of documents). A large user base is nice, but it doesn't justify a high P/E ratio unless it can be leveraged in the future.

Look at the "smartphone" numbers. The implicit message was that Apple doesn't really have all that much marketshare. Whatever. But, what's Microsoft have? Close to nothing, and there's little evidence that it's going to catch up. No one in his right mind can claim that the "phone" won't replace many (more) current desktop/laptop use cases in the coming years. What slice of that goes to Microsoft?

I don't know much about the CRM space, so I can't comment on the Salesforce.com vs. MSFT thing. But, what's notable is that Microsoft doesn't really enjoy network effects in that space. It must compete like other enterprise software companies -- again, not a model to justify a high P/E. The netbook numbers can be counted as a "save" against consumer-facing Linux distros, but I understand Microsoft to be practically giving away Windows 7 "starter" edition to keep share. Hardly a great model. Furthermore, the OS is little more than a platform for a web browser. Microsoft is doing all the dirty work and making little in return.

What if IBM blogged about its huge mainframe market share in the Fortune 500? Should we be excited about the future prospects of z/OS? How many mainframe customers would gladly get rid of their mainframes if switching costs were lower? 80+%? Look at the number of skilled COBOL programmers out there. Surely such a large development community will continue to propel the platform forward?

What's causing Microsoft's stock to stagnate is that the company has failed to maintain the network effects that fueled its growth and pricing power. They're becoming yet another company competing for consumer nickels and corporate dollars. While that's well and good, it's not the stuff of hocky stick growth curves.

And, Bing? I started using it because of 15% Bing Cash Back deals. Forget doing an actual search or clicking an ad.

<comment><USER16> "Let's take Office as an example. Does anyone seriously think that it will still enjoy network effects five years from now?"

Absolutely.

Office isn't going anywhere in most business settings. If anything, the last two Office and SharePoint releases have only continued strengthening its position.

I definitely wouldn't bet that the desktop/Windows/Office thick client paradigm will last forever, but I also wouldn't dare bet against it in the near-term.

<comment><USER13> Oh boy... My wife led the project of her company's local branch intranet. She wanted to do it in Plone (probably my fault, as I introduced her to it), but central office demanded it to be done in Sharepoint because that's what they use.

I feel sorry for the companies who use Sharepoint for its document sharing/management... In time, it will prove a huge competitive advantage for their competition.

<comment><USER17> SharePoint is a great intranet and collaboration product, but it's not a document management system. However, you can extend SharePoint with Laserfiche document management. Check it out on our site www.aisww.com or read more on our document management blog: blog.aisww.com

<comment><USER13> Was this spam? My whole point is that Sharepoint is _not_ a great intranet and collaboration product. It's unnecessarily tied to Microsoft Office products (and it's that way by design), has simply appalling content management (why would I want to buy a second product from a second vendor to make what I bought bearable to use?). The point was that the Sharepoint intranet had half the functionality for twice the budget and twice the maintenance cost of the originally designed Plone-based solution.

<comment><USER17> Hi, No, its not spam. I don't know enough about the installation to be able to speak intelligently on the specifics of that project, but we have many clients that use SharePoint for intranets and collaboration while its not perfect for every situation that does not mean its not a good intranet/collaboration product.

My point about extending SharePoint was that you said "I feel sorry for the companies who use Sharepoint for its document sharing/management" and I was addressing that by mentioning a product we use to fill that gap in SharePoint.

There are many reasons for using SharePoint, there's no need for me to get into that here. If you need to add document management to SharePoint, Laserfiche is a nice easy way to do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For the "Global Windows Live Mail users", it would be nicer if they used active users (signed in during the past 90 days) to compare. I know I have a few Windows Live email accounts sitting around that I haven't touched in forever.

<comment><USER19> Wouldn't that defeat the original purpose of posting it? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I believe his stats - but WHO are all these people using Windows Live Mail/Messenger, Azure, Windows 7, Windows server, etc? I have yet to meet one. Are these middle America and international markets?

<comment><USER21> _but WHO are all these people using Windows Live Mail/Messenger, Azure, Windows 7, Windows server, etc?_

Guilty one here. While I use Windows 7, Windows server (multiple licenses) etc at home, I guess just Windows 7 is the norm for most people I know.

At work I can attest to having some hundred Windows Servers and not a single Linux box. As we were a consulting firm, we had lots of different customers but our focus-area was MS-tech. Ofcourse my numbers will be biased, but let me tell you: there are lots of Windows Servers out there. Lots. Sure some Linux- servers here and there as well, but Windows Servers are having pretty good days all in all.

As for Windows Live Mail... I dunno, I like gmail better.

As for Windows Live _Messenger_ though... At first that seems like a really odd question to me, but really, it's not that special.

In my experience IM software is one of the categories of software with the highest geographically variation of any I've come across. In the US I hear people actually use AIM, which is entirely unheard of in the rest of the world. In Europe, you will find MSN is the status quo. In Australia Yahoo Messenger seems to be pretty big (or so it seems), but I've never seen anyone use it elsewhere.

The interesting thing about this kind of software is how it's not the _software_ itself which is drawing users. It's who you can reach (ie, userbase). So if everyone in your area is using product X, it doesn't matter if product Y does everything ten times better, it will still be useless to you unless you can reach the userbase of product X.

Whoever gets users first wins (because who seriously bothers to run several IM applications?). And then it just seems to stay that way.

If I were to take my (severely) biased impression and generalize, I would say everyone is using every product from Microsoft, with the noteworthy exception of BizTalk. Linux can only be seen on netbooks or as a means of bypassing the corporate web-filter. Oracle does exist, but only in very few companies which rakes in billions. MySQL doesn't exist at all, except for in the bottom-tier web-hosting basket.

But I'm not going to do that, and I suggest you don't take (what I assume is) your Linux-hacker biased experiences and overgeneralise them either. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

<comment><USER22> "In Europe, you will find MSN is the status quo."

Not everywhere. Mostly ICQ here in Germany.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> See _Seven Copies of Windows 7 Per Second: Fast! But How Fast?_ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1466549> for a fun way to put the numbers in perspective.

(links to [http://technologizer.com/2010/06/27/seven-copies-of- windows-...](http://technologizer.com/2010/06/27/seven-copies-of- windows-7-per-second-fast-but-how-fast/))

</comment><comment><USER24> Microsoft is a great company, I don't know why a lot of people dislike them. Look at their track record, look at the numbers they're impressive. Perhaps it's jealousy, who knows? Sure they have done several mistakes along the way ahem ie6... But you know what, at the end what matter is the profits. I don't know why people bash on them for their closed source technologies. They're here to make money, if they wanted to give away everything they would have been a charity not a business! You might as well go bash on coke, their ingredients are "closed source." In order for a taco truck to make money they got to sell their tacos, can't give them away now can they? In a nutshell all you who hate Microsoft, find a better reason to hate them. You can't say ie9, because it's beginning to look like it'll be an awesome browser for users and developers alike. End rant. Sorry if this is a little off topic. :)

<comment><USER25> You might be too young to remember the days when MS ruled with an iron fist. When they got IBM to use their DOS, they structured the licensing so that the only affordable one was to pay MS for every box that went out the door, no matter which OS was on it. So a shop could either sell only MS-DOS, or not offer it at all, and any shop that didn't offer it couldn't stay in business, once IBM "approved" of MS-DOS.

When they came out with any software, they chose the most confusing name possible. "Windows" was a generic term for any the panes in windowing GUI, until MS appropriated the word. Then came "Word", which sounded like about all the competition out there. Once they had the OS market sewn up, they used that to make their other software work better than anyone elses, with undocumented APIs. Then they offered "bundles" which meant, if you used their OS, which of course every business had to, you couldn't afford to turn down their other offerings. This might sound like fair, tough competition, but the reality was that they used their money and clout to run the competition out of business, then their de facto monopoly to make a fortune.

And tough but fair, often gave way to threats. If a retailer didn't play ball, getting rid of competition, they would pull their joint marketing/advertising deals. If a small business came up with anything interesting, they'd swallow it, or run it out of business by any means necessary. This did more to stifle innovation for about 15 years than anything else.

This is only the beginning of why people don't like MS. If we were to all post here, it would become an encyclopedia.

<comment><USER26> Wow. You are completely misinformed and, I suspect, just trolling (and presuming to instruct others) based upon events you had no connection with and only understand second-hand from others. By the way, your allegation that Microsoft "stole all the simple-sounding names" is just laughable. I'd dissect the rest of your argument but frankly, I got tired of swatting flies like you years ago. The only accurate statement in your entire rant? MS-DOS. And even that's slanted.

<comment><USER27> He is not.If you think he is the misinformed person is you.

You can inform yourself.Search for DRDOS.Search for windows trademark issues,lindows, you know what? they were an entire line of windows branded products before MS, MS destroyed them all, you can search what happened to them.

Windows is a generic word, it can't never be trademarked(unless you are rich to get over the law), that applies to "word", "powerpoint", "project", "excel", "exchange". A word in the English dictionary just can't be trademarked, by law.

Maybe you were a kid then, but there was a time when "word" was not the most used word processor, it was "WordPerfect", and people used Lotus123 instead of "excel". What did MS did? They made windows but didn't let WordPerfect and Lotus123 people(and everybody else, like compiler builders) use the windows API, so MS had a 4 year period of advantage. Once they did, the high level exposed API was slower than what MS used.

I'm tired too. When people don't know they don't know what they don't know.

<comment><USER28> Well, not quite. Lindows certainly wasn't around before MS. According to Wikipedia the company was founded in 2001. Edit: On further reading, Microsoft didn't manage to force them to change over in court - they just paid $20 million and Lindows changed over. Hardly "destroyed" them.

Windows is an English word, however that doesn't mean it doesn't enjoy some trademark protection in an arrangement like "Microsoft Windows". The protection is not as significant as it would be on an invented word (like, say, "Microsoft") but it's still there if you come up with something that's judged to be similar enough to cause confusion.

Similarly, try founding an IT company called Apple and see how far you get - that's an English word too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I just finished reading the MSFT blog post that this TechCrunch piece got its info from. I then went to nytimes.com and an ad on the site was "While you were reading this, 21 people bought Windows 7...Click here to learn more" and it takes you right to the MSFT blog with these numbers. I don't think this site and these numbers are a professional way to run a marketing campaign. Especially when your campaign lists net income on it and compares it with two of your growing, trendy competitors. It just feels...tacky. And that is coming from a user who switched to Windows 7 after using OSX for 4 years.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm not sure what everyone else's experience is, but the MSN Messenger # feels a bit inflated. I'm in Australia so MSN was _the_ dominant chat platform in the early 2000's. But these days if I want someone to chat to -- they're going to be on FBchat and not MSN. (Which also puts MSFT in second place there behind facebook)

<comment><USER31> I honestly didn't think anyone used FBChat. You are literally the first person I've ever seen anywhere mention using it. Windows Live Messenger has a pretty good stranglehold in the business world, which is a pretty large segment of IM usage.

<comment><USER30> :) Always nice to be "cutting edge". Facebook chat is crap - but it works (most of the time at least). It drops out, the text input is tiny, you're tied to FB, etc. But it's good enough. And I'll clarify that that is purely personal use - never used it for work.

Do Microsoft have an Intranet focused IM solution ala Lotus Sametime? Notes shops all seem to be running sametime, Exchange shops seem to be not running IM or running public Messenger.

<comment><USER31> Yes, Microsoft has Office Communicator. However, it's a terrible client, it's about on feature parity with AIM version 0.5. It doesn't even turn "<http://...> strings into hyperlinks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I just bought a netbook with Windows 7 starter, and I did not wipe the Windows partition.

That said, the only reason I'm trotting out that installation is to test my sites on IE. Otherwise, It's Ubuntu all the way. Probably Android when Intel releases the Froyo build. Also maybe Chrome, just for fun.

In other words, the only reason I'm keeping Windows is I like playing with barely functional software. (I kid, I kid. Though it did hang for 4 hours on the logout screen.)</comment>


Iran: E-Business Improvement Conference - <AUTHOR> http://techrasa.com/2016/02/01/e-business-conference-step-forward-towards-online-business-development-iran/ <comment><AUTHOR> On Wednesday January 27th the first E-business Improvement Conference took place in Isfahan, Iran. Here's a brief summary of the event.</comment>


Windows 10 isn't the most vulnerable operating system – it's Linux - <AUTHOR> https://www.techradar.com/news/windows-10-isnt-the-most-vulnerable-operating-system-its-actually-linux <comment><USER2> > However, Linux experienced the most reported vulnerabilities per product at > 139.4, which is likely because the software company is relatively young and > has fewer products. However, Linux is projected to grow and may soon join > the likes of Cisco...

Does the author realize Linux isn't a company?

</comment><comment><USER3> This is wrong for a different reason than about Linux. The Debian vulnerabilities include all software distributed by Debian -- that is, as of current count, 149.009 different packages. It then compares this number to the vulnerabilities distributed by Windows... just the operating system.

For that matter, it separately breaks out Firefox -- which receives published vulnerabilities in Debian itself!

All told, this article is questionable, at best.

</comment><comment><USER2> The article considers Debian Linux one item for the list, yet treats each version of Windows as separate. In their 20 year chart, all versions of Windows adds up to 4865 to Debian's 3067.

Otherwise, we have to split up Debian by version, or at least only count the versions since Windows 10 was released. For example, the chart showing just 2019 shows Debian with 360 and Windows 10 with 357, essentially neck and neck.

If you look at the vendors charts, you'll see that Microsoft is clearly in the lead.

</comment><comment><USER4> This makes no mention of the severity of the vulnerabilities. More vulnerabilities does not mean less secure.

These are also the detected vulnerabilities, but what of the actual number of vulnerabilities? You could argue Linux has more vulnerabilities simply because there is more people looking for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> All great points. I was hoping I wasn't taking crazy pills reading over this article -- thanks for recentering the discussion outside of "count of vulnerabilities."

To your point, if I have 3 vulnerabilities and another program has 3,000, both counts are immaterial if vulnerability includes everything from "can observe encrypted traffic occurs" to "wide open access."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Linux is open source, so of course alot of the vulnerabilities will be found and fixed. How many more undiscovered vulnerabilities does windows have?

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious what software they're counting as "Debian." Are they counting the way OpenBSD reckons--"Only two remote holes in the default install, in a heck of a long time!"\--key word being "default install." Or are they counting the combined vulnerabilities in Debian's 59,000+ packages? Debian is a lot more than an OS, it is a project to vet and distribute a helluva lot of free software.

</comment><comment><USER7> What a terribly click-baity titled article

</comment><comment><USER8> Clickbait.

The author (editor?) is comparing 20 years of Debian to one release of Windows.

Not worth the waste of time to get everyone riled up about how bad this piece is.

</comment><comment><USER9> Seeing as how the list says it starts back in 1999 and Ubuntu didn't even come out until 2006; and is fucking based on Debian... I can quite positively state:

this article is 100% bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER10> Isn't it when Windows and OSX would be ooen source we'd only be able to find the real number of vuln.

</comment><comment><USER11> a number of Win 10 vulnerabilities masquerade as features</comment>


Show HN: Kidisms – A lighthearted community of kid quote lovers - <AUTHOR> https://kidisms.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, this is one of my first projects from years ago. Nothing advanced, or world changing. Just a lighthearted, simple way, for family to record the funny things our kids were saying. So there you have it :)

Recently upgraded the infrastructure from MySQL/Kohana to RethinkDB/Express.</comment>


CERN experiments observe particle consistent with long-sought Higgs boson - <AUTHOR> http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2012/PR17.12E.html <comment><USER3> What stood out to me from watching the presentation was the incredible integrity of the physicists involved. The CMS group had 2 sets of data with > 5 sigma significance, but chose to also show weaker data that actually reduced the significance slightly. Consider the enormous effort spent to show that the result was not some background fluke - two separate detectors, running 2 completely different means of detection, each with their own sets of computer programs verifying the results. Finally both show almost exactly the same result (although the masses are slightly different at this point)!

Given that tevatron also sees similar (although weaker) results, the confirmation is beyond doubt. And what an achievement - the first fundamental particle observed since the quarks in the 1980's! An incredible victory for theoretical models developed almost 50 years ago (no wonder Peter Higgs had tears in this eyes)!

Combining the brilliance of the theoreticians with the integrity of experimentalists is what makes science the pinnacle of human achievement (IMO), and makes me proud to be human today.

<comment><USER4> > _So, chose to also show weaker data that actually reduced the significance > slightly_

Well, they are not trying to convince anyone here. They are trying to prove something. So, choosing to hide that data would've been dumb, as the two possible outcomes would have equally interesting I think: proving that the Higgs Boson does exists, or proving that it doesn't.

Beyond that, yeah, it's a good day today for science :) !!!

<comment><USER3> > Well, they are not trying to convince anyone here. They are trying to prove > something.

A nobel prize is at stake! If ATLAS only had the results and not CMS, they would have lost the nobel. For them to put aside personal glory for science is impressive.

<comment><USER5> Even without the question of ATLAS vs. CMS, awarding a Nobel Prize for this will be rather challenging. At most three people can share it according to the rules, and there were literally hundreds of scientists involved in this discovery.

This is probably yet another argument in favor of the claim that Nobel Prize in its current form is antiquated and not matching the reality of modern science (especially particle physics).

<comment><USER6> The language of Nobel's will (as translated into English on the official site of the Nobel Foundation):

"The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses. The prize for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiological or medical works by Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm; and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be a Scandinavian or not."

After a settlement with Nobel's family, the foundation was set up with these rules:

"a) that the statutes, common to the prize-awarding institutions, dealing with the manner of, and the conditions for, the award of prizes as prescribed in the will, shall be drawn up in consultation with a representative nominated by Robert Nobel's family and submitted to the approval of the Crown; and

b) that there shall be no departure from the following main principles, viz: that each of the annual prizes established by the will shall be awarded at least during each five-year period from, and including, the year immediately following that in which the Nobel Foundation commences its activities, and that the amount of a prize thus awarded shall under no circumstances be less than sixty percent of that portion of the annual yield of the fund that shall be available for the prize award, nor shall it be divided into more than three prizes at most."

[http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_organizations/nobelfoundatio...](http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_organizations/nobelfoundation/statutes.html#par1)

From the statutes of the Nobel Foundation:

"A prize amount may be equally divided between two works, each of which is considered to merit a prize. If a work that is being rewarded has been produced by two or three persons, the prize shall be awarded to them jointly. In no case may a prize amount be divided between more than three persons."

[http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_organizations/nobelfoundatio...](http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_organizations/nobelfoundation/statutes.html#par4)

<comment><USER7> So just like I said, the will doesn't mention the three person limit, only the statutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mkr-hn [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/07/04/hi...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/07/04/higgs/)

This is a great comment: "Think about it this way. Let's say you're at the target range, and the Lone Ranger is shooting at clay pidgins right nearby. Obviously you'll want to know if he's shooting silver bullets, right? But you can't look at them while they're still tied up in the gun. You can't look at them after they've hit the pidgin. And they're traveling too fast to study while they're in flight. The only way you can see if they're silver bullets is based on how the pidgin gets blown to pieces."

"The Higgs boson has a very short lifetime outside of other subatomic particles. The only way for us to study them is to smash those particles together and see the results of the decay. Based on how the Higgs decays (blows itself to pieces), we can infer its existence."

<comment><USER8> It's even harder than that, because it turns out full metal jackets will cause the pigeons to blow apart into the same pieces, so it's not just the pieces, but things like the direction and velocity of those pieces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's cute that ATLAS spokesperson says 126 and CMS spokesperson says 125. Then CERN says 125-126.

</comment><comment><USER10> Can someone please dummify this result a little bit? what does this mean for particle physics in the future? does it confirm any theories?

<comment><USER11> Here's a pretty good Q&A that talks about this: [http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/particle-consistent- with-...](http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/particle-consistent-with-higgs- boson-found/)

</comment></comment><comment> mkr-hn I'm going to summarize this based on my limited understanding, and hopefully someone can confirm or deny.

This is important because it confirmed the accuracy of the way we conceptualize the structure of the universe.

That means both the people who start and fund projects know that the basis of modern physics is sound. So the time and money won't be wasted by a surprise "nope, Higgs-boson isn't there" in the middle of a project based on the belief that it is.

<comment><USER12> Yup, this was the last particle predicted by the Standard Model. In addition to not having any evidence that it existed, we also didn't know exactly how massive it was, or how likely it was to show up in high-energy collisions.

Unfortunately, the Standard Model still doesn't have a good explanation for how quantum mechanics and gravity work together, so we know it's not complete. But at least the particle menagerie seems to be full :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can someone please explain to me what would the immediate technological advancement be if this is true?, what applications would this have? (Already watched the video and read the FAQ, still a lot that is not clear to me)

<comment><USER14> This has been covered a lot, but in short: this is basic science that will have far-reaching implications in the long term. It gives us a greater understanding of the universe, and confirms a hypothesis that heretofore had no direct evidence.

The immediate short term won't see any technological advancement, but as with all basic science we will see outcomes in the future.

Science is in fact _not_ engineering.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for your response, I understand science is not engineering I was just not sure if I was missing some other immediate implications. The more you know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Really interesting article: so we're basically back to studying the Aether, right? Or did I get that wrong? The only cause of mass is the particles moving through a vast pervasive invisible field?

<comment><USER16> Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we need to be more careful about rejecting theories that simply sound like that of the luminiferous aether on the surface.

FYI aethers can be explained mathematically nowadays.

See: [http://www.quora.com/Physics/Besides-maturity-of-model- what-...](http://www.quora.com/Physics/Besides-maturity-of-model-what-are-the- differences-between-the-Higgs-field-and-aether/answer/Jay-Wacker)

<comment><USER15> The link isn't bad.

(the comment oddly doesn't follow my comment??)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is probably the best headline for this that I've seen on a news aggregation site.

</comment><comment><USER18> So, will we get more understanding about the shape of the universe?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_universe>

Can we now conclude what'll happen if we go right to the edge of the universe with speed of light? Without any further debates?

<comment><USER19> There is no such thing as 'edge of the universe'

<comment><USER15> Speculative.

<comment><USER20> Nope, it comes down to the generally agreed definition of the universe: the universe contains everything. If you want a border, there's the observable universe (everything in our past light cone).

<comment><USER15> Did you not follow the wikipedia link above?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Amazing, I wonder what this means for creationists and more importantly - <USER2> understanding of our universe?

<comment><USER21> The anti-creationists have become a religion unto themselves, complete with persecutions and indulgences.

"I'm about fifty-fifty on believing in God" - Steve Jobs

<comment><USER22> This is true only if creationists' bullshit is as valid as our reality.

So, no.

<comment><USER21> Hawking bet $100 that the Higgs Boson didn't exist. Does that make him a quack? If one or more creationists believes the earth was created in 6000 years, does that make all creationists quacks? Where's the scientific method in that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> just for the record and to please the prospective downvoting mob, here are my experimental observations consistent with the cern experimental domain in order to warn any non-westerners:

"The cost [...] has been evaluated, taking into account realistic labor prices in different countries. The total cost is X (with a western equivalent value of Y) [where Y>X]

source: LHCb calorimeters : Technical Design Report

ISBN: 9290831693 <http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264>

about integrity:

<http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1127343?ln=en>

FYI: [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Spin_(public_...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Spin_\(public_relations\)#Techniques)</comment>


Apple Moves One Step Closer Toward Location-Based Camera Disabling - <AUTHOR> http://www.petapixel.com/2012/08/30/apple-moves-a-step-closer-to-location-based-camera-disabling/

<comment><USER2> This would certainly make me drop my iPhone and go back to an Android device.</comment>


Videojuicer, moves out of startup mode, looks for another ruby app developer - <AUTHOR> http://gist.github.com/103088

<comment><USER2> I know some of the guys from Videojuicer, and they're awesome. If you know Ruby you should take a look at this opportunity.</comment>


HP Puts the Future of Computing on Hold - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/538121/hp-puts-the-future-of-computing-on-hold/

<comment><USER2> This was hyped so much since the past 2-3 years. All the researchers I know have been reassigned to work on some part of this project. I hope it is not a bust. This really is the last chance for HP to make itself relevant.</comment>