hakaaaaak

This thread is one of the best I've seen on HN. 1001 ways to screw yourself in bash. Love it. My contribution is a message from Mr. Odus himself- also a Reverend.

Don't do this unless you want a bad day: :)

  `printf "\ fr- mr odus"|rev`

I usually don't alias the command itself; that's bad form. It limits what you can do and screws you when you are using an environment without your alias when you forget it. Live and learn.

1435 days ago- that's almost 4 years. I wonder if one day in 2034 someone will post a "done that" link with a conversation over 10k days old?

Some of the things he said made sense though. Basically, if this guy wanted such rigid requirements, he should have stuck with a high-end custom publishing house. O'Reilly has never tried to make its name synonymous with a quality publishing house; they are known because they gave a voice to smart people in the tech world. Since then, it has expanded, mostly because techs no longer buy books in print as much as they did, and because to be profitable in a down market, you have to cut corners. The problem that plagued this author is that he associated the O'Reilly name with "high design quality" and that just isn't true. O'Reilly should be used when you want a recognizable publisher for tech books and to be included in their collection. If you are smart, you will also use the standard cover with an animal on it, such as a chinchilla.

> With nonfiction, it doesn't make sense at all.

That is the opposite of what I'd think. Nonfiction includes current topics like books on political figures. Fiction is all over the map and, with the exception of crossover titles like Primary Colors that were about current political figures but written as fiction, typically isn't tied to a current event in such a way that it matters what week it was on the NY times bestseller list for others to see that they might want to read it and buy it.

---

Offtopic: everyone reading this stuff up here- scroll down to Tim O'Reilly's comment below before you jump on the O'Reilly bashing train.

In addition, based on what Tim O'Reilly said in response, it sounds like the author was incredibly overdemanding compared to their typical author, and would have benefited from a small high-end custom publishing house. O'Reilly would be a great way to get published for anything that is primarily print; not a book on design with precise requirements, it would seem.

Yep, FF on mac here and it looks great. Why do people keep using Chrome, IE, Safari, and Opera?

Soulless? Now, look. O'Reilly has gone downhill, but so has just about everything. The economy made people cut corners and care less about quality or customer service (where the customer in this case is you, the writer). But if they kept the same standards they had before while book sales dwindled, they would be bankrupt. That is the cold hard fact of it, and it is sad. We'd like to think that quality is always rewarded, but paper is becoming less relevant, and ebooks can be hacked and torrent'd + magnet'd or just plain shared. Any data based business whether it is books, music, or otherwise, is in the shitter and looking for a new gig. I by no means think that litigation and DRM are the answer; fear and bad cryptography are never the answer. But, these people don't have many options, and they are going to make bad choices.

You're a good guy, Paul. And I agree that things get too cynical and too negative.

Please continue to foster an environment that is positive and provide a good example, but if people feel like they are being manipulated, they are going to get pissed off. I used to get more pissed off than I do now, but I still get upset. I wish I didn't. I wish that everyone could live in peace and work together.

Maybe if HN we're self-policing via ability to flag comments and posts where enough flags means that it shows as username only with no post title/comment show unless "show" is clicked, no downvoting (a flagged and hidden post or comment could rank at the top), and without the user banning/ghosting stuff...

> That's how you gauge the experience of a programmer: how much of the field she/he's terrified by.

I'm terrified by what I don't know, especially by what I don't know that I think I should know, to be "in the know".

It would be nice next time to direct to a static status page with info on what is going on, if possible, and keep that site up all the time, e.g.: status.news.ycombinator.com.

I'm all for diversity on the team. Strong efforts should be put forth to hire the best person for the job, regardless of their sex, etc., though. I have all daughters, so I want them to be able to be considered, hired, etc. on an even playfield with men. I don't expect special treatment for them, just respect and equal opportunity.

And, I like almost everything in this post, except that I think the OP might be playing to stereotypes a little too much; some of these are not problems specific to women. Like not playing oneself up as much or focusing on the actual monetary results of work.

Something I experienced that wasn't mentioned related to hiring women was "same sex competition" (which I'm sure is not specific to women, but I've never worked on a team with all women where I was the only male). When only one woman was on a team with a bunch of other men for a long time, that woman was much more critical of female interviewees. After the hire of another woman on the team, this competition continued for the first several months, before they became friends.