The Nazi's comprehensive graphic standards manual - <AUTHOR> http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=24358 Here's a link to a PDF of the book itself, if you want to try your hand at reading German printed in tightly-spaced Fraktur:<p>http://ia700306.us.archive.org/16/items/OrganisationsbuchNSDAP/Organisationsbuch_der_NSDAP_3._Auflage_1937_678_S._Scan_Fraktur.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> And a PDF of the manual itself, if you want to try your hand at reading German printed in tightly-spaced Fraktur:

[http://ia700306.us.archive.org/16/items/OrganisationsbuchNSD...](http://ia700306.us.archive.org/16/items/OrganisationsbuchNSDAP/Organisationsbuch_der_NSDAP_3._Auflage_1937_678_S._Scan_Fraktur.pdf)</comment>


Wearing a bike helmet may make you more likely to get into accidents - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/605128/wearing-a-bike-helmet-may-make-you-more-likely-to-take-risks-and-get-into-accidents/ <comment><USER2> Miss me with that anti-helmet study that doesn't address head injuries or deaths. People don't wear helmets to have fewer accidents. People wear helmets to protect their head when an accident occurs.

It doesn't matter if you lose more fingers if you lose fewer brains.

Also (2016)

</comment><comment><USER3> I find the benefits of not wearing a helmet to be:

* Deciding to cycle for short or leisure trips is lower friction (I always wear street clothes, too.)

* I can hear better.

* I find myself more careful about intersections.

* Motorists seem to give me more room.

* I have one fewer item that can be stolen.

——

On the other hand, I find the helmet benefits to be:

* My head is better protected in a crash.

* I feel more confident choosing cycling for strenuous commuting.

* People aren't as worried about me. :)

<comment><USER2> > I can hear better.

??? Road bicycle helmets leave the ears completely uncovered.

<comment><USER3> Try the same route both ways. The helmet creates noise that makes it harder to hear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most cyclists get serious head injuries when they get dinged by cars, of which helmets pretty much offer no protection from, so it is reasonable to not wear a helmet IMO when cycling (except for in rainy/icy conditions where single bicycle accidents are likely).

<comment><USER2> > _Most cyclists get serious head injuries when they get dinged by cars, of > which helmets pretty much offer no protection from, so it is reasonable to > not wear a helmet_

I don't understand. Did you just say that helmets offer no protection from head injuries?

</comment></comment><comment> your-nanny I should point out that main risks to cyclists are having to share the road with motorized vehicles, and cyclists going faster than is reasonably safe without protective gear.

I feel like the emphasis on head gear is just a way to avoid the real issues.

</comment><comment><USER5> Strange that the study take place in a lab: you definitively not behave the same in a lab or on the road.

</comment><comment> your-nanny tldr, So they strapped different head gear on people doing the balloon analogue risk task (BART) and found the helmeted folks inflated the balloon more.

I'm inclined to think cyclists in a whole bunch of gear do take more risks, but this experiment doesn't really do much to prove that. Headgear offers no functional protection in the BART, so the effect must derive entirely from some more general, irrational, feeling of security.

</comment><comment><USER6> A few years ago I might have said "this is Hacker News, not Google News - we're not all idiots here", but I had a different username then. Have fun crashing without a helmet. Better really... for humanity I mean.</comment>


A billionaire targeting contrarian, underappreciated causes - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-19/a-legendary-trader-is-making-few-friends-as-he-donates-billions?cmpid=BBD111915_BIZ <comment><USER2> > And Arnold, a moderate Democrat who believes a rich country like the U.S. > should provide a high safety net for its citizens, sees the stakes as being > no smaller than the survival of the very governments that provide that net.

Pensions are going to be an issue that deeply divides younger and older liberals. State and local governments face existential crisis. Meeting pension obligations is going to require trading away the future prosperity of these places. What young millenials will want to move somewhere they have to pay high taxes, but get few services in return because all that money is going to paying pension obligations?

It's also going to be a major headwind to the trend of millenials moving back to urban areas. Cities have particularly screwed up their finances. E.g. Georgia pensions are pretty well funded, but Atlanta's is a disaster. As millenials get older and have kids, the cuts to public safety and education that will be necessary to meet pension obligations is going to drive many of them to the suburbs.

<comment><USER3> >Pensions are going to be an issue that deeply divides younger and older liberals.

Pensions are an issue that divides rich and poor. This guy is rich. We are not. This article seems to be about him trying to destroy our pensions.

The so called existential crises were created by the financial sector he hailed from. They did not appear out of thin air. For example:

[https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/01/14/swap-j14.html](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/01/14/swap-j14.html)

When the financial sector is in trouble, they get given virtually unlimited bailout money and they have interest rates set to accommodate their desires.

When municipalities and pension funds are in trouble they are told to go fuck themselves.

<comment><USER2> Most people owed pensions are solidly middle class. They are way better off than the young people who will be paying for them.

And blaming the financial sector for the pension crisis is ridiculous. States and municipalities entered into very risky financial arrangements because for years they made very optimistic actuarial assumptions about pension fund growth, and committed to benefits that could not be sustained once population growth plateaued.

Investing in those risky assets was a gambit to get the kind of returns they needed to stay solvent. That gambit failed, but financial companies didn't create the underfunding that led to the need to invest in risky assets in the first place.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't this suggest that a better pension system would be identical to social security? Where payroll revenue is quickly distributed to pensioners?

That's the problem, isn't it. If you can use debt or a surplus to game the system, everyone loses at someone else's benefit.

<comment><USER5> A better system would be to let people save in their own individual retirement accounts.

If you want to force companies to support retirement, force them to pay into employee's retirement accounts.

The benefit of individual accounts is that they're a lot harder to raid or defund.

<comment><USER4> Except when financial firms skim off of personal accounts with excessive fees. Or the fact that Social Security exists as a form of social insurance in the event you're unable to save enough or lose all of your retirement funds.

Your idea of only individual retirement accounts is a terrible one.

<comment><USER6> I hate fees as much as everyone else does, but excessive fees are not the reason so many individual retirement accounts fail.

<comment><USER4> I don't disagree with you. My thesis is, it would be a terrible idea to switch pension systems like social security to individual accounts you're responsible for and could liquidate. That is not how insurance works!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The pensions system for US public workers does seem quite broken to me. Letting politicians with a relatively short term view control investments that have to realise a return in thirty or forty years is a recipe for disaster.

<comment><USER8> The same can be said for private companies. The difference is that private companies are allowed to weasel out of their obligations and the federal government picks up their pension responsibilities... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pension_Benefit_Guaranty_Corpo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pension_Benefit_Guaranty_Corporation)

<comment><USER9> Which is one reason that most private companies now offer defined contribution plans rather than defined benefit plans. That way a worker isn't dependent on the foresight, goodwill, or even existence of his past employer for his retirement. It is a far better for everyone involved. And if workers are nervous about investing these contributions into risky instruments they can use them to buy deferred annuities from AAA rated insurance companies and build their own "pensions".

<comment><USER8> > buy deferred annuities from AAA rated insurance companies and build their > own "pensions".

Which, in a post-financial crisis world, also obviously involves relying on government-backing of the insurance companies and bailouts when ratings agencies hand out AAA ratings like candy. Ultimately, only the government can guarantee people a retirement. Which is why I personally think we should say "screw it" and just guarantee everyone a reasonable (livable) payout from social security...

<comment><USER9> I think you may be conflating AAA rating of a security with AAA rating of a company. It is an easy mistake to make because the rating companies have deliberately conflated the two in order to sell more structured products rating services.

In contrast to the structured products ratings, the corporate ratings have held fairly well. For life insurance subsidiaries, which are the units that sell annuities, there is even further protection. The law requires insurance subsidiaries to be bankruptcy remote from their parents, and regulates the types of risks they can take on.

To take a famous example, even if AIG had been allowed to go bankrupt, it's life insurance subsidiary -- American General Life Insurance Company -- would not necessarily have been insolvent, and indeed retrospective analysis seems to indicate it would have been fine.

I should mention that all this safety comes at a cost, implied return rates for annuities aren't terribly impressive. But that's the nature of the beast, return and risk are proportional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Private industry has largely solved their pension problems by eliminating pensions and instead making contributions to an employee controlled 401(k) plan or similar. This eliminates some of the problems that come with pension plans, but at the cost of requiring some personal responsibility on the part of the individual employee.

</comment><comment><USER11> Contrarian billionaire request: Fund the Natami project. Amiga needs you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Billionaire financial leech wants to slash the pensions of people who work for a living. News at 11.

<comment><USER12> As opposed to the elected political leeches who want to use _taxes_ slash the paychecks of people who work for a living? Politicians who aren't even honest enough to represent the true cost of the pensions they're paying up front, instead assuming a 10% return on investment every year forever and let the _next_ council candidate make the unpopular decisions and deal with the crisis when they end up like Stockton and Detroit?

(Or perhaps we can imagine that every single state or municipal pension system can make up the shortfall by taking money from all the billionaires they have lying around. Ha.)

I'll tell you what, though. The "billionaire-financial leech" is spending money that he already has on a cause, and he will never see it again. The politician is spending someone else's money, and as thanks for this, he will earn campaign contributions from the relevant unions. Draw your own conclusions.

<comment><USER3> John Arnold made money trading - a zero sum game by definition. All of that $4 billion is wealth that was _extracted_ from somebody else.

Probably some of it from pension funds.

He is now using that money to lobby politicians to strip wealth from the working classes. He is paying PR companies to burnish his image for doing so (this article did not come out of nowhere).

What. a. hero.

>Or perhaps we can imagine that every single state or municipal pension system can make up the shortfall by taking money from all the billionaires they have lying around.

Yes, god forbid we should consider raising taxes on the 0.01% and using it to pay pensions for the working classes after they had so much of their money stolen by rapacious oligarchs like him.

<comment><USER13> Have you actually tried to calculate how much money you could raise if you increased taxes on the richest 0.01%? And have you checked how much money is necessary to pay out pensions in the future?

<comment><USER3> The top 0.1% have as much as the bottom 90% (which includes housing wealth as well as pension wealth).

So you could raise rather a lot more than you needed, actually.

Raising those taxes will also significantly drag down the cost of property (and consequently rents) which is the main outgoing for lower and middle class families.

<comment><USER14> > The top 0.1% have as much as the bottom 90%

False.

Some claim that the top 1% have as much as the bottom 90% but even that claim is disputed.

[http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/top-one- percent-20110...](http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/top-one- percent-201105)

<comment><USER15> This might be the misquoted source for the claim you're refuting: [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/24/opinion/nicholas- kristof-i...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/24/opinion/nicholas-kristof- idiots-guide-to-inequality-piketty-capital.html)

That article is discussing wealth (net worth) versus the article you cited which discusses income. No surprise that the lines between rich and poor differ when you measure it different ways.

I found that via: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Uni...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States)

One question: aside from arguing the specific numbers, it is irrefutably true that a small minority hold the majority of the money, and it is widely reported that the gap is currently growing, not shrinking. Is this a good thing? Do the specific numbers change the outcome or what our course of action should be? Even that Vanity Fair article concludes the situation is bad.

<comment><USER14> A line from the article I linked:

"In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent."

> Do the specific numbers change the outcome or what our course of action > should be?

Of course the data matters! Especially when (as crdoconnor did) you report data that is incorrect by an order of magnitude!

Jesus.

<comment><USER16> "In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent."

That doesn't seem to contradict anything said up-thread.

If the top 0.1% control 20% of the wealth, the next 0.9% control another 20% of the wealth, and the bottom 90% control 20% of the wealth, then the claim you objected to is true. That would mean the remaining 9%, between the top 1% and the bottom 90%, control the wealth that remains - 40%. I don't think these amounts violate any of the ordering constraints, given the relative size of the groups; in reality there will be variation within the individual groups, but if we assume there isn't the math checks out fine: 20/0.1 > 20/0.9 > 40/9 > 20/90

I'm not saying the original claim was correct - I don't know. Just that what you quoted doesn't refute it.

<comment><USER14> And that's really the most interesting thing to talk about here. Not what's right and wrong but the degree to which I've properly quoted evidence to support my pov.

Really?

<comment><USER16> Your position that is data matters, as long as we don't pay attention to what it actually means?

You accused someone of being wrong "by an order of magnitude" and the "evidence" you produced did not even demonstrate that it was likely that they were wrong. If the data matters, fucking understand the data.

<comment><USER14> I do understand the data. And I'm not wrong.

I'm just not really interested in doing the legwork to provide you with perfectly cited sources. This is Hacker News not the US Congress. You know how to use Google.

<comment><USER16> In general, evidence provided in discussion is more useful if it's likely to be called out when it is invalid or irrelevant, so I called it out - giving my reasoning.

You might not be wrong. You manifestly _don 't_ understand the data. Observe that, learn from it, update your confidence.

 _" I'm just not really interested in doing the legwork to provide you with perfectly cited sources."_

I was not disputing the citations of your sources, and I wasn't demanding perfection. I was demanding that what was provided as evidence that someone was wrong _" by an order of magnitude"_ actually _be_ evidence they were wrong at all.

 _" This is Hacker News not the US Congress."_

Exactly! So we're agreed that we should expect at least a modicum of decency, and respect for argument and informed discussion?

 _" You know how to use Google."_

I do, and I know that it doesn't do a very good job answering these kinds of questions.

I engaged more deeply with your evidence (including the article you drew it from) precisely because I hoped it would inform me in the ways you'd indicated that it should. I was left disappointed.

Unfortunately, you seem quite a bit more interested in rhetoric and posturing than in actually engaging intellectually, so unless your replies are inordinately better than those above I won't be responding further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Pension reform makes me laugh. "Oh yeah, this is a massive contract we signed, we want to renege on it."

No corporation would stand by this in terms of major signed projects or debts without a massive fight. If renegotiation was required for payment to occur, either in the form of bankruptcy or reduced rates, then it would be a crushing asset grab, with no quarter given. The person who took on a contract they could not afford rightly should be squeezed to crap.

But because it's poor people, they are the ones who have to make the sacrifice when someone wants to renege on their contract?

Hilarious.

<comment><USER18> Sure, with a company you can liquidate it and creditors can seize whatever assets are available. How are you going to do that with a city or a state? Is the city of Atlanta supposed to close up shop and hand over whatever assets it has to pensioners? Then what? Atlanta just continues on with no city government to provide public services?

<comment><USER17> Raise taxes and meet your obligations. Reduce them if need be under negotiation like any kind of bad debt situation, because that's what it is.

<comment><USER18> There's a limited amount a city or state can raise taxes. If they're too high, wealthy people will just leave. It's not hard to move if you have money. It does screw over the poor people left behind who now have high taxes and no tax base to pay for government services.

Reducing the pension burden is exactly Arnold and others are trying to do. The result of that is that some people are not going to get the pensions they thought they were. That sucks, but it's better than dissolving the government altogether.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Delivering Breaking Bad on Netflix in Ultra HD 4K - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.netflix.com/2014/06/delivering-netflix-in-ultra-hd-4k.html <comment><USER2> For a small to medium displays at typical viewing distances (this includes most "big screen" panels you can buy at your local electronics shop), 1080p meets or exceeds the limits of the typical human eye's resolving power. Without using a projection system and a large screen or a stupendously expensive (>100" diagonal) flat-panel, 4K is a subtle upgrade at best.

When video is encoded with insufficient bandwidth, compression artifacts (e.g. macroblocking) are anything but subtle. These artifacts typically are not constrained to one or two pixels, but ramify to much larger portions of the image. Netflix has, by necessity, used insufficient bandwidth on practically their entire library. My money is on Netflix's over-compressed 4K being inferior in quality to Bluray 1080p for the vast majority of users.

<comment><USER3> This might be useful in illustrating your point: [http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html](http://s3.carltonbale.com/resolution_chart.html)

<comment><USER4> Am I the only one who watches stuff on his computer, and sits about 2-3 feet from it?

<comment><USER5> What screen size are you on? 27 inches? Can you make out individual pixels with film material (which usually has no sharp edges in it)?

<comment><USER6> Not arguing against what you are saying, but there's a significant difference between "making out individual pixels" and "noticing a difference".

<comment><USER5> That's true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm old enough to remember tv shows making a big deal about being in color, then stereo, then HD. The big change in going to 4K is that Netflix doesn't need regulatory permission or ten years of drafting standards to make the upgrade.

<comment><USER8> "...Netflix doesn't need...ten years of drafting standards..."

When do you think standards work started on HEVC? When do you think NHK were first demonstrating UHDTV?

They were both being worked on by 2004 and much of the research work will have preceeded that.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Televisi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Television)

<comment><USER7> Good point. And I'm sure Netflix engineers had a certain amount of internal bureaucracy to deal with as well. The point I was trying make was just that it's easier now to make a change like this than what had to be done in previous iterations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The biggest problem holding back adoption for 4k media is vendor lock in. You can't get 4K unless you're on a Sony/LG/Samsung "Smart TV".

There is not a legitimate technical reason why I can't watch House of Cards in 4K on my Seiki through my PC. I watched the trailer in 4K over a dozen times on YouTube.

Gamers want to play games on low input lag 4K screens from brands like Asus, Dell, Acer. 4K is much more easily justifiable when users can buy a single screen for their games and ultra-hd content.

Gaming PC's are about the only units with enough compute for highly compressed h.265 playback without built in hardware acceleration, so I don't understand why the market has not made this content accessible for me to purchase.

<comment><USER8> You are right there is no technical reason why you can't but there are probably commercial and practical reasons.

The number of people with gaming PCs is relatively small and the complexity of providing it to them might be quite high. I don't know what the availability of stable HEVC decoders is like or what the licensing cost for them is or the difficulty of integrating them with Silverlight or whatever it is that Netlix use.

The Youtube trailer was probably VP9 not HEVC but was possibly using a higher bitrate that could effectively be downloaded rather than streamed for a short trailer.

Basically the complexity of supporting the small group of gamers with the right PC's and 4K monitors was probably not worth it initially especially considering the backlash from customers who's PC's weren't fast enough. It is easier to launch on a set of known devices and then they can expand from there. I'm sure it will come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is great and all, but what are we gonna do with 4K streams when Comcast can't even deliver a low-quality stream?

<comment><USER11> That's the whole point.

(Warning: conspiracy theory ahead)

Netflix is rolling this out to illustrate to consumers how internet providers are failing to fulfill their contractual obligation for high-speed, unlimited internet at a set price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How many GB/min of footage is this? I can't imagine ever being able to stream that here, where our high-end quotas are measured in 100s of GB/month.

<comment><USER13> 15Mbps [1], which will consume around 6.8Gb/hr [2]

[1] [http://bgr.com/2013/09/26/netflix-4k-streaming/](http://bgr.com/2013/09/26/netflix-4k-streaming/) [2] [http://web.forret.com/tools/filesize.asp?speed=15&unit=Mbps&...](http://web.forret.com/tools/filesize.asp?speed=15&unit=Mbps&dur=3600)

<comment><USER14> It's actually ~6.6GB/hr. Note: _Actually_ GiB, but who writes GiB...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Netflix; I dont need that, we already watched it. It was great.

Please add more shows to the EU/Dutch region.. the US and UK catalog are interesting.. why cant we see this?

Also, i'd pay extra if i could watch ANY movie as soon as it got out of the theatre.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wait, my back of the envelope says you'll need to pull down around 650mb a second to stream 4K. That's uncompressed, sure, but anything in that power of ten isn't feasible.

<comment><USER17> Typical compression of 4k video ends up being more than a factor of 10 smaller.

<comment><USER16> Yikes you're right. Looks like 2 powers of 10.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wait, only on select smart TVs? So I can't watch this on netflix.com with my 4k monitor? (not that I have the connection to stream it anyway)

<comment><USER19> Nope. See 'proprietary DRM' and 'vendor lock-in'. You can basically use specific Sony/LG/Samsung TVs and that's it.

Or pirate it after it's released and watch it the way you want to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> In what resolution are the original negatives?

<comment><USER17> It was almost certainly shot with 35mm film. Film is analog so it doesn't have a well-defined resolution, but modern 35mm is pretty comparable to 4k (maybe a little less, depending on the quality of the camera/printing/etc)

<comment><USER21> AMC still shoots their originals on film.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Too bad their 4k content has bitrates that should only be acceptable for 1080p or less. Downscaling their 4k to 1080p would almost look as good as if they just had proper 1080p to begin with. And a proper 1080p upscale to 4k would look better than this poor excuse for 4k.

</comment><comment><USER23> How do I know what quality stream I'm getting?

</comment><comment><USER24> Smurfs 2, really?

<comment><USER25> Sponsored by Comcast. It's one way of reducing the bandwidth demands ;)</comment></comment>


10 brilliant office interiors - <AUTHOR> http://deputy-dog.com/2008/04/16/10-annoyingly-brilliant-office-interiors/

<comment><USER2> I like the openness/energy level of number 10. The others just seem silly, and not to mention extremely expensive.</comment>


Ask HN: Suggestion for a super-simple customer web portal? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a super-simple and pretty/customizable web portal for my product customers: I need to make files available to them every so often and want to just upload them to a SFTP account and have the web portal provide access to those files.
Before I build something, I thought I'd check if you might be aware of something that might meet this need (nearly) out of the box.  Not required, but if its in PHP, that'd be a plus. <comment><USER2> A private Wordpress site?

</comment><comment><USER3> Basecamp?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good idea! I wonder if there's a version of Basecamp that can be customized/skinned.</comment></comment>


Study Shows More Reasons Why Belly Fat Is Dangerous for the Heart - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/5671.html <comment><USER2> Word for word blogspam of

[http://www.acc.org/about-acc/press- releases/2016/09/26/15/13...](http://www.acc.org/about-acc/press- releases/2016/09/26/15/13/study-shows-more-reasons-why-belly-fat-is-dangerous- for-the-heart?w_nav=S)

</comment><comment><USER3> There is not a single "reason" in this article, and it even admits they fail to show causality, so they are really nowhere near talk of "reasons".</comment>


Scribd Puts My Old Uploads Behind a Paywall and Goes Onto My Shitlist - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ericgoldman.org/personal/archives/2010/09/scribd_puts_my.html

<comment><USER3> I think there are a few takeaways here:

* You have to charge from the very beginning. If you start a free service, and then try to establish a pay system afterward, your users will feel tricked and trapped and they will rebel loudly. Scribd seems to have been in a hurry to get adoption, so they made it free to host documents; as this guy said though, he much preferred hosting with Scribd over doing it manually on his university's web server. That could have been Scribd's value proposition, and a small yearly fee for that probably would have worked OK.

* SaaS could get itself in trouble if there are too many incidents like this. I already hear from clients that are concerned about using online services; the most common questions are, "What if they change their terms?", "What if they go away?", and those are legitimate concerns. Many of my clients aren't the most computer-interested people, so if they have concerns like that, then that means that stories like this have penetrated very deep into the consumer market.

<comment><USER4> > If you start a free service, and then try to establish a pay system > afterward, your users will feel tricked and trapped and they will rebel > loudly.

If you lock behind a paywall things previously available for free, sure. And they'll be right too.

An other option is to add features which are only behind a new paywall. Issue then is providing additional services of value and a way for users to discover them.

<comment><USER3> Just as a case study, Reddit did exactly that, and their users _flipped out_. Reddit ended up doing OK with it -- they've made at least enough from it to be able to afford some infrastructure upgrades and at least one new hire -- but there was a pretty vocal not-small group of users that were unhappy about it.

<comment><USER5> The initial response was to flip out, but once people realized reddit wasn't going to switch to a pay-only site the outrage died down. It might have only worked because reddit users/admins try so hard to foster a sense of community, but it seemed to me like reddit showed how to set up a pay service correctly, and people were just too jaded because of sites like Scribd to realize it.

<comment><USER3> > _...once people realized reddit wasn't going to switch to a pay-only site > the outrage died down._

I'm not very active in Reddit anymore -- HN is my last distraction now -- but I did watch that situation carefully because it was interesting. I got the sense that the outrage died down only because Reddit promised to migrate its paid features into the "free" arena. Until then, a lot of people were angry that there was going to be some kind of "elite" class on the site.

Practically speaking, even if Reddit had managed to permanently piss off this chunk of its userbase, I doubt they would have left altogether, and even if they did, there's no way to gauge what fraction of Reddit's traffic was really represented by these guys. It could've been (and probably was) just a tempest in a teapot.

But either way, in that specific case, there would have been some vocal rebellion if the paid-for features stayed locked behind a paywall.

<comment><USER4> > I got the sense that the outrage died down only because Reddit promised to > migrate its paid features into the "free" arena. Until then, a lot of people > were angry that there was going to be some kind of "elite" class on the > site.

As a Charter and gold reddit member... not really. It was well understood early on that most of the "gold" features would be stuff that was too expensive (computationally) to give to everybody (especially before the server upgrade), at least from the start.

The great fear gripping everybody was truly that Reddit would somehow become "for-pay", and that content previously free would now become non-free (a fear which didn't make much sense as the community is the one providing the content, and the admins might not be too media and ad-savvy, but they're not stupid)

> But either way, in that specific case, there would have been some vocal > rebellion if the paid-for features stayed locked behind a paywall.

Doubtful. 1000 comments/thread is a nice feature for instance, but it didn't exist (at all) before gold and it's not exactly a deal-breaker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Early Scribd broke the web by taking open format documents, putting them in a proprietary wrapper, and calling it a "service".

Middle Scribd fixed their own brokenness by moving to HTML 5 (which is sometimes more convenient than a PDF, and is certainly "open" and accessible).

Late Scribd is again breaking the web by moving documents behind a paywall. Some qualities are just baked into a company's DNA.

<comment><USER7> Thank you. I've never understood why Scribd exists at all. The web has done fine at moving documents around before Scribd, and it'll keep doing it fine long after they disappear.

<comment><USER8> emailing pdf's is not my definition of "doing fine", I am not following the current drama much, but I do thank scribd for letting me look at content I would have otherwise ignored on seeing ".pdf"

<comment><USER9> I always thought that Scribd was just a reaction to how awful Adobe's free PDF reader has become.

<comment><USER10> What is the problem with pdf ? Editing a document in html is too painful.

<comment><USER11> What does that quality of Adobe's pdf _reader_ have to do with the ease of _editing_ documents in html or pdf?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't actually believe that they would go the paywall route. It honestly seemed a few months ago when they added HTML5 support that they were going in a really great direction and now I will avoid them like the plague.

<comment><USER13> I think the whole HTML5 thing was a big PR exercise to improve the way they are seen. Possibly also a big play to get acquired - "We're doing cool stuff with fonts! Buy us!".

Fundamentally though, they're about locking away documents behind a pay wall. And personally, I don't see their value proposition at all.

<comment><USER14> Scribd's HTML5 was about having crawlable (read: show up in Google) content.

Nothing wrong with that, btw.

<comment><USER15> I think it was just about "gaming Google" -- at some point the links to pages on scribd had higher ranks than original pdfs. I consider that more like successful spamming of Google search than long-term feature.

How is it now? Do they still have higher rank? I'd consider than that a bug in Google ranking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From the FAQ (this is crazy):

Your documents will automatically be entered into the Archive after an initial period of time. You can recall a document from the Archive by opening the document's properties, clicking the Archive Status tab, then clicking the Recall from Archive command. If a document's properties page doesn't have an Archive Status tab, then that document has not yet been placed into the Scribd Archive. To learn how to edit your documents' properties, please see our Writer's Guide.

After a couple months your document will return to the Archive, and you can repeat this process to recall it again.

<comment><USER17> Or you can go change the global setting so that none of your documents go into the archive.

<comment><USER16> Conveniently not mentioned in the FAQ.

I changed it for my own account only after reading the article. Funny enough, it's an inversely-worded checkbox in there (unlike all of the other options):

[ ] Do not include my documents in the Scribd Archive program. Learn more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't care if they want to establish a paywall, that's there perogative, what I don't like is taking my content, which I uploaded under the belief I'd be able to host it there at no cost to end users (persumably subsidised by ads) and then charging my readers for it. I post my content (mostly slides from talks and such) for readers, I'd probably even pay to put my content there, it's rather convenient.

<comment><USER19> The last part: Absolutely. They got it the wrong way. I mean - okay - <USER2> have the right to establish the paywall.

But they are scare off the wrong people: the readers. Why use a service to pay for reading something that the publishers WANT to give me for free? Not enough: Many publishers would pay for it, as it is convenient and absolutely user friendly.

This won't work. Well no, actually it will work - but not as a service that proclaims "show your work to the world for free".

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've never seen the appeal of Scribd, and I'm no fan of the direction they seem to be stumbling in, but it seems a bit unfair to dismiss invitations to join a user advisory board and/or come visit them as "not much of a response".

Even if both are mere PR exercises, it's an improvement on the kind of content-free hand waving I'd expect from a company desperately seeking profitability.

<comment><USER21> Exactly. How can he call this "not much of a response?" As you pointed out, the message said, "I'd also like to extend an open invitation for you to come in and meet the team." To me, that sounds like a free trip to give direct user feedback and have a real chance to make a positive change.

Instead, it sounds like Mr. Goldman just wants to bitch. He feels like Scribd used him? Did he not use Scribd? At least Scribd provided value to him (as he indicated); whatever value he provided Scribd, he is now trying to destroy it with this blog post.

There was a submission on here last week: _If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold._ (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1684732>).

I never use Scribd, and I'm not really concerned either way with how successful they are. But I'm starting to get really annoyed with everyone's sense of entitlement these days. Louis CK hit it on the nose with his remark, "How quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only ten seconds ago." (<http://barefootmeg.multiply.com/video/item/56> \- it's a great clip if you haven't seen it)

<comment><USER22> Well, it's "not much of a response" since it doesn't respond to his concerns. Inviting him to give further feedback is great and all, but while it acknowledged his issues with the Archive paywall (just by saying they could tune it -- not with a concrete solution), it completely ignored his privacy complaint about broadcasting reading activity.

Basically, it was a response, but "not much" of one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Guys: you could write your next software for people like this gentleman, _or_ you could write it for a 50 year old woman who pays money for software and services. Choose wisely.

<comment><USER24> Indeed. I also thought the following comment from Scribd showed what is wrong with their mindset:

      As a start-up, we're constantly trying to strike the right
      balance: building products that people love but that also
      help us make money (to cover server cost and everything
      else associated with running a company).

Umm, surely as a company you are trying to do more than cover your running costs? Or are the saying "As a start-up" profitability is irrelevant and all they care about is covering their costs whilst increasing their market share? A larger share in a market no-one is actually willing to pay for is not worth more than a smaller one, what with them both being worth nothing and all.

<comment><USER25> A lot of people have these things they call lifestyle businesses: if they're meeting payroll and expenses, and loving what they do for a living, they've 100% satisfied their goals.

I'm not sure that's what is going on in Scribd's case, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This reminds me of chi.mp. I recently suspected that my Gmail was hacked, so I clicked maniacally to get to the page where I could reset my password.

I discover that my chi.mp account is the back-up e-mail, which is great; the service lets me decide which e-mail address to forward to.

I go to chi.mp, think for a minute to remember my password, and get to the e-mail-forwarding screen. The account is set to forward to an e-mail address that is inconvenient (I can't remember the reason), so I remove the forwarding I've set up and---

"Something, something, you need a Pro account to create a forwarding address."

What the hell is a Pro account, I think to myself, a thought that is quickly eclipsed by the fact that a) The guys screwed me over without telling me, and b) I have no way of saving my e-mail account from a potential invader, unless I pay these <expletive>s.

I have yet to e-mail them and give them shit for it, but I didn't want to let it ruin my week, but I'll be sure to contact them when I can muster the time and energy.

<comment><USER27> HopToadApp.com did the same to me. About a year ago, I signed up for their free plan. It allowed two users, so I added our lead engineer.

Recently, he left and we added another engineer. So I removed engineer #1 and couldn't add engineer #2 unless I paid to upgrade the account. I don't mind paying when it makes sense, but a) HopToad was totally unwilling to grandfather the account, which meant I couldn't add the new engineer, and b) there was no messaging that the plan changed. I found out about it when I tried to add engineer #2. Lame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sometimes, when reading pieces like this, I think it is time that we as internet users reach a certain point in our understanding of entitlement. There are so many services we readily use, most free of charge, while some of them provide a huge service to us. Some even make us money. But if the service providers themselves try to validate their business by making money out of it in some way, we start bitching...

I do not especially condone what Scribd is doing here, nor can I say I would have anticipated that behaviour (harvesting interesting content and subsequently making the whole service pay-only is not the dumbest thing ever), but if you take a second when you first start using a service and try to think about the fact that they some day will have to make money, you should be able to get some conclusions. What options does the provider of the service have to make money at all? Which of these options would be ok for me? Which would piss me off badly? And how do I avoid being in a trap like the OP?

If one thinks about those questions instead of just feeling entitled to use a service, which might be "free" at the moment, the awakening should not be to abrupt.

<comment><USER29> I would flip that around on you: I think it is time that companies reach a point in their understanding of users' reaction to the bait & switch.

The value of your service to a user isn't going to increase simply due to the passage of time or growth of your site. If they wouldn't pay for it on day 1, the odds are they won't pay for it after 2 years of using the service. If, in the process of trying to monetize your service, you "hold hostage" a portion of the value that the user has contributed to your site, they are going to be pissed.

This has all happened many times now. I think companies trying this route in the first place will be easier to change than peoples' reaction to it.

<comment><USER30> > I think it is time that companies reach a point in their understanding of > users' reaction to the bait & switch.

For real. This always reminds me of the dude who tries to be friends with the girl so he can eventually date her, instead of simply asking her out, and risking the 'No' like a man.

Slimy.

<comment><USER31> It's also the wrong way to go about because once you end up on the friends ladder it's almost impossible to cross the abyss. ;)

<http://www.laddertheory.com/ladderconstruction.htm>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Getting a bunch of people to give your free service content and then suddenly changing policy so that you can charge for that submitted content always felt pretty sleazy to me.

Kind of like raising a bunch of money for starving orphans and then buying yourself a yacht.

</comment><comment><USER33> I have content hosted there too and value the "open access" spirit, but would also like to see Scribd develop a viable business model. An alternative is the service will close down and everything -- both free and archived -- will go away.

Another question: Besides an archive paywall, what else could the company do to build revenue (such as professional services, print-on-demand, etc.)

<comment><USER15> > I have content hosted there too

Can you please or anybody else explain me why you see any added value of scribd at all? I see it only as an annoyance. If I'd like to read a pdf I'd prefer to click on the link and read it, not to go to some suspicious site which demands from me to sign up there only to do what otherwise would be one single click.

As far as I know the only "advantage" of the service was to make content infringement easier (a site for documents which is like youtube was for videos), and that the site owners expect people to pay for access to it is hardly surprising. But I like other mechanisms more.

My suggestion for everybody who is the owner of his own documents and wants to upload them: host them as the normal files on the normal sites, unless you do want people to pay for access to them.

<comment><USER34> I don't use it myself, but reasons people I know have used it:

1\. They don't have webspace and want to put a PDF somewhere online.

2\. They do have webspace, but are worried, possibly unnecessarily, that it'll cost them too much money if they send out a link to a big PDF to a large-ish mailing list.

3\. For Mac users, where PDFs don't load in a plugin in the browser by default, they want to be able to link to a PDF that opens in the browser instead of popping up an external viewer.

4\. And, yes: They have a PDF that is at best gray-area which they want to distribute without hosting it themselves, like a scan of a book chapter for a reading group.

<comment><USER35> >3\. For Mac users, where PDFs don't load in a plugin in the browser by default, they want to be able to link to a PDF that opens in the browser instead of popping up an external viewer.

FYI, PDFs absolutely load in the browser by default.

<comment><USER34> Hmm, is that only for Safari? On my OSX machine, Firefox pops up PDFs in an external instance of Preview by default. Presumably I could install the Acrobat plugin, but it doesn't seem to come with it, or to be able to find one already installed on the system. But if Safari does show them inline, then I agree I was wrong about the "default" behavior, since Safari is the default browser.

<comment><USER36> Better: use this plugin: <http://code.google.com/p/firefox-mac-pdf/>

It uses the native Quartz PDFKit backend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> If people put the documents available for download for free, I think they should be left that way, no one likes someone else to makes actions for them without their knowledge.

Everybody is surprised when someone tells him "Why have you made the document available for download only via purchase?"

If they don't fix this thing soon I'll stop using Scribd completely.

Also, a really funny sentence in the response from Scribd:

> You're right that our communication around the Archive should have been more > clear.

It sounds like, yeah, we know, but we like it this way for now.

</comment><comment><USER17> In the time it took him to write his rant, he could have clicked the checkbox to make all of his old content available for free again.

When you use a free service, you have to expect them to need to make money somehow--and that means you should expect them to try changing the mix of what is free and what is paid now and then, and changing defaults. Accordingly, you should expect that on occasion you might have to change settings in order to get the thing to work the way you like.

</comment><comment><USER38> I feel that the main issue is the lack of open and direct communication with the users.

Sure, making the paywall opt-in by default increases conversions. But you still have to tell the user about it rather have them discover one day that a lot of their documents are no longer being read. That sucks.

</comment><comment><USER39> People still don't understand all of the things they are agreeing to on sites like this:

Scribd Creator Terms Of Service [http://ipadtest.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/scribd-creator- term...](http://ipadtest.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/scribd-creator-terms-of- service/)

<comment><USER40> A whole pile of data on scribd was never uploaded by the original owners though, but by people posting links to pdfs to sites like HN.

<comment><USER15> Can anybody please tell me why does HN actively support such a site?

<comment><USER40> Because YC invested in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to everyone for the feedback and comments, Scribd just announced they are making changes: [http://blog.scribd.com/2010/09/21/the-scribd-archive-an- apol...](http://blog.scribd.com/2010/09/21/the-scribd-archive-an-apology-and- immediate-changes)

</comment><comment><USER41> This reminds me of what happened at the end of the dot com bubble, where the hasty erection of a paywall usually meant that the death of a site was imminent, and users often did feel "tricked and trapped" or that their community relationships had been violated.

</comment><comment><USER42> Relevant: [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cartoon_the_only_consta...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cartoon_the_only_constant.php)

<comment><USER43> That's not realistic at all. If Facebook really did that to your car, they wouldn't leave the note.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This kind of service is just another "Brill's content" type scam.

</comment><comment><USER45> if anything is "free", YOU are the product sold.

</comment><comment><USER46> "readcasting" sounds like an excellent SEO siloing play. Lots of inter-related internal links. Good google-fu.

</comment><comment><USER47> I've encountered a few documents that were 1 page application forms for community resources, and all were shocked when those were suddenly behind a rather expensive paywall. I also was really annoyed the first time I noticed some obscure document I read was broadcast to all my "followers." That means I've encountered both of these major beefs myself. I was never a scribd user, but I sure as hell would never use them now. This is not an issue of not charging early - it's expertsexchange all over again.

</comment><comment><USER48> That paywall pays for hosting, the platform and the tools that guy used--not to mention the fact that it also pays for hundreds of jobs and fuels the entrepreneurial economy. If that causes a benign blogger to add the service to his or her shitlist, then I think Scribd will live on.

</comment><comment><USER49> Did you try contacting them to clarify ? If so, what was their response ?

<comment><USER50> He did. From the post:

 _As a courtesy, I sent a prepublication draft of the above post to Scribd's press team and asked for a response. They were kind enough to reply to me pretty quickly with the following_</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is Apple ripping of European users? 1€ ≠ 1$ - <AUTHOR> Anybody can explain this strange policy followed by Apple in their stores? <comment><USER3> I don't think it's that strange. Let's compare the cost of the same MacBook Air in the US and France.

1\. MacBook Air 11-inch : 64GB in US is $999.

2\. MacBook Air 11-inch : 64GB in France is €1,049

3\. $1 = €0.80 at the current time.

So you might think the MacBook Air should be €800 (999 * 0.80). So why it is €249 more? France levies 19.6% TVA (sales tax) on goods and the tax is included in the display price; the US levies sales taxes by state and these are not shown in the displayed prices (sales tax calculated based on destination).

So, what you need to compare is the pre-tax price on both machine. The pre-tax price of the MacBook Air in France is €877. Thus Apple is charging €77 more for the MacBook Air in France than in the US.

The issue is tax rates not Apple.

If you look at the UK you'll find that

4\. MacBook Air 11-inch : 64GB is £849

5\. $1 = £0.65

So, the £ equivalent of the $999 machine is £650. UK VAT (sales tax) is 20% and thus the pre-tax price of the machine is £707. So Apple is charging £57 more in the UK than in the US.

<comment><USER4> Although not as massive as it looks in the first place, there _is_ still a discrepancy. The new MBP-Retina top config is 2799 USD -> 1805 GBP. In the UK store, it's 2299 GBP, less 20% vat -> 1916 GBP.

So they're taking more than a 100 quid extra from each UK customer, "just because".

<comment><USER5> Well, don't forget our lovely European regulations. The costs of hiring employees and handling business in Europe is higher than in US if I'm not mistaken.

Finally, I'd guess that Apple pays its contractors in USD. So if today 1 USD = 0.8 EUR, Apple needs to consider the fact that tomorrow it may be 1 USD = 0.9 EUR, and the price needs to reflect this scenario as well (they cannot change the price every single month to reflect the current USD/EUR conversion ratios).

These are details, but add them together, and you'll arrive at that 10% price difference (I guess)

<comment><USER6> The european regulations are cheap compared to the legal risks of operating in the states. So, thats not it.

Exchange rate? You keep assuming prices are based on costs. They are not. They are based on profit.

So, when the population in a country has more money to spent, or better but, there where the median, rather than the average, income is the highest, the prices will be too.

So, its cheap in the US because americans are generally more poor, except for a few that throw the average. Off course, "poor" is a very relative concept in this regard.

Income inequality leads to lower prices, and lower margins.

<comment><USER7> _The european regulations are cheap compared to the legal risks of operating in the states. So, thats not it._

You would need to provide some evidence of this since it is completely counter intuitive. Just look at where US treasuries compared with European bonds to compare which countries/continents are viewed as having less legal risks.

 _Exchange rate? You keep assuming prices are based on costs. They are not. They are based on profit._

You are correct, if French people will pay more for an Apple product and Apple can price discriminate, they will.

 _So, when the population in a country has more money to spent, or better but, there where the median, rather than the average, income is the highest, the prices will be too._

Well, median income is not the deciding factor for willingness to pay, but would certainly be a contributing factor. Supply and demand equations could be more complex or less complex depending on the situation.

 _So, its cheap in the US because americans are generally more poor, except for a few that throw the average. Off course, "poor" is a very relative concept in this regard._

This is untrue, proven by the other person's link to wiki.

 _Income inequality leads to lower prices, and lower margins._

This is untrue also. The price of gold watches and private jet flights are not affected by income inequality, but rather the size of the target segment (wealthy people). A highly polorized economy with 50% really rich vs 50% really poor would by far more jet rides than a country with a distribution toward the center.

<comment><USER8> > Just look at where US treasuries compared with European bonds to compare > which countries/continents are viewed as having less legal risks.

To be fair, you're comparing apples to oranges. Government bond prices reflect the default risk of the government in question. 'Legal risks' include things like getting sued because of perceived defects of your product. Some statistics about that would be interesting, but probably vary greatly by sector: medical devices probably involve lots of ass-covering, whereas something like paper notebooks probably incur fewer lawsuits.

<comment><USER7> _To be fair, you're comparing apples to oranges. Government bond prices reflect the default risk of the government in question._

They also reflect overall competitiveness of the country in question which by definition includes legal risks. This is primarily driven from currency fluctuations. In Europe, the German Bund is currently priced stronger than Spanish bonds which is due to default risk.

If each country had their own currency (compare US to Europe as a whole), the bigger fear would not be default risk, it would be inflation risk. This inflation risk is a function of competitiveness.

 _'Legal risks' include things like getting sued because of perceived defects of your product. Some statistics about that would be interesting, but probably vary greatly by sector: medical devices probably involve lots of ass-covering, whereas something like paper notebooks probably incur fewer lawsuits._

I agree with your assessment of what legal risks are, but keep in mind it is more to do with the change in legal structures rather than current legal structure. If there is no change, businesses can make projections and be confident in them. If there is a risk of change, that is perceived as a larger legal risk.

I don't have statistics, but I would say that a country (France) which elects a president that is perceived as socialist (radical change from previous president) has far more legal risks than the relatively stable US.

<comment><USER8> I think the OP was talking about the costs of lawsuits and their effects on business, not risk of doing business in general in various places.

Also: I don't think that, in the context of France, the change in presidents is really all that radical. I suppose I could be proven wrong, but I don't see them as being that much further apart than, say, GWB and Obama, even if the latter two are shifted 'rightwards' compared to what the center is in France.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In Europe you are forced to give your customer 2 years of warranty on certain products. E.g. computer hardware or electronics.

Apple refused to in the past (and still had their crazy EUR prices then). But now, after being dragged to court about it in Italy, and loosing, they at least have a good reason to charge more in Europe. ;)

This is the case for most vendors. E.g. my Panasonic GH2 camera did cost a bit more in Europe than it would have in the US. But I get 24 months of warranty.

See:

[http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/apple-increases- product-w...](http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/apple-increases-product- warranty-to-2-years-across-europe-2012042/) <http://www.apple.com/uk/legal/statutory-warranty/>

<comment><USER10> Apple's warranty policies in Europe are still a disgrace, unfortunately. The warranty on a laptop charger is only one year, instead of two, for example. They aren't cheap to replace either (€80 for a simple cable?!). The warranty on an iPod is useless when there's a crack in the screen: defects that have nothing to do with the screen will only be fixed for a hefty price. The advice is to "just buy a new one".

In the mean time, they do reel in this extra money, for apparently no good reason. It really made me think twice about buying an Apple product again. The products are exquisite, but the service is just terrible.

The warranty policies in the US however seem to be exquisite as well (or were a while ago at least).

<comment><USER11> _The warranty on a laptop charger is only one year, instead of two, for example._

They might claim that, but it isn't, and a small claims court or equivalent will prove it to them. All new non-perishable products have two years of warranty, period.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I feel obliged to repost this. Updated prices in Brazil:

        Air 11": R$2699 -> R$3699 (1849 USD)
        MBP 13": R$3599 -> R$3999 (2000 USD)
        New MBP: R$9999 (4500 USD - WHAT??)
        New MBP maxed out: R$15973 (~8000 USD...)

Import tax is 60% for individuals, around 40%, maybe less for importers. $2199 * 1.4 * 2.06 (today's USD, predicted to go < 1.90) = R$6340. How 2199 turns into 9999 (4.5x), or 2799 into 16000 (5.71x) is a mystery.

Now, what were you saying about being ripped off?

[edit] just for kicks I maxed out a Mac Pro: R$ 48.959,00, or 1/4 of a nice brand-new apartment.

<comment><USER13> How do other brands compare? For example, how much would a similar Dell or Lenovo laptop cost?

<comment><USER14> You pretty much can't buy Lenovo in Brazil (I mean the Thinkpads).

Dell is established, affordable, good customer service. Competes here with Acer, HP, Toshiba and even cheaper brands probably assembled in Brazil (like Positivo). Sony Vaios are normally a little bit higher priced, closer to Apple.

The lower end Dells start around R$ 1700 (820 USD): Core i5, 4GB Ram and 1 TB HD. The higher end (gaming or slim) ones, my guess would probably be around R$ 3500 (1700 USD).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In Australia, it's called "The Australia Tax".

Partly, selling into another country is a bit of a headache. That's one reason why US businesses can do so well - they only need to succeed in a single jurisdiction and they'll make a lot of money. Yes, there's different state laws, but pretty much all countries have annoying state laws, and not all countries are as lucrative a market as California alone.

<comment><USER16> I get the impression that state laws are significantly more uniform in Australia than the US... IMHO, it's more that distributors are "used to" a lower AUD, have exclusivity/best price guarantees, and so can prevent anyone importing goods (at retail scale) that undercuts them. They've got their business model worked out on the basis of higher prices, their customers are used to higher prices, and they make arguments like "hey, well, we ran a bit of an advertising campaign and submitted your product for regulatory approval". Perhaps true, but not necessarily worth the extra "tax". See the story about how the digital price for Australian buyers of The Witcher 2 got increased because the Australian distributor made a fuss: [http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/05/why-does-the- witcher-2-cost...](http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/05/why-does-the- witcher-2-cost-more-in-australia/)

<comment><USER17> There's certainly that factor, but then it even happens with the app store. Though what I think happened is that the distributors kicked up a fuss when the iTunes store was made available in Australia, so the record companies made the prices higher. Apple learnt from this experience that they could make the prices higher, so they've replicated it across the board. I guess there's also the possibility that some larger app store developers have been able to convince Apple to make the price differential higher for Australia as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If I had to guess (and I guess I don't /have/ to), I'd say it's strictly psychological pricing, and is not intended to reflect some sort of idealized exchange rate or the like.

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

<comment><USER19> Agreed.

I think it's not just that though - there's the sales tax and the extra warranty mentioned elsewhere in thread, plus there's a bit more overhead of doing business in Europe. More languages, different rules, etc.

Adding all of that up, I can totally understand that Apple just slap on the same EUR/USD amount and call it a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Don't forget sales taxes as well. Depending upon where you are you are probably paying something like 20% VAT (TAV or whatever) - quoted in the consumer price.

In the USA, they have the annoying habit of excluding sales tax (presumably on the grounds that it varies wildly from place to place) and that is only added at the checkout.

</comment><comment><USER21> Just to echo the sentiments here, it's certainly partly just because they can. If you want a hilarious example, look at Canada. I'm going to use Lenovo here as an example (but applies equally to other retailers). Baseline T420 on the US site? $1365.00. Baseline T420 in Canada? $1520.00. The exchange rate? Been within 5% of parity (either direction) for the last several years. Taxes? Canadian sale prices must be shown pre-tax (just like in the US). Supply chain? Practically the same thing. I ordered a T400 several years ago, and watched it get shipped from China to Alaska to their depot in Kentucky, and then trucked up to Toronto.

I guess there might be some problems with the Made in China part (doesn't completely fall under NAFTA), but I honestly can't figure out the tarrif /import duty laws.

But the point is that US prices almost always seem lower =/

<comment><USER22> IT IS lower! I've been buying stuff from the US for years now - <USER2> accounting for VAT, certain IT products are cheaper, not to mention there are a lot of products you can only find in the US or online...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> To make it short: Because they can. As others have pointed out there are taxes, regulations and so on, but the main reason (in my opinion) is that they still make a very good profit in Europe, so why should they reduce prices? Apple is a business and businesses will do almost anything to make more profit (that's the reason they exist, nothing wrong here).

p.s.: Steam has a similar policy and one could note that Steam and Apple share a common trait: No real alternative.

<comment><USER24> That is not a Steam policy, that is a policy of publishers who distribute via Steam.

If you look at Valve's own game pricing, you will see the euro and dollar are almost on parity when you account for sales tax.

<comment><USER23> If I remember correctly you could buy with dollars at Steam as an European customer until one year ago, since then this isn't possible anymore. Was this change forced by the publishers?

Anyway, thanks for the hint. Pricing of Valve games is indeed near parity, so you are probably correct regarding publishers/Steam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The new retina display MBP US starting price 2199$ == 1757€. The new retina display MBP FI starting price 2349€ == 2938$

Difference of 739$ or 590€ feels quite substantial.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's because of two years warranty, higher taxes, toll, and for more expensive items, smaller number of sold items.

It's not fair you singled-out Apple, since this is true for several gadgets I bought, software, or for example more expensive Canon lenses. It's not Apple specific thing.

<comment><USER27> My friend from the UK comes to the US to buy sports cars. His wife comes with him to buy clothes. While here, they also pick up iPhones. Not see what makes this a particularly Apple issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Europe is ripping off Apple customers, for values of "ripping off" which mean "more or less listening to their expressed preferences that certain favored goods cost nothing at the margin and everything else costs a lot more."

</comment><comment><USER29> Summing it up - EU prices have VAT included and exchange rate is best possible for Apple in long term perspective. But correct me if I'm wrong - if you buy Macbook in Apple store in US their adding some kind of local tax, right?

Also - if you're running a company in EU you can refund overpaid VAT, right? So the only difference is, that currency exchange rate is worst possible.

</comment><comment><USER30> The first post by jgrahamc sums it all up nicely. On the additional 77 EUR Apple charges in Europe, one may have to consider strikter recycling laws. As far as I know, the cost of recycling is already charged at the time of purchase of an electronic product in Europe. That may, at least in part, explain the 77 EUR margin.

</comment><comment><USER31> In Europe Apple _must_ give 2 years of warranty. There was a recent court decision on that in Italy. That is additional cost that reflects also in the price.

<comment><USER32> The court decision was about Apple not mentioning this in the prospectus of their support plans. They always followed the two years warranty rule.

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/23/apple_italy/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Have you looked at the prices for the Aeron Chair? Amazon.com: around $700 Amazon.de: the cheapest offer is 1.298,99€ (that's around 1,624.16)

That's some markup there…

</comment><comment><USER22> Yeah, pretty much _because they can_. The average buyer doesn't compare USD to EURO - they just see the price in EURO and it seems normal. Keep in mind that the salaries are also similar in both countries USD=EURO (so technically US workers are paid less if you convert).

Running a company in the EU is also harder than the US, at least for smaller businesses and startups - that may account for something...

<comment><USER34> Not in the UK from it tech and engineeing jobs our pay is much lower compared to SV and housing costs a lot more. The only advatage we have is only paying 12% for NHS etc instead of 20%+ just for health insurance.

<comment><USER22> I was talking more about the mainland - Germany, Netherlands and Belgium to be more specific... But you can't really compare anything with the Silicon Valley directly - IT and engineering jobs are present all over the US, and they pay less than SV companies and startups, too...

<comment><USER34> well going from UK to Europe "Engineers" are MUCH MUCH Higher status jobs.

The wife of the Number 2 at BT labs (you know the place that desigend and built Colossus) once got asked what sort of cars her husband worked on :-(

And yes they did think he was a car mechanic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Because they can!

The good price is the maximum price the client will pay for the service/product.

As long as the users buy, they are going to continue this way.

<comment><USER36> I support this argument. Not sure why the downvotes, but it's the most truthful answer in this set of comments.

Cheers to you sir, just because people don't like the truth does not make it any less truthful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Why is McDonalds ripping off European customers? In my somewhat limited experience (3 years in Belgium and 2 in Sweden), the only good that has anything to do with the exchange rate is the dollar itself. For everything else, $1 ~= 1 euro ~= 10 SEK ~= 1 pound. Look at the cost of a cheese burger at McDonalds.

</comment><comment><USER38> Apart from Tax, there is also the problem with fluctuation of exchange rate. Then there are operating cost and other sorts of things.

There is still quite a margin, but same type of Electronics devices would have cost more in UK compare to US even without the tax difference. So it is not really a Apple thing at all.

</comment><comment><USER39> It's simpler than that. They do it because they can.

Apple could charge allot less for everything they sell but they don't just because they can get away with it.

I'm sure nobody here really believes that the difference in price between countries has anything to do with keeping the profit margin the same everywhere :)

<comment><USER40> If the difference was high enough, people would import.

<comment><USER22> Most people don't want to deal with the extra waiting time and warranty issues to save $100-200, though...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's not Apple ripping off users, it's a price of state-sponsored healthcare and education. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

<comment><USER42> I cannot see how governments spending money on education and hospitals means that Apple prices are higher?!

 _(Unless you're talking about higher sales tax/VAT?)_

<comment><USER41> Yes, it's exactly what I'm saying: retail prices in Europe include VAT and it's about 20-25%, same as difference between the value of one dollar and one euro. And, in general, taxes are higher in Europe because of higher government spendings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Will folks that like to use external monitors buy the MBP Retina?</comment>


Is the world moving away from accessible design? - <AUTHOR> http://softwareprototyping.net/2009/02/09/are-we-moving-away-from-accessible-design/

<comment><USER2> Very nice article effectively. But accessibility is not only good for old people or ones with a visual disability.

I discussed with a 16 year old a couple of weeks ago and asked what she though about the iPhone and the Nokia (she had a Nokia in hands).

She did only one thing in front of me: Unlocked her phone, wrote an SMS, sent it, everything without even having a glance at the screen. Then she smiled, looked at me and said "Can you do it with an iPhone?".

Me: speechless and lesson learned.

<comment><USER3> <http://www.apple.com/accessibility/iphone/vision.html>

<comment><USER4> That is a useful replacement for tactile feedback in the same way that this

[http://www.theonion.com/video/apple-introduces- revolutionary...](http://www.theonion.com/video/apple-introduces- revolutionary-new-laptop-with-no,14299/)

is a useful replacement for a keyboard.

<comment><USER3> How does tactile feedback help to _read_ for the blind?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very well written article that touches on some of the more important points about accessibility. I've seen the attitude that they mention in too many developers. What they don't realise is that for people with a visual or motor disability, a computer and the internet can make possible things that weren't earlier possible or make easier things that were hard.

If you'd fractured both legs or you're allergic to sunlight, would you prefer to get your milk at the local grocery store or to order it online and have it home delivered? If you had a visual disability and had to rely on audio cues, would you prefer a conversation in a crowded room full of people or IRC?

I don't know if toucscreen devices can replicate the kind of tactile feedback you get from a physical keyboard. I've heard of research in this area that uses tiny electric pulses or vibration, but I don't have a source to cite right now. It may be some way off, but just dismissing it by saying it's not necessary isn't the solution. We're all smart enough to figure it out if we first identify it as a problem.

Remember some of the first FORTRAN and COBOL programmers are in their 70s now. Arthritis and visual problems aren't that uncommon at that age. Will PHP, Python and Ruby programmers still be able to use a computer when they turn 70?

</comment><comment><USER6> I wish this article would get past the "disabled people don't use computers" straw man (at least, I hope none of OP's technical friends really espouse that) and address the reasons that designers marginalize accessibility in real decisions.

For one, most of us are ignorant as to just how many users fall outside the "able" use case, and in what ways. Among product managers, if you can't quantify that unusual use case, it's going to be termed the "10% case" or the "1% case". And that is the kiss of death.

For another thing, few of us have any idea _how_ people outside the majority want to use software. It's just as ludicrous to assume that a legally blind person will use a cameraphone the same way as you do as to assume that she won't use a cameraphone at all. Perhaps she's far more likely to use it for document scanning, and far less likely to demand the option to apply a wacky sepia tone effect to her photos.

Getting the answers to these questions into designer's heads is going to have more impact than any number of "come on, you guys" appeals.

<comment><USER6> Incidentally, in the specific case of colorblindness, I think the abovementioned type of awareness is starting to permeate the industry. You can especially see the results in games, which sometime include a colorblind- friendly display mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _actual tactile feedback_. A major feature of real buttons. This is what they refer to as affordance. A button, by its nature, is meant to be pushed, and obviously so, even when you aren't looking at it.

The more interesting trend to me, which seems to be true for both touchscreen and accessible design is... _no mouse_. There's a shake up from which ever way you look at it.

<comment><USER8> Accessibility is much about understanding what can be perceived and understood. Yes, non-tactile buttons aren't great for people who rely on touch - but that doesn't matter if there's a better interface that is accessible.

A visual person looks at an iphone and sees the touch screen as a series of hotspots, something akin to a button. But, it's a flat surface, it doesn't have to be interpreted as non-tactile buttons.

Look at an iphone touchscreen when the phone is switched off. Now look at a Macbook touchpad. If the touchpad - with no 'screen' behind it, or no display at all - how would you use that to navigate around the various features of an iPhone like OS?

Very quickly you'd land on the idea of gestures with spoken output. You'd create a navigation of gestures. Swipe left to move to the next application. Swipe right for the previous application. Double tap to activate the selected application. That's just for starters.

As the iphone demonstrates, there's a rich language for interacting with the device that seems to be enough to navigate around the various features of the phone.

Accessibility is about providing the equivalent functionality. No-one ever said the way of using it had to be the same, just equivalent. A different interaction allows access to the same functionality.

I remain deeply impressed with Apple for producing a mobile device that for the blind community absolutely rocks. It's a pity that Google's equivalent device is not as well thought out or implemented, sure it works for TV Raman, but others I've spoken to have concluded that Google's attempts are nowhere near iPhone quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> EITHER flat touchscreen devices are inherently unusable OR designers don't have to make major compromises to provide accessibility. One or the other — not both. This article spends half its time bashing touchscreens and the other half brushing aside designers' objections that they'll have to make sacrifices to achieve the kind of accessibility he's looking for. Not even arguing against the objections, just saying that it's not really a problem and the real issue is those darn lazy designers who "don't prioritise the effort."

It would have been really cool and useful and might have actually changed some minds if he'd included practical advice into his post rather than just gripes and platitudes. Brushing aside the objections of the people you're trying to convince is pretty much the worst argumentation tactic imaginable.

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://blogs.forbes.com/booked/2010/04/12/apples-ipad- brings...](http://blogs.forbes.com/booked/2010/04/12/apples-ipad-brings-easy- reading-to-the-blind/)

<http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/accessibility.html>

[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/more-accessibility- fe...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/more-accessibility-features-in- android.html)

[http://developer.apple.com/technologies/iphone/accessibility...](http://developer.apple.com/technologies/iphone/accessibility.html)

This is a very important issue, and touch screen devices present new challenges to making applications accessible, but it does not appear that the problem is being ignored.

</comment><comment><USER11> I was going through a Section 508-derived set of standards today for a government project, and it was surprising just how many of the implementation requirements were really just best practices for semantic markup. Isn't that the way forward for accessibility everywhere? When data, interaction, and presentation are properly modular, it's much easier to replace parts of the system for those unable to use them.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've also seen this attitude in discussions of new user interfaces for computers. Whenever some new GUI show up here (or yet another post shows up about that awful 10/GUI system), many people get defensive or dismissive about the idea that some thought should be spared for those without 20/20 full-color eyesight and normal dexterity.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why should everyone be limited to the subset of designs/techs that are accessible? Choice is a good thing, we can have both unaccessible and accessible designs at the market, and let the people choose what they want and can use.

<comment><USER10> That's true, choice is a good thing until you are blind and then you have no choice. In the US, the whole point of Section 508 is to protect the minority. If you left it up to the market, the majority of people who have no disabilities would be the ones who are catered too and a secondary market attempting to address the needs of people with disabilities would have to spring up. Most likely, things in that market would be inferior on the whole to their counterparts in the mainstream market simply by virtue of there being a lot less invested in them. That is not what we want, someone who is disabled should have the same choices as someone who does not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The iPhone works fantastically well for bond users, thanks to the brilliant design of VoiceOver. It turns out tactile feedback isn't nearly as essential as one might expect.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is there even some way to replicate the touch screen functionality through keystrokes on a plug-in keyboard?

<comment><USER16> For how many of the applications available for touchscreen phones and tablets is the touchscreen really necessary? For some of them(fast-paced games, visual-arts-related things, etc.), the touchscreen is key, but those are largely inherently inaccessible to the blind. Not as much to arthritics and others with decreased manual dexterity, but they'd probably be better off with a mouse.

For most iPhone/Pad apps, the touchscreen, at best, makes the UI more convenient. It is not at all integral to the functionality. One of the frequent criticisms of Android is the risk of fragmentation of the platform between devices with very different capabilities, but this is one situation where that could actually be a good thing. There's no hope that a blind person will ever be able to use an iPhone or an iPad, but there is at least a chance that HTC or some other company will release an Android device targeting people who have difficulties with touchscreens. It probably would be a much worse experience than a normal Android device for people who can use touchscreens, but the decision for those that can't wouldn't be between a normal smartphone and one without a touchscreen, but between a phone without a touchscreen and no smartphone at all.

<comment><USER17> It turns out that the iPhone is actually an excellent smartphone for the blind - check out VoiceOver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've worked enough in the non-profit sector, where 'accessibility' is a substitute for 'usability'. Never again.</comment>


Climeon could make geothermal as widely accessible as wind and solar – Quartz - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1566234/climeon-could-make-geothermal-as-widely-accessible-as-wind-and-solar/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-climeons-technology- takes...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-climeons-technology-takes-low- temperature-next-level-denbow)

This other article explains a bit better the technology behind it. It is indeed an ORC, but they seem to have taken some interesting design choices with the working fluid to increase the cost/efficiency ratio</comment>


Ask YC: Good distance graduate certificate/masters programs in C.S.? - <AUTHOR>

I'm going to be working full-time next year and I'm looking for a way to continue my CS education by doing something like a graduate certificate or part-time distance masters. I'm going to be in the states [namely Seattle,WA] , but as an alien (meaning wildly varying tuition). I'm wondering: What are some good schools with distance graduate-certificate or masters programs in C.S.? Also what are the type of undergrad marks/ GRE scores required for most programs? Are there other tests besides the GRE I should look into doing for international distance programs? <comment><USER2> As far as well-respected schools with distance CS programs, I think it's between the Universities of Maryland and Illinois.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=131047>

Also try <http://searchyc.com>, this has been asked before</comment>


One Small Leap for Open Source, One Giant Leap for Mankind - <AUTHOR> http://press.redhat.com/2009/10/01/one-small-leap-for-open-source-one-giant-leap-for-mankind/

<comment><USER2> What is the difference between software as a tool and something mechanical as a tool? Mechanical devices, for which there are many patents, take a state of matter and change it to another state of matter. Why should you be able to patent a circuit board, but not a set of program code that does exactly the same transformation to a set of bits?

Why are mechanical engineers able to patent their devices, but computer engineers are not?

I understand the ramifications of software patents. But the problems with software patents are the same for patents in _every_ other field. Why is software special?

Why are we narrowing the conversation to software? Patents for software, like any other field require research and development, they save time and money, they make things more efficient, they improve life for countless individuals, they do require risk, innovation, and yes _reward_ to survive.

That's what patents are for. They are to reward the risk takers. In the case of software patents, the reward goes to the programmers who take the risk to write all the code that will be patented. They aren't "abstract" ideas, they are lines of code that are concretely typed into a computer. They convert information from one form to another. They control the physical world in previously unidentified ways.

To say software patents are invalid or software can't be patented really puts software programmers at a disadvantage relative to other fields of science and innovation. Why should pharmaceutical companies, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, and all other disciplines have the right to patent their inventions -- but not software engineers?

<comment><USER3> What if civil engineers could file a patent that looked like that following:

 _A method and system for crossing a body of water via a constructed object. The customer starts on one side of the water and walks across the object to the other side._

Your average software patent is roughly equivalent to a patent on the concept of a bridge. If there are useful software patents, they've been overshadowed by the large number of abusive ones.

<comment><USER4> Are you sure that's the typical software patent?

Some famous law-suits were about patents that are far less trivial than your bridge example.

For example, Pixar holds a patent on Monte Carlo sampling, and has sued or threatened a number of companies that used any sort of randomization in their rendering algorithms. This despite the fact that Monte Carlo methods have been known and used for many decades before Pixar was started. The issue here is not that the concept of Monte Carlo integration is trivial, but instead that Pixar's contribution to it is so tiny compared to the previous state of the art that it should not give them a "right" to own the whole field.

Similarly, some lawsuits were about compression algorithms if I remeber right. Same issue here - it's not that a given compression algorithm is trivial, it is more the fact that it is probably a tiny increment on the top of existing compression techniques, and anybody that also builds on the known ideas should not be threatened by loosely related patents.

Of course, patents are a problem that should be addressed, but I don't think trying to prove that software patents are somehow different than others is the right way.

<comment><USER5> > For example, Pixar holds a patent on Monte Carlo sampling, and has sued or > threatened a number of companies that used any sort of randomization in > their rendering algorithms.

Actually, Pixar has a patent on certain uses of randomization in rendering. In patent-speak, randomization is the mechanism and rendering is the result.

I mention patent-speak because patents are the use of mechanism to accomplish result.

Would you object to a patent on certain uses of a lever to close a gate? (Ignoring novelty issues - closing gates with levers is well known now, while using randomization in rendering was presumably new when Pixar did their thing.) In patent-speak, the lever is the mechanism while closing the gate is the result.

If not, then you're arguing that a lever as a mechanism is somehow different from randomization as a mechanism. If so, you're pretty much arguing against all patents (using mechanism to accomplish result).

<comment><USER4> I'm mostly arguing against patenting trivial increments over non-trivial ideas.

It has been long known that MC can be applied to computing any integral over any domain, so computing the integral of color over a pixel is simply a specialization of a general technique, and should not be patented.

Similarly, in akeefer's post above, storing insurance claims in a relational database is a specialization of the well known process of storing _anything_ in a database, so should not be patented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Open source proponents need to realize that, while it is possible for the Supreme Court to enter a ruling making software non-patentable, this likely is wishful thinking.

The authority for patent laws ultimately comes from the Constitution and finds its implementation in statutes passed by Congress. There is nothing in either the Constitution or in the existing patent statutes that expressly allows courts to limit process or business method patents (the type at issue in the case before the Supreme Court) to those that pass the so-called "machine-or- transformation" test imposed by the lower court. Thus, it is by no means assured that such a relatively narrow test will be upheld. If it is not, then the looser standards likely will be back in play, meaning that a broad variety of process patents (include software-related) will be capable of being granted.

For those interested, this case has generated _huge_ interest in the tech world and, as of a couple of months ago, at least 44 such companies had filed briefs with the Court (for what it is worth, most of them favor rejecting the lower court's ruling and thereby letting more process patents be issued). A good summary of the positions appears here: [http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/08/briefs-in- bilski.htm...](http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2009/08/briefs-in-bilski.html).

I am not saying that software patents shouldn't be abolished - just that such a result is highly unlikely to come from any ruling in this case.

<comment><USER7> > I am not saying that software patents shouldn't be abolished - just that > such a result is highly unlikely to come from any ruling in this case.

You're probably right. The best way for a person to help get software patents abolished, IMO, would be to join their local Pirate Party -- <http://www.pp- international.net/>

<comment><USER8> Heh, no it's not. That'll just get you marked a radical and summarily ignored by anyone with power. Not that I agree with that, but that's how things are.

The _real_ way to get software patents taken care of is, as with any other matter of public policy, to convince large swaths of major, consistent contributors to the campaigns of your incumbent representatives to press the issue.

This will probably be difficult because people with money want to do evil with these patents and they will just counter your pressure, though there is some hope that the big players will decide that software patents are too dangerous altogether if a few more injunctions like the one against the sale of Microsoft Word come out (see i4i v. Microsoft). But right now, Microsoft is trying to use its patents to neuter its open-source competitors, so they may value that too highly. We'll have to see!

<comment><USER7> (on joining the Pirate Party)

> _Heh, no it's not. That'll just get you marked a radical and summarily > ignored by anyone with power. Not that I agree with that, but that's how > things are._

The Pirate Party already has one MEP. If (probably when) the Lisbon Treaty is passed, they'll have two. The Pirate Party will probably _be_ in power in several countries over the next 10 years (as part of coalitions).

> _The _real_ way to get software patents taken care of is, as with any other > matter of public policy, to convince large swaths of major, consistent > contributors to the campaigns of your incumbent representatives to press the > issue._

This might be true in the USA under their current political system. But as you imply from what you say, the USA isn't properly a democracy, it's an oligarchy ruled by corporations. This is in fact a bigger problem than software patents.

It isn't true in Europe, where Pirate Parties have a siginificant chance of getting people elected, due to using more democratic electoral systems.

If Pirate manage to get software patents abolished or neutered in one major jurisdiction, they will probably indirectly win in the rest of the world.

> _This will probably be difficult because people with money want to do evil > with these patents_

I agree.

> _But right now, Microsoft is trying to use its patents to neuter its open- > source competitors, so they may value that too highly._

That's certainly part of Microsoft's plan for their patents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While reading these comments, someone quoted well that: "The intent of patents is to get inventors to disclose their inventions to the public for the benefit of all." This sounds like a good principle. Instead of applying the traditional patenting method to software, we should find the equivalent of that principle in software world.

So, patents apply to implementations, right? Also, code itself is the design, right? And yet, so far we try to describe the implementation with vague words of mostly English language, and to bend the boundaries by making it as broad as possible. Doesn't seem to work too well.

In real world, you can patent an implementation of a bridge -- effectively the design of its construction if it's novel. You can't patent the underlying, generic bridge-construction principles. Code is design.

I think the principle could apply analogously to software patents by opening the source of a proprietary implementation, and then licensing interoperability with the patented implementation. In other words, that spells like kind of a code-escrow for an exclusive licensing rights for limited time.

The patent would only apply to forks or third-party implementations that are compatible with the patented implementation. If you invent a clever protocol, you could require money for compatible implementations: this would hopefully incentivize opening proprietary implementations.

On the other hand, if someone takes your ideas and builds his own implementation, you would not be entitled to anything: that someone will be required to build his own market share, compete with your implementation and user base from the ground up, and effectively do the same work that you have already done -- just to get on par with you.

Complete codebases and unit tests could be required to make it easy to verify the compatibility or incompatibility of programs potentially based on the patented codebase.

Reviews for novelty would be much easier to arrange if expert programmers could study the working code and compare it to earlier implementations. That is, as opposed to lawyers trembling with the words and semantics of patent applications.</comment>


MongoMapper 0.8: Goodies Galore - <AUTHOR> http://railstips.org/blog/archives/2010/06/16/mongomapper-08-goodies-galore/

<comment><USER2> about to use either this or mongoid.. anyone have any thoughts ?</comment>