$99 Parallella Supercomputer is Now Open Source Hardware - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnx-software.com/2013/06/30/99-parallella-supercomputer-is-now-open-source-hardware/ <comment><USER2> This sounds really interesting, but does anyone know how useful it is in practice? 90 GFLOPS doesn't seem that high compared to e.g. high end i7s, though I imagine there's a lot of variability in how that's actually calculated.

Also, if it is as fast as claimed, surely 1GB of memory would be a large limiting factor?

<comment><USER3> If I remember correctly, my Xeon E7-8870 server pulled at most 100 GFLOPS double precision. I think high end i7s max out at about 180 GFLOPS single precision. Considering relative costs (and the scale the 64 core can reach) this is really really cheap per GFLOP, both in power and cost. (E7-8870 is 100W and like $4000).

<comment><USER4> ...but I can buy an off the shelf $200 GPU (e.g. Nvidia 660) with stable tools that will work pretty good with highly parallel tasks, and get ~2000 GFLOPS according to [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_600_Series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_600_Series)

Or is there workloads where the parallella actually would make sense?

Power requirements are low, but development environment is probably rough, and development costs (regardless of stack) are going to be order of magnitudes higher than your electricity bill anyway for most projects.

<comment><USER3> Considering the Z7000 series FPGA, yes there are many use cases where this is much better than any Cpu or GPU. it's a really uncommon use case though, and the best use for this board is probably as a developer board for ASICs with ARM IP cores.

The benefit of the FPGA, though is that you can use it to add whatever peripherals or even coprocessors you want for your specialized application.

It would be awesome to see a 10gbit fiber optic Phy on it.

<comment><USER5> I think he was asking about the 16-core co-processor, not the FPGA.

<comment><USER3> The reply above explained it better. Intel CPUs are the equivalent to the ARM CPUs in the GPU solution and the big benefit of the FPGA is feeding data into the 64 core chip without being constrained to PCIe. (The FPGA has DSP cores too so it'll be able to feed processed data from sensors faster than an equiv Intel would).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Urg. Off-topic:

This blog uses Javascript to "inject" text into what you copy ("Read more: [http://..."](http://...")) (search Google for how this is done.)

This is such an extremely annoying and ultimately pointless practice.

EDIT: apparently many sites use an external service for this, and you can easily block them from /etc/hosts [http://daringfireball.net/2010/05/tynt_copy_paste_jerks](http://daringfireball.net/2010/05/tynt_copy_paste_jerks)

<comment><USER7> automatically blocked by ghostery

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ghostery/mlomiejdf...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ghostery/mlomiejdfkolichcflejclcbmpeaniij?hl=en)

<comment><USER8> Ghostery has been really useful imho... the only thing I don't like is the default alert position and timout.. but those are adjustable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Slightly off topic, but when I saw the power distribution bus with nine different outputs for this tiny little thing, I contemplated that we've come a long way from when I was a kid and everything ran off a single 5 volt ttl bus. It seems the more people say analog is dead, and thats all I've heard my entire life, the more you actually need analog EEs.

<comment><USER3> High speed digital (hundreds of MHz+ signals) is a lot closer to analog/RF electronics than to the TTL digital you're used to.

<comment><USER10> Could you elaborate on that? High-speed hardware interests the hell out of me, but I don't have any hands-on experience there. Any books or exercises you could recommend?

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately I learned EE as an apprentice with no books but I've heard _High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic_ [1] is good.

Understanding why high speed is more like RF and analog electronics has a lot to do with impedance, which is the "resistance" of a material to a change in current at a specific frequency. Ohm's law is impedance at 0hz (DC current) but it gets a lot more complicated when you have a 133 Mhz bus because now the signal is changing fast enough that a lot of interesting effects start to pop up. For example, the capacitance of the PCB has a significant effect on rise times, your trace lengths have to be within 1/20th of the wavelength of the signal of each other or the bits might arrive at different times, you have to start worrying about other Mhz+ noise from the power supply based solely on the location of traces (hence you have to place filter/bypass caps more carefully), you have to worry about mismatched impedances (the "resistance" @ 133 mhz is different between the trace and a pin or something) or else you'll have a lot of energy "reflected" back at the signal source, adding interference patterns, etc. You never really see any of this in hobbyist electronics unless you have a really long cable for Khz signals or are trying to use something like SPI at 100Mhz. Once you start dealing with high end ARM chips, DSPs, DDR2-3, PCI[e], gigabit ethernet, HDMI, these traces become very prevalent.

However the beauty of digital is that you don't really have to understand all of the analog that goes behind it. There are a lot of simple engineering rules that make it very difficult to mess up a high speed digital design (at least in my experience). If you have a tool like Altium, managing all the impedances, trace widths and lengths, differential pairs becomes a cake walk. If you know what an error looks like in an oscilloscope (whether its a rise time problem, reflection problem, etc) then you'll find it easy to work in the field. Then there's actual RF engineering, which is a whole other story (digital signals are rarely more than the mW range, RF engineering also goes beyond that into W-KW-MW range).

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/High-Speed-Digital-Design- Handbook/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/High-Speed-Digital-Design- Handbook/dp/0133957241)

<comment><USER5> It seems like apprenticeship is really the only way to learn this. They don't even teach this stuff in undergrad EE programs.

<comment><USER3> I find that hard to believe because I can't imagine teaching EE beyond the first year without running face first into impedance. I mean, any time you touch on RF (which is the really interesting part of analog anyway) you have to somehow talk about the difference between DC and AC, unless you talk about it in an exclusively academic way as if it's some EE relic that you'll never use. It might come down to the fact that everyone is taught Ohm's Law first, which for me seems a terrible way to teach EE because it forces an immutable, instantaneous relationship for your circuit (aka spooky action at a distance) whereas impedance has a meaning grounded in how the electrons interact with matter. I threw away everything I learned in EE/ohm's law when my mentor taught me impedance because the mathematics, units, and physical intuition finally fell into place.

The benefit of an apprenticeship is that you are usually taught in a project setting with tools that have this knowledge largely built in. All you have to know is the theoretical implications of each of your use cases (and there aren't many in say, consumer smartphone design, except for the antenna) and what the jargon is for your software. Altium has "matched lengths," "interactive differential pair routing," "impedance matching," etc. which you can use with specific engineering calculators ( [http://www.mantaro.com/resources/impedance_calculator.htm](http://www.mantaro.com/resources/impedance_calculator.htm) is my favorite) and the software will do the rest. Literally, point, click, and drag.

<comment><USER5> I should probably clarify. What I meant to say is that they don't really teach high-frequency analog design in school. We covered the theoretical aspects, like impedance matching and reflection, but there's a long way between knowing those things and being able to reason with them when designing a chip.

<comment><USER3> Well if you understood the fundamentals it's actually not that far to being able to design a board. Designing a chip is a whole other matter but can also be quite easy if you are comfortable with FPGAs and using IP cores. I'd say there's about a 0% chance of you having your own fab so the ASIC firm you hire will usually help you synthesize the high level language design to silicon (for a price).

Once you're comfortable with your routing tool, check out the following links. This is the material I use as a refresher when jumping back into high speed digital design:

[http://www.ti.com/lit/an/scaa082/scaa082.pdf](http://www.ti.com/lit/an/scaa082/scaa082.pdf) <\-- Check out page 7, has a great diagram for what happens with reflections

[http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/app_note/AN2536.pdf](http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/app_note/AN2536.pdf)

[http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/stx2/stx2_sii52012.pdf](http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/stx2/stx2_sii52012.pdf)

<comment><USER5> I should mention that I'm a computer engineering major and not a EE major, so I haven't taken some of the more advanced physics classes like solid state physics or electromagnetics. Are there any resources you would recommend for getting more of the theoretical background on those topics?

<comment><USER3> I've tried to learn the physics behind EE but my brain has been shot too many times by primary through secondary education. As a CS major you can dive in depth into the PCI/DDR standards and they will teach you alot about the signals. Combine it with a application note on DDR routing and you'll get the big picture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very interesting. This is even less expensive than the Zedboard and it has the multi-core unit as well. I think the Zynq is pretty awesome but man, I don't think Xilinx could have made using it any more complicated if they tried!

</comment><comment><USER12> Would this be a good fit for something like video processing? Could you use the GPIO pins to actually have a video input, and then send it out via HDMI?

<comment><USER5> Should be possible. Just attach some RCA jacks to the GPIO pins and use the FPGA to do some pre-processing before sending it to the CPU. Not sure what the performance would be like, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think if they had opensourced this from the beginning their kickstarter campaign would have been even more of a success

<comment><USER14> I don't think that would have had much of an effect on their fundraising. The boards design was not close to completion at the time, and the funds were actually used to build the prototypes that enabled them to get this far. They've been really transparent and open, but I would agree that would have perhaps saved themselves some work by letting the community find and troubleshoot bugs earlier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The parallella + john the ripper google SoC project sounds neat:

[http://www.parallella.org/2013/06/12/google-summer-of- code-p...](http://www.parallella.org/2013/06/12/google-summer-of-code- projects-with-openwall/)

I have an old 65k+ passwd file that I have always wanted to get to 100% cracked paaswords (purely for sentimental reasons.) Unfortunately I bet that implementing DES is not a huge priority.

<comment><USER16> AFAIK, Radeons should be much better for password cracking than Parallella.

<comment><USER15> Including power considerations? This is an ancient 10+ year old passwd file that I spent a lot of time working on cracking for grad school. I got ~2/3 of the accounts. I figure that number includes most of the human generated passwords and a couple versions of the "randomly generated passwords." I have always been curious what the story was behind the remaining third. But I'm not curious enough to devote many resources to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> They haven't actually published the design/source files for the coprocessor itself, have they?

<comment><USER18> I don't think they will. I'm not sure if the VHDL would contain any proprietary IP from them or others, but I spoke with their CEO at OHS last year, and he indicated that open-sourcing the processor its self was out of their reach. I didn't push further, but I could imagine there were IP issues involved in doing so.

Most certainly, the actual chip design will include a lot of 3rd party IP - I'm not sure they would want to create new transistor designs, etc. when those can easily be licensed from the fab company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't understand electronics component pricing. The entry level board cost $99, but the cheapest Zynq-7 costs over $100 (Octopart)? Or maybe it's just Xilinx. How does Adapteva manage these prices?

</comment><comment><USER20> If they have not done so already, low latency traders should be all over this thing. Much easier than trying to do it with just FPGA's.</comment>


Why I'm Buying A Nokia Lumia 920 Instead of the iPhone 5 - jor-el http://pocketnow.com/2012/09/17/lumia-920-vs-iphone-5/

<comment><AUTHOR> Garbage. Funny that a website originally 100% Windows Mobile would pick a Windows phone. The article is primarily a bunch of shallow, personal opinions. The case is sexy and Windows Phone UI is "better" than iOS.

Shallow as they come. Don't bother reading.</comment>


Visa, MasterCard Looking Into Online Targeted Advertising Using Credit-Card Data - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204002304576627030651339352-lMyQjAxMTAxMDIwNDEyNDQyWj.html <comment><USER2> Here's something immediately useful for those who can't be arsed reading the whole article:

> _People can remove their information from MasterCard's analysis by providing > their card number on the "Data Analytics Opt-Out" page at > www.mastercard.us/privacy._

There are three different opt-outs available (roughly "stop tracking my browser", "stop tracking my email", and "stop tracking my card"), and apart from a CAPTCHA, it's really very frictionless to opt-out.

Now time to read into how exactly they define "opting out" and what that entails to me and my data.

EDIT: apparently, they're serving those opt-out forms via Akamai, so I get a lovely "SSL Error" page in Chrome when I hard type the "https". Cute.

<comment><USER3> I can't seem to be able to click the "opt out" button here: <http://www.mastercard.us/privacy/web-analytics-opt-out.html>

And the fact that the data analytics page doesn't default to HTTPS is a slap in the face.

I wonder what they'd do if someone wrote a script to opt out every possible MasterCard number.

<comment><USER2> > _I wonder what they'd do if someone wrote a script to opt out every possible > MasterCard number._

I suppose that's what that pitiful CAPTCHA is in place against!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Every trend in history has that seminal event that defined the future to come... If our spending habits are opened to advertising interests, I would consider that such an event and the beginning of a nasty slippery slope with unexpected consequences down the road for all of us.

This scares me.

<comment><USER5> _If our spending habits are opened to advertising interests_

It already is, all over the place. Login to Amazon and take a look at the suggested products. It's just that it's typically done on a store by store basis, and doesn't encompass every single purchase you make.

<comment><USER6> Correct me if I'm wrong though but today only the stores see the products we buy, where as the credit card companies see only what we spend at each store. The combination is much more scary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > for instance, a weight-loss ad to a person who just swiped their card at a > fast-food chain

This isn't always accurate. I know people with anorexia who buy diet products at the UK store "Boots", and who use their loyalty cards when they do so. Boots then sends them information about weight-loss plans; slimming medication; and so on. One can imagine similar happening with alcoholics.

And I'd be interested to see how legal this is in Europe. It seems to be a clear breach of data protection laws.

<comment><USER8> > It seems to be a clear breach of data protection laws.

If the customer consents to the collection and use of the data it is within the current European law. All they would need to do is get consent when signing up for, or renewing a card.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When banks were first founded, there was a big hoo-ha over how much of an insight they had into people's private lives. After the hoo-ha, lots of strict regulations were put in place governing what could be done with the data.

Looks like we're back there again.

<comment><USER10> Got any specifics on that? I'm curious.

Banks were first founded in the 17th/18th century, FWIW.

<comment><USER9> I've tried, but I can't find the reference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice, now I learnt to no longer buy 'private' stuff with the cards. I'll warn other people with this article.

They FUD'd themselves unnecessarily.

<comment><USER2> FWIW it's been a rule of thumb since, well, always not to buy private stuff with your credit card. Issuer banks and sometimes the CC networks themselves are constantly profiling you in order to better assess the risk you pose (and in turn how much credit you ought to have).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The more organisations turn to advertising to monetize their products and services, the more valuable products and services _without_ advertising will become.

</comment><comment><USER13> They're also going to be selling off real-time feeds of per-company sales data to investors:

MasterCard has launched a new product for investors leveraging its huge global panel of transaction data from over 1.7B cards. This panel is global, more representative, more timely (weekly data to get ahead of monthly comps) and more customizable than any other transactional database available to the buy- side.

There is a broad range of topics on which we can provide investors with timely insights with actual sales transactions. Here are just a few samples of the topics we have done work.

• Detailed Macro reads across 14 sectors in the US and 4 in the UK

          •         Department Stores – Total sales, transactions and Avg Basket size across segments

          •         Office Supply Stores – Total sales, transactions and Avg Basket size for ODP, OMX and SPLS

          •         Home Improvement – Total sales, transactions and Avg Basket size for HD, LOW, LL and Ace

          •         Consumer Electronics – Total Sales, Transactions segmented by price point (e.g. to get a read on flat-panel/laptop sales)

          •         Other Retailers across a broad range of segments – Total Sales and Transactions

          •         Grocery stores – Total sales, transactions and Avg Basket size

          •         E-Commerce—Segmenting direct v. store sales trends, analysis of e-commerce companies like AMZN, NILE and many others

          •         Hotels – direct vs. OTA bookings/international trends, highly correlative chain hotels RevPar, Vegas-specific hotels

          •         Airlines – forward looking bookings as an indicator of RASM

          •         Cable/Satellite – ARPU, Churn and Total sales

</comment><comment><USER14> Credit card companies selling their data to BlueKai/Exelate - _shudder_.

</comment><comment><USER5> Isn't Google (and MasterCard) already doing this with Google Wallet?

<http://google.com/wallet/>

</comment><comment><USER15> Showing "a weight-loss ad to a person who just swiped their card at a fast- food chain" seems like an odd example. I guess it might work, but it strikes me as counterintuitive.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have no problem with this. I'm all for advertisements being either more entertaining and funny, or more for things that I actually want. It's better than being blasted with stuff that I have no need for, even if they put in pictures of half naked women in it.

</comment><comment><USER17> problem solved: "disallow third party cookies"

(very easy in firefox, it's a checkbox)

Note to developers - never rely on 3rd party cookies, just like never rely on a referer.

</comment><comment><USER18> Hmm, time to move to cash or bitcoin?</comment>


Lawrence Lessig now doing an AMA at Reddit - <AUTHOR>

Link: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1hibzy/i_am_lawrence_lessig_academic_activist_now/ <comment><USER2> Clickable: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1hibzy/i_am_lawrence_l...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1hibzy/i_am_lawrence_lessig_academic_activist_now/)

This looks really interesting, thanks!</comment>


The joy of text – the fall and rise of interactive fiction - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/22/interactive-fiction-awards-games <comment><USER2> Andrew Plotkin has released a few IF games for iPhone [http://zarfhome.com/](http://zarfhome.com/) He has a new one coming out soon, _Hadean Lands_. [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands- inter...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zarf/hadean-lands-interactive- fiction-for-the-iphone/posts) He wrote his own interface for playing IF games on phones. It's called IosFismo and it's open-source, if you want to make your own text-based game for iOS. [https://github.com/erkyrath/iosfizmo/](https://github.com/erkyrath/iosfizmo/)

Edit: Some of those games are also playable online. The browser-based IF interpreter is called Parchment, and it's open-source too. [https://code.google.com/p/parchment/](https://code.google.com/p/parchment/)

<comment><USER3> Back in 2000, I was working at a startup, and one of our rabbit trails was an IF interpreter for z-machine games on mobile phones. At that time, you could count on about 4 to 6 lines of text to be visible on a phone at any one time, and text input was horrendously tedious. Our founder approached Andrew Plotkin about licensing his games, and he was reportedly "kind of a dick" about it. Considering the source, that might have been projection.

I shudder to think of what might have happened if that company actually turned a profit from something, and this thing in particular.

<comment><USER4> Hey. This is me. I hope I was not that much of a dick, but at that point I wasn't interested in making money off old IF. I don't remember the specific incident, though.

(I'm still not very interested in making money off _old_ IF, although I've tried a bit of that. The Hadean Lands plan is to charge money for a _new_ game which has never been released before.)

Other notes: we also have a Boston IF meetup group ([http://pr- if.org/](http://pr-if.org/)).

The term "interactive fiction" dates from the early 80s, actually. Infocom used it in their ads with the general theme of "We're more serious and important than mere videogames." The term has been tussled back and forth over the years; these days it's more of an umbrella term than a niche.

<comment><USER3> I think you probably weren't a dick. You just said no to someone who was very accustomed to getting what he wanted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> IFComp organizer here. Pleased to see some interest in IF and the competition on HN!

I'll take this opportunity to say that the comp's judging period lasts through November 15, and is open to the public; anyone who rates at least five games via the website (at [http://ifcomp.org](http://ifcomp.org)) will have their votes counted.

This is the IFComp's 20th year, and we have 42 new text games for you to play. All of y'all are welcome to come join us!

<comment><USER6> ...and most of the games in the competition are playable online in browser, see:

[http://ifcomp.org/ballot#browse](http://ifcomp.org/ballot#browse)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> By the way, it's highly noteworthy, for hackers/devs especially, that the newest Inform programming language (Inform 7, a.k.a. Natural Inform), for writing Interactive Fiction, is based on _natural language_ \-- i.e. "code that reads like English." Thus, the mandatory Hello World looks like below (copied from Wikipedia):

        "Hello World" by "I.F. Author"

        The world is a room.

        When play begins, say "Hello, world."

Really, I'm not joking! For more info, see:

[http://inform7.com/](http://inform7.com/)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inform#Example_game_2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inform#Example_game_2)

What's even more surprising (at least to me), is that it actually seems to work, and quite nice! And the feeling of writing in it is really awesome and like nothing else. That said, it's not completely without quirks, obviously (what hit me most, personally, were problems with backwards compatibility between far away versions).

<comment><USER7> I've been playing around with this in recent months and while it does work, it's a pretty deep language with lots of quirks (kind of like English, actually...)

I recommend anyone who is interested in language design having a look at it, as it is a unique and interesting variation on domain-specific languages that sacrifices scalability and performance in favour of a certain kind of accessibility and power.

I've been using Aaron Reed's "Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform7" as a guide, which is as much about the nature of IF storytelling as the language (which is well-documented in the standard IDE): [http://www.amazon.com/Creating-Interactive-Fiction- Inform-7/...](http://www.amazon.com/Creating-Interactive-Fiction- Inform-7/dp/1435455061/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414055607&sr=8-1&keywords=aaron+reed+inform)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone who is still interested in Interactive Fiction in the Bay Area, there is a once-a-month meetup for enthusiasts: [http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area- interactive-fiction/events...](http://www.meetup.com/sf-bay-area-interactive- fiction/events/206248972/)

It's free, there's often pizza, and the group usually plays a few games together on the projector, or hear artists discuss their work in-person. Come down and play some games!

<comment><USER9> ooh, playing games together on a projector is a lovely idea for a meetup! i have fond memories of doing that in college, with friends crowded around a monitor and playing through some of the ifcomp games. interactive fiction lends itself nicely to that sort of group effort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> FYI the "Uncle Who Works For Nintendo" game that made the front page on HN last week was created with Twine.

<comment><USER11> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8471580](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8471580)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Around 2009 somebody came up with the idea of marrying Inform7 games with multiplayer, he called it Guncho. I am not entirely sure how this differs from regular MUD playing but I can imagine it's very nice if you want to explore the same atmospheric 'realm' together. A realm that's easily build with the excellent Inform7 natural language tools and world simulation. The only obstacle is finding players to play the game. The platform is C# and open source, I like the idea so much I'm installing it now on my own machine. [https://www.guncho.com/](https://www.guncho.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I played a text-based MUD called Federation II for about a year before I moved over to a more popular title named Gemstone III, which was a sort of text- based precursor to World of Warcraft, where you could run around and kill rats and cast spells and such. I was obsessed with GS3 for a few years until my early teens. It was no less addictive than Warcraft later became (at massive scale), and back in the days when AOL was $3 per hour for dial-up, this was not an inexpensive activity. Fortunately my parents wanted to support my interests and for several years I received "AOL coupons" for all the usual holidays, my birthday, and chores around the house. I'm glad they found a way to make it work, because those experiences are what inspired me to learn how to code - I wanted to make a virtual world just like the ones I fell in love with playing. Most people I've talked to who never played them definitely underestimate how immerse a text environment can be.

Here's a video that shows the medium for those are who may not have seen it before: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJrC1xD4DM8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJrC1xD4DM8)

<comment> vertex-four I'll note that Gemstone IV (same game world, same general idea) still exists, and is one of only a handful of subscription MUDs that still exists. An account is $15 a month.

<comment><USER14> And Federation still exists, with the universe rebooted a third time: [http://ibgames.net](http://ibgames.net)

Gemstone : World of Warcraft :: Federation : Eve Online

Their attempt to make the planet authoring tools more accessible by adding a GUI wasn't the best idea, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For those without an interactive fiction client you can read attack of the yetti robot zombies[1] via http. This text stuff is really versatile; no wonder it rose again.

[1] [http://www.allthingsjacq.com/intfic_clubfloyd_20080703.html](http://www.allthingsjacq.com/intfic_clubfloyd_20080703.html)

<comment><USER6> For most of the games entering the competition, it's actually very easy to play them online (without any need for a special client), see:

[http://ifcomp.org/ballot#browse](http://ifcomp.org/ballot#browse)

<comment><USER15> Thank you, I'm going to apply at [http://www.alethicorp.com/](http://www.alethicorp.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You might also take a look at inkle's 80 Days ([http://www.inklestudios.com/80days/](http://www.inklestudios.com/80days/)) to see how I.F. has evolved on mobile devices. Warning: There are a few illustrations, but not too many.

</comment><comment><USER17> It seems a lot of the IF games are based around old engines, or at least old engine concepts. Don't get me wrong, I loved the old games back in the day, the sense of exploring a large and unknown world was awesome.

I wonder what would be possible these days with a cutting-edge natural language processing, and a game engine designed to run dozens of bots. Each bot would have its own attitude, goals, behaviors, quirks, etc.

Aside from the occasional IF game, the height of NPC interaction these days seems to be just picking a sentence off of a menu. Maybe you can blame the rise of the consoles for that, but even so I think we could do better.

<comment><USER14> Arguably, IF has _always_ been on the cutting edge of natural language processing. I'd encourage you to take a look at what's possible with inform7.com.

And as far as NPCs, versu.com is pushing the edge of AI for stories (sadly not available for widespread use, though).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's really a shame for mobile gaming that this does push hard in this direction. [0] is one of the few developers who make great interactive fiction for Android (and maybe iOS). Their "Sourcery" and "Sourcery 2" games are really really nice (although terribly short).

What I'm missing is also a "Professor Layton"-like game.

[0] [http://www.inklestudios.com/blog/](http://www.inklestudios.com/blog/)

<comment><USER5> The "Puzzle Agent" games by Telltale Games are serviceable Layton-alikes, and available on various PC and mobile platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Text adventures were magical to me in the early 80s when I started playing them. My child mind had no idea how a computer program could do what it was doing. I was talking to a machine, and it was talking back to me and taking me on an adventure.

Then graphics came along and made them pretty much obsolete.

Then they got renamed to "Interactive Fiction", and, frankly, became a really weird niche.

</comment><comment><USER20> Has anyone tried to marry IF with voice recognition (+synthesis or recorded content)?

I imagine it could be a wonderful experience, sitting with a headset, eyes closed, and exploring this kind of world. Not unlike "pen&paper" role playing games - even if you have to restrict your speaking to a limited vocabulary.

Does it exist? Any experiences?

<comment><USER21> I tried it with Frotz when Apple added speech recognition to iOS. It was really fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I just want to take a moment to re-affirm that A Mind Forever Voyaging is a great piece of Sci-Fi.

<comment><USER23> It is, and the fact that it's told in a medium like interactive fiction adds much to its greatness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Reminds me of the new John Darnielle book [0]. Definitely makes me want to try out some IF.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0374292086?pc_redir=1413707125](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0374292086?pc_redir=1413707125)

</comment><comment><USER25> I wrote my first IF this year using [http://textadventures.co.uk/](http://textadventures.co.uk/) although after a while I had to download the desktop client to make things work.

</comment><comment><USER26> Lately, I'm using TextFiction[0] to play Zork on Android. It's a nice app.

[0][http://www.onyxbits.de/textfiction](http://www.onyxbits.de/textfiction)

</comment><comment><USER27> Fallout series?</comment>


Humanity's end: the time we waste on virtual lives - <AUTHOR> https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2016/8/2/humanitys-end-the-time-we-waste-on-virtual-lives <comment><AUTHOR> Two years ago I became curious as to how much time is spent play video games, a few Google queries later I was confident I had a decent estimate. I was shocked at the figure and wanted to see what those man hours could translate to. Recently I revisited this post and have decided to share it here.</comment>


Whole human brain mapped in 3D - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/whole-human-brain-mapped-in-3d-1.13245

<comment><USER2> Shameless plug: 3Scan [1], a company spun off from a university in Arizona (if I'm not mistaken) and partially funded by Peter Thiel's Breakout Labs grant is making a robot that is capable of doing this entire procedure with absolutely minimal human involvement.

They can already do a full 3d map of blood vessels and neurons (with stains) in a mouse brain within a few days and store it on a TB hard drive (I'm told an equivalent for the human brain would be a petabyte but their slices might be thinner). This is a procedure that would take months if not years to do by hand (they do a full analysis on all of the slices to reproduce a 3d model afterwards).

This paper was done mostly by hand but soon we'll be able to do it quickly and automatically.

[1] [http://www.3scan.com/](http://www.3scan.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ten TRILLION bytes...

It's okay, Nature, the word terabyte doesn't scare people and is indeed now part of common parlance...

<comment><USER4> Roughly 9.09495TB for anybody interested

<comment><USER5> Now you've done it, this thread is going to collapse into a binary-vs-metric data measurement flamewar.

<comment><USER6> Metric won that war ;-)

[http://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte](http://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte)

<comment><USER7> Wikipedia is not a source~

<comment><USER8> For proof that Wikipedia is more accurate than other encyclopedias, check out [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia)

(Though seriously, Wikipedia is about as accurate as the Encyclopedia Brittanica, at least for science articles: [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html))

<comment><USER7> That applies well to en.wikipedia.org, not as much to simple.wikipedia.org. See my reply to andyhmltn about how the properly researched page disagrees with the grandparent's link.

Don't trust a wikipedia page that has zero citations.

<comment><USER8> These are good points and it would be quite helpful if you put them in the comment next time. "The simple english wikipedia page has these specific flaws" is substantially more accurate and informative than "Wikipedia is not a source."

<comment><USER7> Well, if you want to know, my original objection was toward using Wikipedia as the arbiter of correct stance on a political issue. Wikipedia itself tries to keep politics out, and for good reason with the way online communities can groupthink. Clearly I should have expanded on that in the first comment.

I was not aware at that time that Wikipedia actually _contradicted itself_ , but that was a very easy way to demonstrate my point in a followup post. But the particular flaws in that article were never my main point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here is part of the software that was used to create this:

[https://github.com/BIC-MNI](https://github.com/BIC-MNI)

as confirmed here:

[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2013/06/19/340.6139....](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2013/06/19/340.6139.1472.DC1/Amunts.SM.pdf)

Hell yeah, free science requires free software!

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd love for a neuroscientist to weigh in on this - what is the possibility that something like this could be used to generate an artificial neural network which imitates, even crudely, the functions of the human brain?

<comment><USER11> >what is the possibility that something like this could be used to generate an artificial neural network which imitates, even crudely, the functions of the human brain?

If possible, this would open a huge ethical can of worms: how can we tell such a simulation is not conscious? Would deleting its runtime data after however many simulation cycles be tantamount to murder?

Edit: I am not saying that the above concerns should stop us from working towards developing human brain simulations since the potential benefits of those are just too great. Rather, it is something we have to have in mind as they get more complex and closer to the real thing.

<comment><USER10> I'm not necessarily saying we _should_ create a simulation of the human brain - just asking whether it would be possible. There are other much more concrete concerns with creating strong AI too - avoiding accidentally creating a paperclip maximiser comes to mind: [http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The BigBrain dataset is a subject of the NSA's research into graph analysis [1]. Some sample numbers:

      - 100 billion vertices, 100 trillion edges
      - 2.08 mNA · bytes^2 (molar bytes) adjacency matrix
      - 2.84 PB adjacency list
      - 2.84 PB edge list

[1]: [http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/SDI/2013/slides/big_graph_nsa_rd_2013...](http://www.pdl.cmu.edu/SDI/2013/slides/big_graph_nsa_rd_2013_56002v1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems like each brain is unique and it is meaningful to speak only about "connections" between regions and areas, given that even structure of nerves are different from person to person.

And, of course, it isn't even near to what we could call a "working model". Just a mapping of every neuron of some particular brain specimen. No one understands how it works yet. There are detailed description in textbooks of how each kind of cells in the brain works, but still can't see the mind among neurons.))

</comment><comment><USER14> I am wondering how can you work with a 3D model with a file size of 1 TB ? Does it require custom software to deal with such a large data ?

EDIT: Perhaps its similar to google maps, where 3D "tiles" are loaded as required as you zoom in or out.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's kind of like Iron Man 3</comment>


Mono not Chasing Tail Lights - <AUTHOR> http://jeffreystedfast.blogspot.com/2009/09/mono-not-chasing-tail-lights.html

<comment><USER2> I'm not convinced interoperability isn't key. If all they wanted was a Java clone that handled generics and boxing better, compatible with nothing but themselves, they could have had that years before C#.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't Vala handle that? Not to mention it runs faster and with a lower memory footprint.

<comment><USER4> Don't get me wrong, i love mono and vala and use them both regularly. But vala doesn't have stack protection, etc which is quite useful for certain situations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He assumes a MS patent claim won't hurt a mono-using company. He asserts they'll just remove the code and happy days again.

But that's not the worry here: MS could sell a mono-related patent to someone who's willing to attempt to bankrupt a mono-using company.

And so, Mono puts a company at more risk of dying in the court-room, gives MS more "proof" Linux is not safe, and gives MS more leverage in negotiations via patent-threats.

<comment><USER6> You think Microsoft is going to sell the patents to it's core development technology to someone else so that they can bankrupt a company using Mono? That's a pretty far fetched scenario.

Beyond that, as the article points out, you can use Mono and not use Microsoft's patented technology. It just requires a little more work (again, C# is an International Standard which is not covered by any patent)

<comment><USER7> [http://press.redhat.com/2009/09/09/microsoft-and-patent- trol...](http://press.redhat.com/2009/09/09/microsoft-and-patent-trolls/)

 _The Open Invention Network (OIN) learned recently that Microsoft was planning to auction off some of its software patents, which we understand it marketed to trolls and some other non-practicing entities. It also used marketing materials that highlighted offensive uses of the patents against open source software, including a number of the most popular open source packages._

This isn't some fanboy's blog, this is a Red Hat press release.

<comment><USER6> I can't seem to find any basis for this other than "entity x recently learned from anonymous entity Y that Microsoft might do something bad"

That said, the point here is that the patents in question in regards to Mono are the cornerstones of Microsoft's own development efforts. So they aren't going to sell off their ADO.NET related patents because it's the core of data access in their entire development environment.

For the scenario in which a patent affecting Mono was sold to happen Microsoft would have to auction off pieces of the .NET Framework itself and that's just not going to happen.

<comment><USER8> Besides, doing so would a PR debacle of epic proportions. Microsoft wants developers to use their technologies (duh). Does anyone seriously believe that they are going to stab those developers in the back after publicly promising to do nothing of the sort?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anything that has the potential to make desktop software better on Linux is good with me. In case anyone hasn't noticed it's in an abysmal state. There are many examples of Linux being a decade or more behind comparable commercial solutions on other platforms. If Mono happens to interest some Windows developers or promote interoperability it would improve the situation greatly in my opinion. As far as patent concerns go with Microsoft -- I say force their hand. Let them litigate if they want to. I think the US DOJ and EU would take a special interest in the case. OSS can't cower in the shadows afraid of big bad Microsoft forever.

<comment><USER6> The one point I'd like to make is that Microsoft has never threatened to sue anyone over Mono. They made an official agreement with Novell to appease Novell's corporate customers but that doesn't mean they'll sue anyone else. In fact, just the opposite. Scott Guthrie (VP of Development at Microsoft) regularly gives time on his popular blog to Mono projects (see one example: [http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/02/11/moonlight-...](http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/02/11/moonlight-1-0-release.aspx))

The whole "Microsoft Patent" issue is based on the Free Software Foundation stating a concern that Microsoft could someday sue. I don't dispute that concern but understand Mono is very much in Microsoft's best interest because it competes with Apache on Linux.

Finally, as the article points out, even if Microsoft asserts it's patents they'll only be taking away certain support functions like ADO.NET. The heart of Mono is the C# compiler which is an ECMA and ISO standard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Considering tools like MoMA are exclusive to Mono and don't have an equivalent in the .Net world (<http://www.mono-project.com/MoMA>), I'd state that in some cases Mono is a little ahead of its Windows counterpart.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm curious how "Java is actually already way behind Mono". What can the one do that the other struggles with?

<comment><USER12> To clarify for other readers: I believe he means the JVM, not the Java language.

I haven't been keeping up with Mono's development, but if they have C# 3.0, it blows away Java right there. C# 3.0 is a functional programming gateway drug, but encourages high readability even for non-functional developers. However, that's not a fair comparison, as there are other great JVM languages such as Scala and Clojure.

As for Mono or the CLR vs the JVM, there has been a lot about this written on the net. You can find discussions about garbage collection, module systems, JIT performance, security, library support, etc.

Here's one example: MSIL is more rich than Java Byte Code. This makes writing compilers easier and can lead to better performance via unsigned types, objects on the stack, unsafe pointer use, etc. See: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/95163/differences- between...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/95163/differences-between-msil- and-java-bytecode)

I'm not an expert on the CLR by any means, but I do quite a bit of C# development on Windows. I greatly prefer C# to Java, but couldn't really care less about CLR/Mono vs JVM. I'm really more interested in LLVM as a compile target for interop and optimization of open source languages.

<comment><USER11> The "Debian shootout" suggests the JVM is consistently faster, but more of a memory hog.

[http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?test=al...](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=csharp&lang2=java&box=1)

<comment><USER13> quad core, or not quad core - that is the question:

[http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all...](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=csharp&lang2=java&box=1)

<comment><USER11> The answer to the question seems to be "doesn't matter much", and the same for 64-bit. Java is always faster, nearly always fatter.

<comment><USER13> More of the Java programs have been re-written for quad core, which is partly why those programs faster and fatter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> nick-dap A plug for Software Engineering Radio [http://se- radio.net/podcast/2009-07/second-life-and-mono-jim...](http://se- radio.net/podcast/2009-07/second-life-and-mono-jim-purbrick)

I've personally never used Mono, but if people are putting their time and sweat into the project then it obviously has value for them. Nobody is forcing anyone to use it. Free as in beer.

I wrote five paragraphs after this, but then realized that nothing else really matters. So what we are witnessing here is a circle jerk. Moving on.</comment>


Drop the Degree Requirement: Better Ways to Evaluate Developers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.careers.stackoverflow.com/2013/09/09/drop-the-degree-requirement-3-better-ways-to-evaluate-developers/

<comment><USER2> The only reason for a degree requirement is that it simplifies the employment process. Everything after that is downhill. Has anyone noticed that most stellar entrepreneurs are dropouts of one kind or another -- a list including Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Richard Branson?</comment>


You might as well be a great copy editor - <AUTHOR> https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1471 <comment><USER2> NYT's "Copy Edit This" quizzes are quite good.

[https://www.nytimes.com/search?query=%22copy%2Bedit%2Bthis%2...](https://www.nytimes.com/search?query=%22copy%2Bedit%2Bthis%22)

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/11/insider/copy-...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/11/insider/copy- edit-this-quiz.html?searchResultPosition=18)

<comment><USER3> Those are fun. Just got through the first one with 17 total tries (most of which were on the 8th question).

Some of them are dubious, though, IMO. For example:

> The total amount available to |disperse| will be $150 million annually.

I guess in a journalism context more people are talking about disbursing than dispersing, but how am I supposed to know that? For all I know this sentence comes from an article about wanting to "scatter" that money.

EDIT: another example from the second quiz:

> Republicans will not like many of these proposals, but they have been > |fulsome| in their praise of Mr. Trump since his election. Speaker Paul D. > Ryan, for instance, has repeatedly said that he expects Mr. Trump to work > with Republicans on their agenda of rolling back the Affordable Care Act and > making large-scale changes to the tax code and entitlements.

The explanation for why "fulsome" is wrong here was that "this word means not just "full" or "abundant" but "offensively excessive."". How am I supposed to know "offensively excessive" wasn't the intended meaning here? I ended up picking it simply because it came across as a bit too pretentious, but not before I picked "instance" for the same reason ("for instance" instead of "for example" bugs me a bit).

<comment><USER4> > How am I supposed to know "offensively excessive" wasn't the intended > meaning here?

I'm guessing if it were the intended meaning, "but" would be incorrect in "Republicans will not like many of these proposals, but they have been fulsome in their praise of Mr. Trump since his election"

<comment><USER3> I mean, if it's "offensively excessive" from the writer's point of view, then I feel like it'd make sense even with the "but"; that's indeed how I took the sentence to mean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Something I've known for a while (but have really come to terms with more recently) is just how important writing skills are even for technical people (even coders). It's hard to get anything done if you can't convince people why they should listen to you.

Especially in this increasingly remote-connected world, writing skills are key.

<comment><USER6> >how important writing skills are even for technical people (even coders).

Especially coders. Writing clear programs is a lot like clear writing. A function is like a paragraph of a text. It should meaningfully abstract one concept of your higher level logic. It should be introduced by a clean input from the previous "paragraph", and produce an output that is the input for the next "paragraph".

If your higher level function becomes too large, you can create larger structures like sections in writing.

Having this ability to mercilessly copy edit, paring down your functions to their core concept and putting them into meaningful context is really useful if you want others to understand your code.

<comment><USER7> All this that you write about code is correct, but I think you are missing the parent's point. Coders also need to be good at writing _non-code text for humans_. There is documentation to be written, and bug reports, and proposals for new features, etc. I have colleagues who are brilliant developers, and when they propose something I'm sure their idea is technically sound, yet often I don't understand what they are trying to say because their writing is much poorer than their coding.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't say I'm missing the point. I agree that coders need to know how to write text. My point was that for coders writing is not the thing you do on the side, coding itself IS writing.

That's why I said that "even" should be "especially".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would like to add a third recommendation to the list of two, and recommend "Style: Towards Clarity and Grace". (Alternatively, use any similar book by Joseph M. Williams featuring the words Style, Clarity, and Grace in the title).

This book discusses the information architecture of clear and coherent phrases, sentences and paragraphs in the English language, and a few passes through its contents will leave you able to reason about the way you lay out ideas and information in your writing.

<comment><USER9> There is a fantastic section that shows why the passive has its uses, and that "avoid passive voice" can be harmful.

<comment><USER8> Oh, yes. The passive voice is not simply dismissed in this work as a tool to avoid responsibility. Rather, it takes its place as an important tool that can make paragraphs more coherent, by structuring the sentences to elevate the parts that really matter. The subjects of sentences in this paragraph, for instance, are all strongly related to writing concepts. This paragraph itself would be weakened if I were to begin, "Joseph M Williams promotes the passive voice." Our communication would only be hindered if we were to highlight the incidental matter of his authorship.

<comment><USER7> That's not a strong argument. The natural "translation" of your first sentence would be something like: "This work does not simply dismiss the passive voice as a tool to avoid responsibility."

The author's name doesn't come into it, and there is no reason to transform "does not dismiss" into the much stronger "promotes".

<comment><USER8> Well _excuse me_

I am sure the author polished his work over several years. I devoted mere minutes to chatting it up on Hacker News. There's a reason you pay the author for the book and you don't pay me.

Let's see you argue something better instead of just taking potshots at people who bother to try, jerk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Back in high school I was the copy editor for the paper (and the minutiae of AP style are still seared into my brain), and it's definitely been a useful skill. My first job was doing developer marketing, and we had a lot of devs that were happy to contribute to our blog but didn't feel their writing was great - a lot of it was just little grammatical and style stuff, so my being able to clean it up really encouraged them to work with me on creating content.

That said, I think that reading a book on copy edit just to be able to edit your own stuff is a little bit of overkill. You don't need a deep, sophisticated knowledge of grammar - something like Strunk and White's Elements of Style will cover the grammar stuff you need while also helping to offer a little bit better sense of bigger-picture writing style.

<comment><USER11> Strunk and White's Elements of Style is trash; don't buy it, don't read it, don't follow its advice. Read this first:

[http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.html](http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/LandOfTheFree.html)

<comment><USER12> My wife has been reading _Charlotte 's Web_ to our kids. I asked her if she was familiar with the Strunk and White Guide and she thought I was asking if she was familiar with the drunken white guy.

(For the record, she was familiar with neither.)

(And for those who don't know, _Charlotte 's Web_ was written by E. B. White who is the White of Strunk and White.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Pro tip, from an actual pro: you can't copyedit your own copy.

Lots of reasons why, including, your inability to recognize problems you are unaware of; the inexorable fact of reading what you think you wrote, not what is on the page; inability to see logical problems, missing assumptions, etc. Ad infinitum.

There are line-level hacks which can help with some of this, e.g. reading backwards to find typographic and spelling error...

...but there is no general solution.

Suggested fix: find a professional peer and become their formal editing buddy. Define terms and scope, this is not peer review–it is simply copy editing.

<comment><USER14> One copy-editing trick I employ is to use a text-to-speech system to read my work back to me. If I merely read it myself, my brain will autocorrect my mistakes into what I meant to write. When the computer reads my work, it pulls no punches.

<comment><USER15> Interesting. What software do you recommend? Do you know of something that can take a latex or pdf document?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You need to be the reader's advocate, to try to set aside your ego and read your work as if someone else wrote it. This is not substantially different from adjusting your code. One might argue that with code you have also a very demanding reader, the computer, which might fail to run it or wreck something. Still you are writing for a human audience.

<comment><USER17> Computers demand formal precision, which is different from conceptual clarity. Every obfuscator (including optimizers) relies on this fact.

Good code has both formal precision and conceptual clarity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As the joke goes, "an author is someone who wasn't good enough at writing to become an editor."

</comment><comment><USER19> I was lucky enough to have Prof. Regehr in my masters program. If he says these are good books to look into to improve your editing, trust this guy, he is as good as they get. _Now edit this comment for practice!_

</comment><comment><USER20> Knowing how to tighten the screws on a text is essential for a lot of workplace communication, especially if you're trying to get something from your higher-ups. Don't think everyone is going to take their time to become a _great_ copy editor, but it pays to learn the craft at least a little.

</comment><comment><USER21> My team went through a major shift a number of years ago, moving most complex discussions to written documents (with commentary!) wherever possible. The outcomes were great and fwiw we had a minimal remote culture pre-pandemic, people would write things down even if they were sitting next to each other. In particular:

\- It's much easier to track the provenance of complex decisions.

\- Deciding in docs reduces meeting bloat.

\- It's harder to get pissed at someone based upon a document.

\- Anecdotally, points of view seem to be better thought-out.

This article made me think of how we should remember to try as hard as possible to adjust for variation in writing skill. I also wonder whether we're inherently biasing against people who are _slower_ writers.

</comment><comment><USER22> A very useful trick for copyediting and proofreading is to use a text-to- speech tool. The default voice on Mac is quite good. I use it all the time to proofread intros, and explanation sections in my books. For math-heavy or code-blocks, it's not quite as good... but actually works OK for Python. See [1] for how to setup a keyboard shortcut.

[1] [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem8qpMmnaBFYOgV32gdMc/edit)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm speaking from the perspective of non-native academic English speakers. I find that my time and the time of my PhD students is better spent focusing on the high-level problems. Once those are fixed, we rely on professional copy- editing. Done!

</comment><comment><USER24> A favorite of mine is the book _BUGS in Writing_ , by Lyn Dupré (1998, Addison Wesley). It's a teach-by-example book with lots of examples she rates as ugly, bad, good, and even splendid.

</comment><comment><USER25> Just wanted to add a book recommendation for copy editing: "Revising Prose" by Lanham. It was recommended by a respected philosopher when I was in undergrad. Excellent.

</comment><comment><USER26> Modifying other people's code is kind of like a severe type of copyediting.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is copy editing a viable career?

<comment><USER28> You have to be very good, because all the jobs are drying up.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Cryptocurrency Job Board – HiredCrypto - <AUTHOR> http://www.hiredcrypto.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi hackernews, I've created a job boarding for finding the newest jobs in the cryptocurrency industry. If you are A) Looking for a new job or B) A company looking to post jobs(for free) come check us out.</comment>


Fighting With Teenagers: A Copyright Story - <AUTHOR> http://www.jasonrobertbrown.com/weblog/2010/06/fighting_with_teenagers_a_copy.php <comment><USER2> The author's "screwdriver" example fairly clearly shows that he's still a little foggy on the distinction between physical property and "intellectual property". He goes on to cement that notion with examples about a show and a book. All of which argue from a base of scarcity which doesn't exist in the venue he's suddenly found himself. Its easy to see how the girl could continually miss his point.

This is likely his first encounter with a gift economy, its logic and its denizens (who are mostly, but not exclusively) teenagers. It would seem that the qualities he wants to attribute to the "teenage mind" are really traits of the gift economy that sprung up around trading digital sheet music.

Its easy to sympathize with him however. It may turn out that only a handful of generations found themselves in the peculiar circumstances that allowed them to cast elements of culture into items of physical property that could be mass produced but were not easily duplicated. It must be quite disorienting to find oneself at either edge of that transition.

<comment><USER3> As I understood his argument, it had nothing to do with ease of duplication. Instead, it was about ownership. His contention that the creators (who are by implication the owners) of intangible things have rights too is not invalidated by technology.

<comment><USER4> And I agree with his contention. It seems pretty clear cut to me. For the pro- Eleanor folks, I want to break down here what are the elements in my pro-Jason stance, just to be real clear:

1\. just because you _can_ do a thing, doesn't mean you _should_ do a thing [this nulls out the whole "b-b-but technology makes this possible now!" argument; for bonus points think of the implications of your stance regarding the availability of nuclear weapons]

2\. you don't have a right to other people's work, automatically, by default, for free

3\. if they make it available for free and/or say copy all you want -- that's fine, do it

4\. ... but if they do _not_ , you should _honor_ their wishes regarding _their own_ creation

5\. ... if despite that, you do not, then you are _unethical_

<comment><USER5> I tend to think that a lot of the loss of respect that people have to copyright/IP/etc breaks down to:

1\. The abuse of these rights by corporations. [e.g. 'patent-mills' that just crank out patents on any idea that pops into the heads of their engineers, even if it's just falls into the formula: "everyday object + {computers,internet} = brand new idea" or "patented idea 1 + {internet,computers} = patented idea 2" ]

2\. The egregious way with which Congress/Corporations have extended the duration of IP rights to levels of absurdity that boggle the mind. Do people _really_ believe that NBC would have had no reason to create a radio, and then television network if they were not guaranteed to still have copyrights on all of their content in the year 2010? Do you think that the person that wrote the "Happy Birthday" song, wouldn't have written it if they weren't guaranteed to hold a copyright until the year 2030 (not to mention that they took the melody from an earlier song, probably without licensing it... the horror)? From Wikipedia:

      > The Summy Company registered for copyright in 1935, crediting
      > authors Preston Ware Orem and Mrs. R.R. Forman. In 1990, Warner
      > Chappell purchased the company owning the copyright for U.S. $15
      > million, with the value of "Happy Birthday" estimated at U.S. $5
      > million.[5] Based on the 1935 copyright registration, Warner claims
      > that U.S. copyright will not expire until 2030, and that unauthorized
      > public performances of the song are technically illegal unless
      > royalties are paid to it.

This is not an example of creating something of value. They are leeches that are sucking money out of the economy on the back of maybe a weeks worth of work (I hope that you're not going to claim that "Happy Birthday To You" was the result of millions of dollars of investment...) prior to 1935. It's rather an example of someone creating something 'trivial' and expecting to 'hit it big,' never creating something of value again.

<comment><USER6> > 1\. The abuse of these rights by corporations.

> 2\. The egregious way with which Congress/Corporations have extended the > duration of IP rights to levels of absurdity

I agree, but I've never seen anyone take a stand against that abuse. Eg: TPB steals from everyone, including independent artists, Open Source contributors, and people who support copyright reform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You know if we all stopped pirating stuff and obeyed the very letter of copyright law, open source and free entertainment, software, etc would have a huge renaissance.

You know those bands that make their money from touring that are always put forward as the future? Their mp3s compete for mindshare with pirated Lady Gaga stuff.

Maybe if we all obeyed copyright then Elanor would have looked around for some other composer who gives their stuff away for free. Win-win. Composers who want money get money, composers who want fame get it instead.

The biggest competitor to Gimp is pirated Photoshop.

Etc.

<comment><USER8> That's why some entrepreneurs in the "free entertainment and open source business" are just begging for the copyright people to do what they wanted in secret, while trying to convince everyone that a post-copyright world is a good idea.

Some of us are just convinced that it's good money, but some of us can't help but trying to tell people about the truth while being happy that they don't believe it. It's a weird situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a good exchange, and worth reading particularly if you are one of those "extraordinarily hostile young men" who are likely disagree to with him. I left the article feeling that Eleanor (the defiant teenager) was particularly well-spoken, and that Jason Robert Brown would love for me to get off his lawn. I don't know him, but now I'm prejudiced against him and his works. But he does a great job of explaining his thought process, whether one agrees with it or not. And better understanding those with whom one disagrees is a good thing.

I thought the weakest part was his attempt to make it a clear-cut case of right and wrong, and then go on to give some very muddy examples that really haven't been clearly decided: "I then ripped that CD on to my hard drive so I can listen to it on my iPod in my car. Well, that's not FAIR, right? I should have to buy two copies? No. There is in fact a part of the copyright law that allows exactly this; it's called the doctrine of fair use."

Logical, I'd agree, but he might want to discuss this with the RIAA, who argue that it's not fair-use, and merely an example of their forbearance not to sue for such petty infringement: 'there's no legal "right" to copy the copyrighted music on a CD onto a CD-R. However, burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won't usually raise concerns...' ([http://www.riaa.com/physicalpiracy.php?content_selector=pira...](http://www.riaa.com/physicalpiracy.php?content_selector=piracy_online_the_law))

But his moral argument seems almost reasonable: I created this music, so I get to control who uses it. He trades fair-use under copyright for exclusive rights to distribution. Inevitability aside, 'hostile young men' of HN, what's the flaw with this reasoning? Does one need to resort to the fairly weak position that 'sharing' with strangers falls under fair-use, or is there something stronger that can be said?

<comment><USER10> I thought his moral argument was "please pay me for the sheet music so my kids won't starve." Which I agree is ridiculous; he'd just quit writing music and find another job before they died of starvation. I mean, hellooo, soup kitchens are free...

<comment><USER11> I think "please pay me for the sheet music so my kids won't starve" argument is much better than "pay me because it's immoral not to pay me and you'll go to jail"

Begging better reflects position in which technology puts artists today. It is same situation that was throughout all history but last hundred years. You quickly get used to good things so now people think that they are morally entitled to being paid for what they created. As a programmer who had bad experiences with salespeople it's hard for me to say this but creating stuff does not bring money, selling does, and selling became much harder if the only thing you know how to sell is service of providing copy of some (your) work and value of such service to your potential consumer thanks to recent developments dropped to zero.

<comment><USER12> You won't go to jail. Copyright infringement isn't a criminal matter, as a rule.

<comment><USER11> In my country (at least in case of computer software) it may lead to 5 years of jail time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I realise I wasn't meant to, and it doesn't say anything about my position on the issue, but from reading the exchange I formed an immediate liking for the girl.

If every teenage girl was this expressive and self-assertive, I personally would feel better about the world.

 _cough_ I now return you to your "Illegal downloading bad, m'kay?" programming

<comment><USER14> > If every teenage girl was this expressive and self-assertive, I personally > would feel better about the world.

She's not your usual girl, it seems to me - how many collect and use sheet music? Just following her musical/theatrical passion that far is unusual enough, and I was a little impressed that she understood copyright law enough to think she was getting around it by emailing stuff off-site. (She's wrong, of course; contributory infringement could be used to nail her.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> for the tl;dr crowd- The author writes about an incident in which he discovered a teenager was trading his sheet music, without his permission and approaches her about it, said teenager actually makes several very good points, which get ignored by the author on various occasions in their conversation in lieu of a "lecture" on copyright.

Further tl;dr - the comment section by and large are all pats on the back to the writer. Few worthy of reading, but not many.

While I certainly see the perspective of the author here, wanting to preserve the integrity of his work, invariably he faces the same crisis the mainstream music industry faces: refusal to accept the change in mentality about content distribution and consumption, and an ardent unwillingness to entertain the idea that maybe in order to attract new audiences you have to tickle their senses and find out what they want, and how to give it to them. "Build it and they will come", thing.

<comment><USER16> You let the kid off too easily.

He is already selling artists sheet music that they absolutely need for their profession via instant download for the cost of a coffee and the teenager in question still believes it is her right to misappropriate a copy instead because she doesn't want to pay.

The author isn't trying to preserve his work's integrity, whatever that is, he is trying to preserve his income.

He is a song writer. He genre is not a big recording industry item, mechanical royalties will be minimal. There are no concert tee shirts ,to assuage anyone's guilt here.

<comment><USER17> Yes, but the author is couching his rhetoric in claims to "fairness" and moral righteousness. I think his stories are most revealing of his position:

 _I am an author, I tend to believe that I should be able to get paid for doing that work (and it is work, Eleanor, it's really hard work)...You think you're entitled to deny all of those people their rightful share of the work they do. I don't understand why you think that._

That's the core of his argument. He thinks that since he has been making a living this way for a long time, and it has worked out all right for everyone, his way is the right way and anything else is of dubious morals, because why would you want to deprive a good man of good work?

The discussion seems to be about whether the girl has a "right" to download or share his sheet music. In my opinion, she can do it, and that's that; should he have a "right" to stop her? He has not convinced me that there's any reason he should have that right.

<comment><USER18> > In my opinion, she can do it, and that's that; should he have a "right" to > stop her?

I certainly _can_ brutally kill puppies. Do you have the right to stop me if I own them?

Stop trying to twist the argument. There's a helluva lot of things you _can_ do, but whether somebody else has the right to intervene and stop you is irrelevant.

<comment><USER17> And most of those things that you can do, you should be able to do. The exceptions are what need to be justified.

I don't see a lot of justification for claiming that piracy is wrong or bad. It's directly helping someone and not directly hurting anyone, and I haven't even seen someone claim credibly that it's hurting artists' pocketbooks. Certainly this girl's actions were a totally victimless crime.

I certainly don't see evidence that piracy is resulting in a lower quality of art, and it's obviously great in the short-term for consumers (especially ones like teenagers who have a hard time buying music and movies and books.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm actually genuinely curious how the whole "art industry" will turn out eventually. On the one hand I sympathize with an artists desire to eat and provide for their family. On the other hand I don't quite buy into the idea that intellectual property is entitled to the same protections as physical property.

In some ways the medieval and renaissance periods had a more valid model with patronage for the arts. That limited the market to a much smaller pool of career artists though. I wonder what will replace the current state of affairs since a lot of signs point to it being unsustainable. And I do enjoy the results of having a larger pool of artists.

<comment><USER20> The reason it limited the pool of artists was the _much_ higher cost of doing art back then. Not just the cost of materials either; most people spent their entire lives doing backbreaking labor effectively all the time they were awake. They couldn't have created art even if they had been gifted with the materials. Artists had to be supported by "gifts" of food and shelter and all the other basics we almost take for granted today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well it seems that many (if not most) of the posters here side with the girl's explanation. So be it, but don't get pissed at me when I take your GPL product, incorporate it into my closed-source set top box and refuse to release the source. After all, it's not like I've stolen anything or deprived you of revenue.

<comment><USER8> Some people do BSD because they actually want corporations to actively use their instead of "shitty version that corporations wrote from scratch".

Some people, like me, just don't feel like we have anything to lose, but we also accept the fact that somebody might make a million bucks off my work and be totally fine with it.

In fact, I mostly evolved a sort of indifference as I diverge from the BSD and GPL hardliner positions to "hey, let just share!"

I live most of my formative years immersed in open source software. It just feel icky not to give anything back for so much of the free education that they enabled and provided for me in addition to all the great tools that I have the privilege to use.

The author obviously come from a very different culture, a culture that doesn't automatically share its capitals and works, that of which is clearly alien to me, if not to hackers in general.

For me, money and sharing isn't something that belong to the exclusively of one side or another, like charity and jobs. Money and sharing isn't in conflict at all. In fact, I like to think more sharing lead to more cash.

It's a clash of cultures really, but it doesn't mean each culture is equally good, just with a different perspective. What's really happening is a conquest and battle of ideologies, heart and minds, and which make more money. If one culture is clearly better than the other at this, then they are truly the superior culture.

<comment><USER21> _Some people do BSD because they actually want corporations to actively use their instead of "shitty version that corporations wrote from scratch"._

Yes, and some people make their artistic works available via Creative Commons or public domain. But others enforce their copyrights, just like some software authors provide their works under the GPL. The BSD license or a "clash of cultures" isn't an excuse to ignore the GPL.

<comment><USER8> Nobody is saying that it's an excuse to not respect the GPL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the author's final post update.

 _I have also heard from a continuing stream of extraordinarily hostile young men (always men) who insist on "educating" me on the ins and outs of cybermorality, the definition of "stealing," and why I deserve to choke on my own obsolescence._

What he interpret as hostility is a bunch of young men who can't help but try tell you the truth as they see it.

It's about watching people oblivious to the fact of life getting chop to bits by pirates and free markets because they refuse to recognize something crucial.

And when they can't help you, they will buy other people stuff just to spite you. If they're in the same business, they will manically laugh at you. Then they will try to help you, knowing that you will just dismiss them like last time.

Admittedly, they describe me. I am one of those young men who would do this on and off. I wanna crush them, and then tell them the good news.

<comment><USER22> Unfortunately I suspect I know the type he is referring too; I've had my fair share of attacks from them over the years.

And they (you?) are not doing very well at "educating" us. Mostly it verges from amusingly incoherent to downright disturbing :)

<comment><USER8> _Unfortunately I suspect I know the type he is referring too;

I've had my fair share of attacks from them over the years. And they (you?) are not doing very well at "educating" +us. Mostly it verges from amusingly incoherent to downright disturbing :)_

You can call these people "amusingly incoherent" to "downright disturbing" if you want. It doesn't mean anything about the truth that these people try to explain to you, with everything and anything they have.

Every single examples, and every business models big, small, and in between, they will throw out at you. Every single moral, ethical, and economic arguments they employ in their arsenal, thrown out at you. Every single historical evidences, they will dig up.

Meanwhile, musicians and record labels and criticize and rationalize away anything and everything. They rather not give out anything and earn a million dollars in return.

What these people have for you, is good news. It's very frustrating to see people not take it. These young men might have been your biggest fans, fellow musicians and artists, successful entrepreneurs or just a person well versed in economics dealing with non-scarcity.

<comment><USER22> _It doesn't mean anything about the truth that these people try to explain to you, with everything and anything they have._

If they represent the truth I feel very worried for our future :(

Taking a random recent (verbatim) example I recieved:

 _fuk u and ur fucking fancy words why do u hav the right to tell me what I cant do fuk u_

edit: for context it was after I posted this -> [http://www.errant.me.uk/blog/2010/06/that-piracy-thing- again...](http://www.errant.me.uk/blog/2010/06/that-piracy-thing-again/)

I suspect (from your last post) that we are talking about two vastly different sort of people :) certainly I don't see you sending that sort of message (I could be wrong, if you do - please stop it's boring)

These people don't really have good news; they, for the most part, don't have a new business model to offer. Mostly they just have insults and a "god given" right to whatever they want (almost on a level with "music co.s" god given right to demand money).

I find both sides puerile, inconsistent and useless.

On the other hand for the rest of us there are new revenue models that are slowly gaining popularity. When we can distract the media corps from replying to obnoxious emails and pursuing frivolous lawsuits it will probably all start to fall into place

But there is no god given right for anyone to expect something of mine, yours or anyone else's for free. No matter how much or how eloquently it is argued :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have a tiny bit of domain knowledge that I'd like to impart:

1) To be fair, _real_ scores are hard to find. Most of the published stuff is simplified, has parts removed, or is otherwise substantively altered from what is actually performed by professionals (code for this: "Vocal selections from..." "Adapted from..." etc.) I can't speak to this particularly to JRB, who may very well publish real scores, but there is a perception in the industry that in general the good stuff is unavailable.

2) There is no iTunes for sheet music. If you click through his links, get ready to install ActiveX DRMey plugins to preview the music. On mac? Too bad. So there's no way to confirm, i.e., that this is the "real stuff" as opposed to simplified sheet music.

3) If you study the industry in any detail, you'll discover that it's set up like a "Good ol' Boys" system. You can't get a part until you join the union, but you can't join the union until you get a part. New actors are placed on secret lists that are passed around to other directors either to promote or defame them. This may be totally valid and even necessary for Broadway to function--but it does breed resentment among those trying to "break in" to the system.

These three factors spell the perfect storm for piracy. There are multiple roadblocks to acquiring the music legally, and there's a huge resentment factor on the part of the consumers.

</comment><comment><USER24> The author links to his wife's blog post of a year ago in which she says a major part of the problem is the lack of an easy, legal way to access the material in question. He later links to a site where he says his work is available for instant purchase.

When you visit that site, the first thing you see in Chrome is a giant 'missing plugin' block and an invitation to download the 'Scorch' sheet music plugin, which it turns out is available for IE, Firefox or (on Macs) Safari. JOY.

Further down, you get the following message: "We advise you to check your printer setup now before you buy. You will only get one chance to print your music after you have purchased it. If you have difficulty printing, please see our print problems help page."

WTF? OK...let's have a look at the print problems help page:

"=== It says Printing To File Not Allowed ===

"Copyright law prohibits us from allowing customers to store image files of the scores on their computers. Therefore, when you buy from us, we only allow printing to paper."

No. Seriously?

The takeaway for me: not only do these people not get filesharing, they don't get computers and their attitude to those who do is one of xenophobia.

<comment><USER25> Try getting a refund when their crappy plugin crashes your browser...

How about the printed copy that's now unusable (because it's, you know, paper, and paper has a habit of getting crumpled or ripped or wet or binned...)

Even iTunes doesn't make me pay for an mp3 again if my HDD dies...

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think he made a mistake posting this on his site. He was technically in the right but he came off as a total asshole. The girl was offering to basically advertise his work. Plus she stopped trading his music when he asked. She could have put it all on torrent to spite him (and something like that is very likely to happen if certain groups like 4chan see this).

Hell, if his site wasn't so miserable I would just pay the $4 or whatever for her (i.e. I would but it doesn't look like there _is a way_ for me to pay it for her). Sheesh.

</comment><comment><USER8> Let Jason Robert Brown feel mighty and righteous about his sheet musics being copied.....I mean...err..stolen.

For the rest of everybody else who actually have some common sense about business, this is a dream come true. It's market inefficiencies ripe for exploitation. Exploit it and don't let the illegal pirates take it away from you, especially when your competitors decide to stick his head into the sand and give you a free lunch. The more Jason Robert Brown type people, the better.

</comment><comment><USER27> In one of the comments someone asks the author if he himself never infringes on copyright. I thought his response to that was disappointing: _while the majority of the imagery on my site is co-owned by me I can't vouch for all of it nor can I promise that it's all legally sound; none of that should prevent me from asking people not to trade my music illegally_

</comment><comment><USER28> Somehow, the more I read it, the more it seems like a case of "Sorry, I don't want you [the entire tech-literate demographic] as a customer". These guy makes a good point : [http://www.jasonrobertbrown.com/weblog/2010/06/fighting_with...](http://www.jasonrobertbrown.com/weblog/2010/06/fighting_with_teenagers_a_copy.php#comment-9345)

</comment><comment><USER18> Frankly, I'm kind of shocked by HN's collective opinion on this subject- and I am not a conservative.

In my opinion, it is really very simple. I don't care so much about the nebulous question of whether it's right or wrong to infringe on IP, and all these other new questions that come about when you remove the physical aspect and introduce CTRL+C/CTRL+V. What matters to me, is that books and music and movies continue to exist.

That won't happen if we insist we deserve it all for free. Who the fuck will spend their life writing music or books or movies if we don't leave them a way to monetize it? Artists are rarely driven by greed (and if they are, disillusioned quickly) but in nearly every human being, the desire to _NOT DIE_ usurps the desire to express yourself creatively, so artists will be forced to abandon their works to continue living.

<comment><USER29> You know what else is interesting - the means to produce music and movies is moving down market, fast. My friggin phone records HD, and my Mac comes with some basic music production software, I can self-publish my own books on amazon or just host them electronically myself.. and this trend is only accelerating.

So will we see less art in the future? Absolutely not - we'll be seeing huge amounts more, and from people who may not have had access to, say, a recording studio in the past. The economics are changing on both ends of the "business," which I think is a net positive.

<comment><USER30> I think it is great that one can take an off-the-shelf video camera and make a movie. And this sparks a whole world of creativity. Each day a 100 years of video are uploaded to Youtube.

What we need is a way to compensate professional artists and performers in a world where the cost to distribute is effectively zero. Some stuff (for example a "Michael Moore"-style documentary on the oil spill) is complex enough that it is difficult to produce it without having a way to cover your costs. Does Cory Doctorow's way of doing this scale to movie production?

Oh, and we need camcorders and the like to integrate free codecs - the ones currently available by default often produce H.264-movies which need a license if you want to profit from your work in any way...

<comment> loup-vaillant > Does Cory Doctorow's way of doing this scale to movie production?

It may: <http://www.ironsky.net/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> They both fall for the common fallacies and null arguments common to this sort of dispute.

It is still an interesting read though; and I think they both come off well (less so the "obnoxious young men" :)).

Who is right though? It's a morally difficult question because this is not like, say, a big film producer or an indie game developer (representing the two main extremes). This is a girl who (supposedly) wants sheet music for her school production. On the other hand Jason arranges music exactly for those sorts of scenarios; and at what point do you say "this person is now deserving of having the music for free".

Thinking this through there is a fairly easy solution; Jason should offer his music through schools and other youth organisations for free (or free loan). Thus allowing teenagers such as this to put on their shows and practice their art. Then there will be no need for such people to trade the music.

Solution, no?

<comment><USER31> > It's a morally difficult question...

Hardly, in my opinion.

Just use the rather common approach of the Golden Rule: 'Treat others like you want to be treated'. If you want others to keep their promises to you, you should keep your promise to others. Likewise, if you want others to fulfill the contracts they agreed to, you should fulfill the contracts you agreed to.

The author offered a contract: "Pay 4 dollars and promise not to copy and redistribute the media, and I promise to give you a copy". Nobody who accepted this contract, has the moral right to violate it. Otherwise, everybody would have the right to violate contracts, in general.

Everything else is just a matter of organization: If teenagers need sheet music for school production, their parents should pay for it. Or the parents can create a club, hire somebody to write music, and share the resulting work.

<comment><USER22> Sorry yes, you are dead right. There is no moral obligation for Elanor to _expect_ to get the music for free. Or feel she has a right to distribute music etc.

I mean't in the larger sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm impressed with the length of dialogue between the two, and disappointed that it got condescending on both accounts. As far as I can tell, Mr. Brown is legally correct and yet Elanor had some wisdom to offer him. I still haven't heard his work, but I'm thinking about it on her recommendation.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm mildly surprised to see the classic FSF lend-a-book argument in there:

 _"Would it be wrong for me to make a copy of some sheet music and give it to a close friend of mine for an audition? Of course not. In fact, it would be considered nasty of me to refuse. But to trade sheet music online is bad? "_

</comment><comment><USER33> Art. Only for people with money.

</comment><comment><USER4> he was classy and accurate. I couldn't believe the attitude of that girl. unbelievable sense of entitlement to the fruits of someone else's labor.

</comment><comment><USER4> this is the type of story that's going to bring out in clear distinction the line between the HN readers who are in their teens or college and the HN readers who are working adults, especially those with families of their own to feed, and/or pre-Internet memories

</comment><comment><USER34> Well, hopefully there are people in this world that write free and open software so people can build startups and earn money. If these open source people had his mentality, a lot of recent startups wouldn't even have been born.

Greedy, disgusting artist.

<comment><USER7> He's greedy and disgusting because he's not giving his work away for free so that other people can build startups and earn money?

Huh?

<comment><USER35> I think you clearly misunderstood.

The guy is a selfish and greedy person, trying to get these $4 out of this poor girl. Read the comment mentioning the creative common license potential usage, that's the right way to share to people and earn a decent living.

<comment><USER7> Seriously? $4? Would he still be selfish and greedy if it was $1? $0.10?

<comment><USER35> Requesting money when the derivative representation/usage of the work is in return given for free (as in free theater show, free movie, free mixtape, other free software) is IMHO selfish and greedy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Absolutely hilarious that he blithely violates Eleanor's copyright as part of his programme to "educate" her about copyright law.

(He has reproduced her copyrighted e-mails, against her clear wishes. She should educate him back by slapping a DMCA notice on him.)

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure it was mentioned a couple times in there that he asked her and she gave permission. The fact that you would criticize that element and not on her attitude about not paying for his work frankly blows my mind a little.

<comment><USER36> She clearly stipulated that he only had permission to reproduce some parts of her work, and he goes out of his way to mention that he breached that license. Why on earth do you think that copyright law should protect him and not her?

<comment><USER21> _She clearly stipulated that he only had permission to reproduce some parts of her work_

Where?

From the article -

JB: "I'll answer your question, but I'd like your permission to post the exchange on my website. Deal?"

Eleanor: "absolutely!"

From the update: "For those of you who were concerned, I did eventually hear from Eleanor. She said she didn't feel annoyed or offended that I had posted her remarks, she did understand where I was "coming from," and she appreciated that I took the time to deal with her."

I'm not seeing where she "clearly stipulated that he only had permission to reproduce some parts of her work."

<comment><USER36> That quotation in full:

JB: "I'd like your permission to post the exchange on my website. Deal?"

E: "absolutely! that would actually be kind of cool. but if you wouldn't mind changing my name in it to 'Eleanor.' I'm not sure why my iPod put it as 'Brenna' but that's not what I go by and I don't like that name."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nielsen Report: iPhone has the times Android's market share - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/iphone-vs-android/

<comment><USER2> I think the most interesting part was:

>> "80% of iPhone users want their next device to run iPhone OS while 70% of Android users want another Android device. This is in stark comparison to other major smartphone players: only 47% of Blackberry users want another Blackberry while only 34% of Windows Mobile users want another Windows Mobile device."

<comment><USER3> And this follow up: "Given that iPhone penetration is three times that of Android, more iPhone consumers are willing to try Android."

<comment><USER4> Although that's true, I'm not sure there's much information there. There are always many more people willing to switch away from the most popular platform. Imagine if 10% of Windows users would consider their next machine to possibly be a Mac. Even if 100% of Mac users were planning on buying Windows next, the 10% would outnumber them. While interesting, I'm not sure that statistic is very useful.

<comment><USER3> You are right. Percentages are the meaningful numbers here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The report states that Android users are younger than iPhone users. I think perhaps it is a sign that younger users are the first to adopt a growing platform, then it spread to other age ranges...

</comment><comment><USER6> Not sure what's going on with this title, but the report states that the iPhone's market share is 28%, while Android's market share is 9% (a factor of 3.1).

<comment><USER7> I _think_ it was supposed to read "three" times. (iPhone ~28%, Android ~9%)

<comment><USER8> It's actually surprising that android is already that high.

<comment><USER9> Even more surprising to see how strong Windows Mobile still is. Should Steve Balmer have been so negative about where Windows Mobile is now? I see substantial erosion coming over the next 6 months with the new iPhone and constant onslaught of Android devices but I still think it's early to say MS is out of the mobile market.

<comment><USER10> They're basically starting from scratch with their next iteration, so they're very much behind the iPhone/android.

Their market share is as high as it is only because they've been on the market for so long with previous versions. I believe almost everything is getting scrapped, though, which really decreases the advantage of having such a large user ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very interesting, but I'm surprised that Android's market share is so weak considering that I've seen reports that Android based web traffic surpassed iPhone traffic last month, while your survey shows Android/iPhone to be at about the same level in terms of usage in the past 30 days.

I wonder if android owners aren't aware that they are running Android.

</comment><comment><USER12> One of the graphs shows 30% of iPhone users "played pre-installed games" on the iPhone, which as far as I'm aware doesn't feature any pre-installed games. Am I misunderstanding the question?

<comment><USER13> Confusing wording, but I think they mean games you download and install, as opposed to online games. Not sure, though.</comment></comment>