Ragnarok MMO open-source HTML5 client - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vthibault/roBrowser# <comment><USER2> I never played this game, but back in HS/college I recognized that it brought one of the largest shares of traffic to my video game strategy guide wiki. The RO guide underwent constant maintenence by fans, and was subject to extreme organic growth despite no manual intervention on my part. The level of curation, attention to detail, and the extent to which it was taken was fascinating--and I didn't initiate any of it.

I was always impressed by the Ragnarok community.

Sadly, memory of those days was marred when a trusted friend that was running sysops hijacked my domain name account and stole the site from under me when I was overseas. But it was a good lesson in never trusting anyone and not to under any circumstance reuse passwords. (Granted, I swear Godaddy's password reset was an idempotent no-op back then... My account changes never seemed to persist.)

<comment><USER3> _" idempotent no-op"_

Isn't that the only kind?

</comment></comment><comment> chao- Some of my earliest lessons in "how not to write software" came from listening to the ranting of a friend who worked on the original eAthena implementation (i.e. back when it forked from the Japanese Athena project and gained the "e" in its name). All of the fragile handoffs between the multiple server types (character, map, login) and the client. Most notable were the mountains of code, network and otherwise, that had to be written in knowingly buggy, inefficient or incorrect manner simply to properly mimic the official server functionality.

There was also one attempt to make an alternative client for the official servers to deal with some of the lackluster interface issues (longstanding, serious/obvious bugs from 2002 that lasted until 2009ish). From what I recall, it was way too much work, and the core features were easier to deliver as a sort of (eula-breaking) addon to the official client.

<comment><USER4> I might be able to give some insight, I helped found the RO emulation community back in 2003. Along with AppleGirl, I (AjS15822) made some of the first English NPC scripts used in all Athena servers, participated in YARE, contributed code to Athena, and ran several of the forums.

It's been a decade so my memory is a bit fuzzy, but here's what I remember about that time:

We started with AEGIS (leaked Korean server files) on the asb-sakray board [1] but it was notoriously hard to setup since it had major MSSQL and ODBC driver dependencies (I wrote guides). We started work on an installer for Aegis but realized we wanted to customize the server even more.

A few emulators started to take hold at this time (YARE probably the biggest) but Gravity (creator of RO) threatened legal action and shut it down.

Enter "Athena"— we discovered a Japanese RO server emulation project on the "Avethes" BBS that had the most complete packet mapping at the time. AppleGirl did most of the first translation of the code (AppleMod) which spawned a ton of other English emulation forks as the YARE developers jumped back on.

It was a really fun time for me— age 14, not much programming experience, in the middle of this massive, open-source MMORPG emulation war. I learned so much about C++, network programming, and server architecture during that time (as did many others). All the different forks openly stole code and ideas from each other so things moved very quickly.

The beautiful thing about writing code for RO private servers was the immediate sense of gratification you got. I could implement a small change to a skill, or a new NPC behavior, and then immediately log into the client and see it in action (and then thousands of users would see it in action when we committed the change).

We weren't concerned so much about code quality in the beginning since Athena strived to be a server modder's paradise— if you wanted raw stability, you went with Aegis instead. Stability came later once all the projects eventually aligned under one flag (eAthena).

I left in 2005 to work on server emulators for Lineage II, and later got bored of servers and jumped to client-side graphics programming, where I've been happily working for the last seven years. (Funny enough, my latest project [2] was used in Lineage II as well as hundreds of other MMOs and games, so I've now written code for both emulators and official. :))

[1] [http://forum.asb-sakray.net/](http://forum.asb-sakray.net/)

[2] [http://www.awesomium.com/](http://www.awesomium.com/)

<comment> chao- Thanks for the clarification and glad to see RO was a gateway into software for so many people :) I even remember YARE, if only vaguely.

A friend of mine who had a stint in a game studio is convinced he should never have to (re)write a UI in C++ ever again, now that "the web" has created such a lingua franca in the form of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. As evidence of this he often points to Awesomium and has spoken highly of it.

<comment><USER4> Haha awesome, I would love to meet your friend. :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh my Lord...This just took all the way back to my teen years, I played RO from like . . . 12 years old all the way until I was 18/19ish. It was an amazing game, I know I still log into my buddy's private server every now and then to PvP a little bit and it's always a fun time!

<comment><USER6> Just starting the demo, and hearing the music gave me chills. I have spent countless hours in that game.

<comment><USER5> I don't know how such a minimalist and simple could be so addicting. War on Emperium, PvP, and hours grinding cards. And even on low rates, just getting lost in these various worlds, exploring every little map...so many memories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't get the demo to connect to the server, but the screenshots are super impressive.

The amazing part to me is that Ragnarok is still going. We used to play it in high school along with Helbreath because they were free MMOs and we had no money. :)

<comment><USER8> iRO was not free. The only time it was free was during the beta IIRC. After that there was a fee.

<comment><USER9> Hasn't it been free to play for years now?

They get their revenue from their shops, like how most private servers do it.

<comment><USER8> It is free to play now. The comment I was replying to seemed to indicate it was the earlier years of RO. Maybe I was mistaken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really wish I found this 3 days ago, spent almost all of Sunday trying to get RO to run on my macbook without dual boot :(

Nice work, time to spam LoV!

</comment><comment><USER11> Ragnarok has long been a center for OS development of one kind of another. When I was younger I was part of a team of people trying to add the WoE feature set to one of the server emulators. I wasn't very capable, but I helped a little. I recall that it was made more difficult by the comments in the source code being in japanese.

</comment><comment><USER12> Incredibly impressed.

I'm at work, and it's working superbly, with no noticeable lag or stuttering. I... I should stop.

Great work!

</comment><comment><USER13> This game was the first MMO I really got into.

In the back of my mind, I always wondered if a project like this could be done (given that RO is MUCH less resource intensive than the quake engine, and other html5 demos I've seen, etc)...

I am so happy to see this project exist, I love this.

</comment><comment><USER14> when will Starcraft brood war html5 that are capable of 2v2 online multiplayer available?

<comment><USER15> The tools to decompile starcraft were released on github. The next step is to recompile it to HTML5 instead of ARM. You can read about it here: [http://pandoralive.info/?p=3089](http://pandoralive.info/?p=3089)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hope that this is better code than the OS Ultima Online stuff I looked at years ago. Which looked a lot like decompiled binaries, even the original code…

<comment><USER17> Ultima Online was just a nightmare. They _constantly_ released major protocol changes with each new patch, and those were pushed out on an almost weekly basis.

It was still really fun though to play as a GM on your own little personal server and melee guards.

Oh, I'd give the world to play that game again, pre-Trammel, with the active user counts that existed back in the day. The only choice today is the ruined mainline (WoW clone) servers, or ghost-town private (T2A) servers :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is awesome. Felt so nostalgic while going through the videos and screenshots. What an amazing game! And great work Vincent and team!

</comment><comment> aaron-lebo Are they using assets from the original game (if so, are they legally available), or is everything open source and original content?

<comment><USER19> It uses assets from the original game. Tou can download the desktop client and assets for free from the official ragnarok website, but I don't know if it's legally allowed to use the assets in this way. All the privately run servers also use the original assets.

This web client automatically downloads the required assets though. When I used the demo it just worked automatically. I didn't need to manually download anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder in how many years we'll be able to play WoW or GuildWars2 on our browsers.

</comment><comment><USER21> Welp, time to go recreate my Sniper and go MVPing.

Thanks for the post, definitely going to check it out!

</comment><comment><USER22> the ragnarok beta got me re-interested in the old snes rpgs. good stuff.

</comment><comment><USER23> Now you can grind your life away from the comfort of your own browser.

</comment><comment> mkr-hn I saw this a few months ago. I never thought I would see it on HN.

</comment><comment><USER24> Next up: open-source HTML Ragnarok Online bots.

<comment><USER25> Meanwhile you can probably connect HTML client to already existing open-source non-HTML bot [1] using its bot-as-a-proxy feature. Adding automation stuff directly to HTML client shouldn't be hard, assuming network protocol handling and state keeping already provided for you.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Where is the actual JS code for the client?

<comment><USER27> You can find it at [https://github.com/vthibault/roBrowser/tree/master/](https://github.com/vthibault/roBrowser/tree/master/) in the src folder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> welp, time to make Second Impact before Paul finds out

</comment><comment><USER29> Yeah!

</comment><comment><USER30> 게토레이드

</comment><comment><USER31> Demo doesn't work. Not super impressed.

<comment><USER19> The game server seems to be down. It worked when I tried it yesterday, and it plays pretty much exactly like the official client. It really is very impressive!</comment></comment>


Universal Fund - <AUTHOR> https://watsi.org/universal-fund

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing! Want to make sure we mention that thanks to the founders of Teespring, donations are matched for the first 1,000 people to sign up. Let us know if you have feedback!

<comment><USER3> Hey Grace! Are you providing end of year reporting for tax purposes of the contributions?

<comment><USER2> Yeah! Every month, donors receive an email introducing them to the patient they supported, which serves as a tax receipt for that month's contribution. We also aggregate tax receipts for every Watsi donor and send them out at the end of the year for easy reporting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a little confused. For many months now, Watsi has charged my card each month for the amount I specified whenever I first signed up. Each month, I get an email explaining which patient my recurring donation was directed to that month.

What is different about the Universal Fund? Is this just the formal announcement of what was already in place? Also, will Teespring be matching the recurring donations that were already in place before this announcement? Thanks!

<comment><USER2> The Universal Fund is a rebrand/official launch of monthly donations. Your next month's donation will be automatically matched because you were one of the first thousand to join (thanks for being a Universal Fund OG!).

You'll get an email about this tomorrow morning (we didn't intend to launch today, but it got out on HN a little early :)

Sorry for any confusion!

<comment><USER4> Got it, thanks for the explanation. Keep up the good work!

<comment><USER2> Of course. Thanks again for the support! You're helping a lot of patients.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great idea for people who want to stay involved. Sometimes its easy to forget to give especially with a busy job and so many other things fighting for our attention.

When I fund a watsi patient, I usually post it to my facebook and try to herd a whole bunch of my friends into giving to the patient.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is absolutely great. Very impressed by the team, website, idea. Its so amazing to see non-profits bringing transparency and reducing/removing marketing.

Something to think about: How does a funder know if the partner is not giving raised prices the operation. How well do you guys trust the partners and how close are your relationships?

[Edit] Found more info about the partners in their FAQ: [https://watsi.org/faq#what-is-a-medical-partner](https://watsi.org/faq#what- is-a-medical-partner). I guess the FAQ pretty much answer my questions.

<comment><USER2> Glad you found your answers! Feel free to shoot us an email with questions anytime. I'm grace at watsi.org and the person leading our medical partner program is dan at watsi.org.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yay Watsi! I think this is a great extension to what you do.

For people who haven't tried the normal funding flow for Watsi - [https://watsi.org/fund-treatments](https://watsi.org/fund-treatments), directly funding someone's healthcare is an amazingly personal experience.

It literally costs you $10 to be part of changing someone's life and sometimes $100 to be the difference between them getting treatment or not. Making the donation recurring lowers the friction for someone to keep helping people if they had a good first experience.

</comment><comment><USER8> Amazing work! Beautiful design as well. Relevant NPR story: [http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/11/05/361433850/w...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/11/05/361433850/why- your-brain-wants-to-help-one-child-in-need-but-not-millions)

Putting a face to the contribution bridges the gap. Sign me up!

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a really cool idea :-) looks like you guys are using Stripe's recurring billing features?

<comment><USER10> Thomas from Watsi here! When we were initially building the recurring donation feature, we experimented with using Stripe's recurring billing functionality, but we ended up building our own monthly charging (still through Stripe's API). Stripe's feature is more designed for fixed-price "plans" that folks can sign up for - i.e., SaaS products, rather than the Universal Fund's pick-your- own-amount recurring charge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A Shoutout to Adam! He is doing an awesome job! This is something that will change the world..

</comment><comment><USER12> Just signed up.

I was wondering how you select which patient will receive the donation each month ? Optimise impact ? Try and top up a maximum number of patient funds ?

<comment><USER2> Amazing! Thanks so much for signing up.

Your donation will go to a patient who's fundraising on our website but hasn't had their treatment fully funded yet (like these folks: [https://watsi.org/fund-treatments](https://watsi.org/fund-treatments)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What a great platform. Loving the transparency, but i have to ask, can you be transparent about where your funding comes from?

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the kind words!

Our operational funding comes from investors and philanthropists ([https://watsi.org/faq#how-does-watsi-fund-its-day-to-day- ope...](https://watsi.org/faq#how-does-watsi-fund-its-day-to-day-operations)). You can see them all on our About page (just tab over from team to "Founding Donors"): [https://watsi.org/about](https://watsi.org/about)

<comment><USER13> Thank you for the quick response!

Have you thought about teaming up with eBay or some other giant like that? I know they ask me to round up/add a £1 extra to give to charity. Although i think the monthly subscription is hassle free, you'd get much more pocket change like that, which would compound. I'm not sure how you'd get listed there though.

Edit: i see the tip option while subscribing which is better than nothing

<comment><USER2> Np!

People are generous with tips, which is awesome and helps a ton. At this stage, we're 100% focused on raising money for patients. But down the line we'll likely start optimizing more for tips as well, in hopes of becoming self sustaining ([https://watsi.org/faq#how-do-tips- work](https://watsi.org/faq#how-do-tips-work)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just signed up, but can you show us what the average donation is?

<comment><USER15> Thanks for signing up! The average monthly donation is $39.50 and the median is $20.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> this is awesome, watsi!

</comment><comment><USER17> Bold move to put the number of members on the website while it's so low. It's professional looking, but the low member count immediately makes me wary. I would have waited until it was higher. :/

</comment><comment><USER18> How is this different from the typical charity/NGO donation drives of "donate 39 cents a day" ad? I saw how introducing personal connections to individual medical treatments was different from the norm, however this now seems to reverse that by going right back to the old school, typical, individual international aid style of monthly monetary donations.

<comment><USER19> They're not reversing anything... They're just providing a way for people who want to donate to Watsi, but don't care to spend the time to find a particular patient.

They aren't doing away with the old 'pick a patient' method, they're just adding another option.

<comment><USER18> To be more clear: I'm not saying that they are reversing their "pick a patient" method. I'm saying that I saw how the "pick a patient" powered by the web model was an evolution among international aid / charity models. The "big generic fund" model however clearly is not. I'm not saying it's not convenient, I'm saying I don't see how going back to a model that's been used for decades is useful when such a model is arguably ineffectual at building deeper cross-cultural relationships. Not to mention that neither of these models of international aid or public health build anything sustainable.

<comment><USER10> A quick clarification here: joining the Universal Fund doesn't mean that we charge your credit card an amount every month and you have no idea where or who your donation is going towards. Every month, we automatically pick a patient your donation goes towards, and you get an email with the patient's story, and an update email after the patient's medical procedure.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hillary Clinton: Snowden has right to public defense - <AUTHOR> http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/07/04/hillary-clinton-snowden-has-right-to-public-defense/comment-page-1/

<comment><USER2> It only took her 13 months to say that. Sounds like she says it now because that's what she was advised to say to win the "pro-Snowden crowd". But Hillary, much like Obama, likes to say a lot of pretty things you want to hear, and then go and do the opposite when in office.

How about this time around we don't fall for sweet lies, and instead follow their _track records_ and vote for someone who's always been strong on privacy, and not just through lip service, but actions, too.

<comment><AUTHOR> So you see this as a media stunt from Hillary?</comment></comment>


VimSwitch: Use Your Vim Settings Everwhere - <AUTHOR> https://priomsrb.github.io/vimswitch/ <comment><USER2> I understand the need to build tools and I would have used this too, if it was a simple enough bash script with a bunch of aliases and some sweet bash_completion love.

However, I don't see why I should replace this ...

      $ mv ~/.vimrc{,~}
      $ mv ~/.vim{,~}
      $ git clone --recursive email@example.com:lonetwin/lonetvim.git ~/.vim
      $ ln -sf ~/.vim/dot_vimrc ~/.vimrc
      # -- work --

^profiles^ could just as well be branches ...although, I don't think I have use for them.

<comment><USER3> OP here. VimSwitch does something similar to what your script does. It just makes it a bit more convenient. Here is a use case that I plan to use it for:

        # log into production server
        $ vimswitch priomsrb/vimrc
        # -- work --
        $ vimswitch default
        $ logout

This puts vim back into it's original state for the next person who logs in.

In future versions I hope to make the above workflow even simpler:

        # log in to production server
        $ vimswitch --launch priomsrb/vimrc
        # log out

The --launch command will launch vim with your settings without altering the home directory.

<comment><USER4> If that's the symptom then I would recommend using different SSH users instead of everyone sharing the same account. It allows each user to use it's own config and also makes `who` more useful.

<comment><USER3> That's a good point. My example comes from experiences where the only available users are 'admin' or 'logs'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am using GNU stow [1] to share more than just Vim (though you could just do Vim) and it's been easy-breezy.

\-----

[1]: [http://brandon.invergo.net/news/2012-05-26-using-gnu-stow- to...](http://brandon.invergo.net/news/2012-05-26-using-gnu-stow-to-manage- your-dotfiles.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Another option that made the rounds on HN somewhat recently:

[https://github.com/Russell91/sshrc/](https://github.com/Russell91/sshrc/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I just use a Rakefile to do similar. I just clone my Git repo and run 'rake' in the directory and I'm done. (Same for many other apps.)

[https://github.com/Slackwise/dotfiles/blob/master/vim](https://github.com/Slackwise/dotfiles/blob/master/vim)

</comment><comment><USER8> One feedback: It would be great if you can add head/title on your webpage. It just helpful when going through my bookmarks at a later date. Thanks again for the awesome tool!

<head> <title>VimSwitch: Use Your Vim Settings Everwhere</title> </head>

<comment><USER3> Ahh. Thank you for reminding me. It's been added now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does this work with plugin managers such as Vundle/Pathogen?

<comment><USER3> It should work with both as VimSwitch recursively copies ~/.vim. I'm using Vundle for my own profile without problems.

<comment><USER10> That assumes you're using submodules or subtree as your versioning mechanism. If you're using vundle/neobundle, does it do the magic of running the bootstrap to download your bundles from the internet?

<comment><USER3> No, it does not run :BundleInstall for you. Maybe it would be a good idea if the user could specify some commands to run after downloading a profile. For example they could add a line in their .vimrc:

        " vimswitch-after-download=:BundleInstall</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Cofounders Larry Page And Sergy Brin Are Pretty Lousy Coders - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.in/It-Turns-Out-Google-Cofounders-Larry-Page-And-Sergy-Brin-Are-Actually-Pretty-Lousy-Coders/articleshow/24950519.cms#! <comment><USER2> This is nothing particularly new to me, and neither is this the first time that the leader of a large tech company was made known not to code very well (think Mark Zuckerberg [http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs- coding-skill...](http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-coding- skills-2011-9)). Honestly, I wouldn't expect them to be incredible coders. Building a company like Google doesn't take (just) coding skills.

While it is important to have good coders on board, building a company takes ideas, execution, and luck. Coding is an important, but slightly overemphasized part of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> According to Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs never coded a line. Coding is not what makes these men great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed.. building a great team matters more than being a coding superstar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Quality journalism here - his name is Urs Hoelzle.</comment>


Show HN: ASCII Animals in Your Terminal - <AUTHOR> http://ivolo.me/ascii-animals-the-perfect-loading-indicator/

<comment><USER2>
        curl -s [url] | sh

Please don't train people to do that.

<comment><USER3> npm used to suggest something similar as an easy way to install...

      curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sudo sh

<comment><USER4> That's a different case. Installing software implicitly means you trust an installer. Throwing random data into a shell prompt to see an ASCII cat is the sort of shit that gave my dad email viruses in the late 90s.

<comment><USER5> And today it's Javascript. Same problem. Running someone else's code without reading it first.

Why?

Because people want to see a "doodle" or some other silly graphic.

Truthfully, it's gotten worse: "Please enable Javascript." "You need to enable Javascript to use this website." (9 times out of 10, that's a lie.)

In the 1980's, it was telling people to run some ANSI codes through printf to see a blinking Christmas Tree.

<comment><USER6> Your web browser is designed to sandbox and safely run code.

Your shell isn't.

(People are working on it though, see for example [http://berrange.com/posts/2012/01/17/building-application- sa...](http://berrange.com/posts/2012/01/17/building-application-sandboxes- with-libvirt-lxc-kvm/))

<comment><USER5> I can "sandbox" code using the shell far easier than I can control what a "modern browser" can do.

Because I know the shell and my OS better than I know a "modern browser".

"People are working on it..."

C'mon, man. This sounds pathetic. You can learn to use the shell safely. How do you think sysadmins do their jobs?

Or you can pretend the shell is too difficult and something to be feared. The simple fact is _you_ control the shell. You don't expose it to the world (unless you're playing games with CGI or doing like the OP said: feeding it random bytes from the internet). You can read the code for a basic shell (e.g. rc, sh, dash). You can modify and compile it yourself. You can write your own. CS students routinely write their own shells as part of the curriculum. A "shell" is something relatively simple.

You really think you're ridiculously complex "modern browser" is "safe"? Safer than your shell?

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8cQ0yU89sk>

When your use the shell, you trust the people who provide your OS's kernel, the compiler, libraries and userland and those 3d party applications, if any, you choose to run. That's already a lot of people and a lot of code. When you use a "modern browser" who do you trust? I can't even begin to quantify it.

As a very well respected cryptographer once wrote, security may be less a matter of reducing privilege than of reducing the amount of trusted code. The only reason you even have a concet of "privilege" is because it's a relic of shared computing. Everyone has their own computer now. There's no such thing as "root" in Plan 9.

Compare the LOC in a basic shell with the LOC in your web browser.

<comment><USER6> This discussion began when people pointed out that running shell scripts directly from the web was a Very Bad Idea. You then seemed to claim that browsing with javascript enabled was a similarly bad idea. I simply pointed out that they weren't equivalent at all, since the web browser was explicitly designed to execute untrusted code while your shell most certainly is not. I did not argue that web browser security was foolproof, and you're welcome to disable javascript and similar browser features if you feel it's a good tradeoff of functionality and security for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of

      telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

(can't believe this is still up after all these years)

<comment><USER7> My god, I remember being spellbound by this for hours as a novice, after learning my first few shell commands and managing to get the damn modem to work on linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Also similar to _cowsay_ [1]:

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowsay>

</comment><comment><USER9> skip right to the purdy pictures: [https://raw.github.com/ivolo/animals/master/public/assets/an...](https://raw.github.com/ivolo/animals/master/public/assets/animals.saved) [400kb text file download]

which apparently are all _borrowed_ from here: <http://www.heartnsoul.com/ascii_art/ascii_animals_indx.htm>

</comment><comment><USER6> Speaking of ASCII art in your terminal,

      $ apt-get install sl
      $ /usr/games/sl

<comment><USER10> Yay for steam locomotive! I think of it as a handy reminder from your sys- admin "don't drink and ssh!"

<comment><USER11> That same sys-admin probably won the Crash And Compile drinking game at DEF CON. Don't listen to him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are practical uses for ASCII animals. When I built a command-line tool to let the developers sign out for a 15 minute break at my last job (because doing it via the AS/400 interface was a big hassle), I used a big, yellow elephant [1]. This made it easy to remember to hit the enter key to go back on the clock when they got back to their computer.

[1]: I think it was this one: <http://thesteve.org/up/elephant.txt>

<comment><USER13> You had developers do WHATTTTT????

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My favorite (useful!) ASCII terminal animal is the Nyan Cat RSpec formatter. I love that little guy.

[http://mattsears.com/articles/2011/11/16/nyan-cat-rspec- form...](http://mattsears.com/articles/2011/11/16/nyan-cat-rspec-formatter)

He makes the tests slower, but I still have him check my entire suite of specs at least once a day.

</comment><comment><USER15> /usr/games/cowsay -f `ls /usr/share/cowsay/cows | shuf -n1` `/usr/games/fortune`

</comment><comment><USER16> Neat, but it seems to make an http request for every frame. Unclear if requests caches that, but I did get a socket error on KeyboardInterrupt so I don't think so.

</comment><comment><USER7> And if you want to generate ascii text: <http://www.figlet.org/></comment>


Here's why Twitter probably doesn't mind that some of its users are robots - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2014/08/12/heres-why-twitter-probably-doesnt-mind-that-some-of-its-users-are-robots

<comment><USER2> This article defines spam as any automated reading of tweets plus people not viewing ads in the official twitter site and app, and then concludes spam has benefits for twitter and its users like broadcasting information to people who explicitly want that information.

It's like an Onion article. The numbers even directly contradict themselves ... Twitter says they have 20m such accounts, but further analysis shows it may only be 30m not 40m.</comment>


Do You Follow Too Many People On Twitter? Use ManageTwitter. - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/24/manage-twitter/

<comment><USER2> I saw this a few days ago, tried it out, and found it pretty useless. (I follow ~100 people).

Unfollowing someone because they don't follow you is stupid. In fact, many of the most insightful tweets I see come from accounts that don't follow me, mostly people who are to some degree high profile (@wycats (Merb/now Rails guy), @defunkt (GitHub founder), etc.)

If someone's talkative, it's pretty obvious, and I'll either get annoyed by their tweet volume and unfollow them after a time of dense tweets, or they're not bothering me so it's fine.

Quiet and inactive are a horrible reasons to unfollow someone, since if they're quiet the cost of following them is basically 0.

<comment><USER3> I absolutely agree. This tool doesn't help you increase your signal to noise ratio, which should be the real goal.

That's why I recently built this: <http://www.unladenfollow.com/> Unladen Follow suggests people to unfollow based on how noisy they are, not whether they follow you back. It gives you metrics about things like excessive hashtags, links, and so on.

<comment><USER4> I love this tool. A couple points of feedback. I don't mind @mentions if they're sent to people I'm not following since I don't see them. Also, it would be nice if you included the table headers every 50 rows because I can't remember what each column is once they're out of view. Great tool though!

<comment><USER3> Hey John, sorry I missed this comment when you first posted it. @mentions are not counted if they are @replies for the reason you suggest. The repetition of table headers is a good idea, though, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I despise the "follow them if they're following you" mentality. It's identical to having 10k "friends" on Facebook / MySpace. If they don't enrich your life, are they really worth following? Is it just more noise?

It's one of the reasons I tend to like Twitter. I only get info I request, nothing gets pushed to me that I'm not interested in (a la FB's feed). I follow who I want because I want, and I don't want them to follow me if they're only interested in their following count.

<comment><USER6> Yeah it's kind of like that whole "if you're not following 1000+ people you're not a real Twitter user" article that made the rounds a while back. Maybe if you just want another way to kill time and procrastinate at work (as if we don't have enough already) you should follow thousands of people on Twitter, but if you're actually trying to get some real value out of it then it's insane to follow that many people—unless you're a professional blogger, which is where the self-fulfilling prophecy of Twitter hype comes from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice little app, I love the humorous and clever "status" updates as it connects to your account.

Some of the metrics I'd like to see would be to highlight my best followers. Would be nice to know who replies to me, and who retweets my stuff. Also would be nice to change the threshold for what is considered a quiet/talkative user.

Assuming I had hundreds of people I follow, knowing the top 10/20/50 that actually connect with me (via DM/reply/RT) would be a nice way of trimming the 'fat'.

A bot detector would be nice as well. Maybe some logic to tell if someone you follow is using an "auto" tweet app or is tweeting the same thing over and over.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 1) Spend a week building this app 2) Get an article on TechCrunch 3) Profit! :)

Went through quite a few iterations on the design. Feedback/improvements are certainly welcome.

<comment><USER8> Did you make this all by yourself? I like the design. It definitely seems like the best tool for this kind of thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I did (with the help here and there from a few people where I work). Glad you like it. Took a stock image for the background built a simple design and focused on making it usable. Everyone I speak to with 300+ following seems to have an issue managing people they follow. Decided to do something about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> <http://friendorfollow.com/> is also pretty good for this kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER10> > ManageTwitter requires Google Chrome Frame to run in Internet Explorer! > Please install it from the box below.

Wow, are we really going to live through another round of "Best Viewed in Netscape Navigator" wars?

<comment><USER11> No, because it doesn't require Chrome. It requires a modern browser. Firefox works. Chrome and Chromium work. Safari works. Opera works. Epiphany works. Konqueror probably works.

IE, as a platform, simply hasn't maintained parity with the state of the web. It doesn't make sense for a small team to hobble their product or expend undue effort for the sake of one laggard.

And hey, you don't even have to give up IE! Drop in one plugin and everything works, transparently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great app - I think unfollowing people is the secret to improving Twitter!</comment>


How to hire software engineers, a personal experience - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kanzukazaha/how-to-hire-software-engineers-7bed39604cb4 <comment><USER2> > When 2 different 'why' engineers meet, they can discuss some minute topic > for hours.

When people make statements like this, I wonder if they're just exaggerating, part of the segmented population (e.g., they are a 'why' engineer), or actually observed two engineers discuss a minute topics for hours.</comment>


Encouraging Gender Diversity at Tech Conferences - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gaslight.co/post/54926190510/encouraging-gender-diversity-3-reasons-why-qcmerge

<comment><USER2> -Attendance follows speaker make-up : I just don't get this one. Maybe the author believes that women don't want to hear or see men, but I personally do not care who is speaking to me. I am only perturbed if the speaker has such a thick accent that I can not understand him/her. I believe this point makes no sense. -Bridge the gender gap through related fields/interests: I really hate this idea. If I want to go to a jQuery conference, then I want to hear about jQuery. I do not want to hear about the marketing arm of some jQuery widget provider or about the design aesthetics of jQuery mobile 2.50. There are reasons to have a more diverse conference, but from my personal experience these type of conferences provide smaller value if your intent is to learn something not making business connections or socially talking tech. -Watch your blind spots ( venue, marketing channels, messaging) : you are pretty much saying you need to market and get the word out through stereo typically women channels. To me, a tech conference should go through channels that the intended audience would be a part of. I would find it somewhat ridiculous to market a tech conference in a Cosmo magazine but in my reading of this article, it provides little clarity as to what you are talking about.

I am all for more women in tech, but don't try to devise a plan to "trick" or just plain shove more women into the scene. I would much prefer people at the conferences I attend to be attentive and interested. I would hate to go to a conference where half the audience wasn't geeking out over most of the presentations.

<comment><USER3> QCMerge is intentionally different than most conferences. We don't focus on a particular language or framework. It's about everything that goes into building a successful product.

The observations in the article are things we noticed after two years of the event. We didn't set out to "attract more women," but rather to attract more people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it's more important not to discourage it. It looks awfully artificial if you go out of your way to promote it and will raise suspicion that one is not there because of the technology but because one is of a certain sex. I can't think of any instance in which I saw it be discouraged.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you mean when you use the term "big app"?  - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Something that does more than one thing, and does more than one thing "well." Not a niche app, which have their place. It's often an ecosystem; other apps or websites have instructions telling you to install another app first.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking more on the lines of data-rich apps like Google Maps or Flipboard or Evernote. What would you call apps built on lots of data?

<comment><USER3> big data is the buzzword you're looking for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Evernote, OneNote, OfficeMobile, are all "big App".

They are "Suite sized" apps for "off desktop" platforms (tablets, phones, TVs, Consoles).

A big app is typically productivity software. Typically not something built by 3 guys, but rather a team. Typically not free.</comment>


LeanBoots - Looking for bootstrapper stories - <AUTHOR> http://leanboots.posterous.com HN Readers: I've learned a ton over the years by reading about others who have bootstrapped. Whether its via 37Signals, Bootstrapped and Profitable series, or other blog posts. But I haven't found a blog/site dedicated to bootstrappers, and the challenges they've had to overcome or weren't able to.
Everyone has a story to tell, big or small, success or failure, so if you'd like to participate, please visit http://leanboots.posterous.com and drop me a line.
Or if anyone has any specific thoughts on stories or direction, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> HN Readers: I've learned a ton over the years by reading about others who have bootstrapped. Whether its via 37Signals, Bootstrapped and Profitable series, or other blog posts. But I haven't found a blog/site dedicated to bootstrappers, and the challenges they've had to overcome or weren't able to.

Everyone has a story to tell, big or small, success or failure, so if you'd like to participate, please visit <http://leanboots.posterous.com> and drop me a line.

Or if anyone has any specific thoughts on stories or direction, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks!</comment>


Why is there no viable alternative to Windows and OS/X? - <AUTHOR> http://dukedougal.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/why-is-there-no-viable-alternative-to.html

<comment><USER2> Windows (7 and 8) and Ubuntu are both great. None of the things listed in the article about Windows is true.

> Windows is inconsistent - every vendor implements drivers in their own way

What? That makes no sense. Speaking about consitency and drivers in the same sentence does not make sense. No user has to think about drivers in Windows world. Small portion of developers might need to think about drivers, sure. Everybody else can just forget them. They work.

> It's unreliable - a constant source of crashes and problems, applications > doesn't work as expected, long unexplained pauses.

Nope. XP, 7 and 8 are all really stable. Vista had its driver issues. Long pauses? Makes no sense at all. Applications do not work? Sure they do.

> It is thoroughly crap at multitasking

Really? Haven't seen enything in years that Ctrl+Alt+Del > Task manager > End process would not have fixed.

I run Ubuntu at home and haven't seen any weird error messages in years. The only problems I've had with Ubuntu have been hardware support issues. Those are annoying, sure.</comment>


You Asked When To Buy Bitcoin...Well Now's Your Chance - <AUTHOR> http://cryptojunky.com/blog/2013/12/18/you-asked-when-to-buy-bitcoin-well-nows-your-chance/

<comment><USER2> I'm not convinced. Like gold, Bitcoin isn't an investment. Warren Buffet will tell you that investing is putting your money into something which creates real value, like a business. He would also tell you that you should stick to what you know, otherwise its just gambling. For me, that's investing my time and money into building my own income streams.

I don't really care that I could possibly get a return of 10x or more on my money in Bitcoin (or I could lose that much.) I could do the same with my businesses if I do them right, and having everything in Bitcoin would keep me from being able to allocate those resources elsewhere. While the rise in Bitcoin could be a one time thing before it stabilizes (or tanks,) my efforts elsewhere will provide me an income for a lifetime.

I'm more interested in using Bitcoin as a currency. A temporary hold for my most liquid assets which I can use to pay bills and other expenses. If I really believe in Bitcoin and want it to succeed, then I know I should try to run some of that activity on what's possible with Bitcoin now. The more mainstream and the larger the Bitcoin market, the more stable it should become. But I'm not interested in risking a large amount of assets to be a revolutionary or financial martyr.

ETA: To me, a currency is a place I can park my cash and know that it will hold approximately the same purchasing power as when I put it in there in the first place. I don't care to see it go up (as I said, I have other schemes for making it grow) and I really don't want it to go down. I just want it to be relatively stable. Living in the Philippines for a number of years and working with people around the world, there is 6 different currencies that regularly affect me or the people paying me. Since I have been here, the Peso has gained as much as 20% on the dollar. This sucks and it's not something I want to deal with. Bitcoin would drive me crazy.

<comment><USER3> > _Warren Buffet will tell you that investing is putting your money into > something which creates real value, like a business._

Warren Buffet is an _investor_ , i.e. someone seeking returns from interest, dividends, or capital gains from the reasonable expectation of future interest or dividends. Healthy markets have three other fundamental actors: _hedgers_ , who trade to offset a preëxisting risk, _arbitrageurs_ , who trade to profit from establishing the Law of One Price, and _speculators_ , who absorb excess risk and illiquidity other participants do not want.

Speculators absorb the error term. Healthy markets don't function without a proper amount of speculation. So if you believe Bitcoin has fundamental value as an asset and think the upside at least fairly compensates you for the risk, go ahead and absorb that risk. By boosting the asset's value you make it more attractive to others to hold and possibly transact with, thereby giving you a return on your risk.

Point is, you may want to speculate or not. I do not. But that doesn't mean we need to moralise investing over speculating any more than an arbitrageur need find himself intellectually superior to investors.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for taking the time to make such a well written reply to my comment. This further backs up one of my main points. I'm not a sophisticated trader (nor do I wish to become one) so I probably shouldn't be speculating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a question that may sound stupid to Bitcoin aficionados, and yet is the first question that comes to my mind whenever I read something like this, and I'm asking it in all seriousness: _why_ would I want to buy Bitcoin (given that I don't wish to profit from Bitcoin speculation)?

I get that there is some novelty to using an online crypto-currency. But other than the possible fun factor (which I don't expect to experience) what other reason would there be? Now, I'm not asking about Bitcoin's general merit as a currency. Personally, I believe currencies are better when regulated. But that's not what we're talking about. The question of using an unregulated, deflationary crypto-currency instead of "regular money" for most uses by a large population is a theoretical one at the moment, and will remain so for years to come. My question is about using Bitcoin casually _now_ as a supplement to money. A vanishingly small number of vendors accept it. It is not more secure than money: I keep hearing about Bitcoins stolen from online "banks", and I wouldn't trust myself to keep it securely on my own machine. I don't intend to perform an illegal online transaction. So, why _would_ I want to buy Bitcoin?

<comment><USER5> >> Personally, I believe currencies are better when they're regulated by governments.

Stop believing that. The exact opposite is true. If we could all use a currency that _no one could manipulate_ at the press of a button somewhere behind the scenes, _we would_. But as long as governments control money, we're shit out of luck there - they're printing and borrowing money as they please, debasing their currencies and causing all kinds of grief to the little folks, ie. _us_.

You're right to be skeptical about Bitcoin though. It's basically a "speculative investment vehicle", as someone mentioned. Until that changes, you should be cautious about buying them. The gold rush is probably over.

( Or not. But _no one knows_. )

<comment><USER4> I think that kind of manipulation is good, but you know what? Let's agree to disagree on that one. In any case, this is still a theoretical question at this point.

<comment><USER5> You may think so, but it's not.

Imagine a scenario like this.

      - There's 10 units of wealth in the world
      - There's 10 units of currency in the world

At this point, 1 unit of currency corresponds to 1 unit of wealth. But what if someone presses a button and conjures up 10 units of the same currency into his own bank account?

      - Still 10 units of wealth in the world
      - Now there's 20 units of currency in the world

.. So now, after someone printed money for himself, 1 unit of currency only corresponds to 0.5 units of the wealth available in the world. So everyone who holds that currency just lost half of their purchasing power, which is kind of bad. But the guy who printed money doesn't give a fuck - his share of the total purchasing power went up from zero to five, after all, while everyone else's dropped.

Of course, this is grossly simplified, and possibly partially wrong/inaccurate etc, but you get the idea, right? We really _do_ lose purchasing power when more currency goes into circulation.

Besides, we haven't even touched the effects of zero interest rates, borrowing massive amounts of money that will never be repaid, economic stagnation, an ever larger portion of the national tax revenues going towards paying interest on the ever more massive debts, and so on.. It's _all_ bad, and it's all something that: 1) we do not want to happen, and 2) _would not happen_ in a free market (with a market-chosen currency etc).

But don't take just _my_ word for it: [http://mises.org](http://mises.org)

<comment><USER4> That's not how the economy works (international trade is different from local trade, you're not taking employment into account etc.), but for now let's just say that some think a regulated currency is better and some don't. This has little to do with buying Bitcoin now.

<comment><USER5> >> That's not how the economy works (international trade is different from local trade, you're not taking employment into account etc.), but for now let's just say that some think a regulated currency is better and some don't

Feel free to tell me why what I described there does not correspond to reality in any meaningful way. If you can't, then maybe you should reconsider your position on "regulated" currencies.

Also, you should investigate [http://mises.org](http://mises.org) \- they'll tell you all you need to know about economics. You'll find out that governments are always only a net loss on any economy.

<comment><USER4> I don't know if the reference to mises.org is sarcastic, but pointing to that site to learn about economics is like referring to Glenn Beck's site to learn about President Obama. Obviously, most economists have some ideology, but I think you should try to learn from people are are at least not so fanatic.

<comment><USER5> >> pointing to that site to learn about economics is like referring to Glenn Beck's site to learn about President Obama

So where _do_ you learn about Obama? -The mainstream media? How's that "change you can believe in" going? -Oh well, I guess stripping away your civil liberties counts as "change", right?

>> Obviously, most economists have some ideology, but I think you should try to learn from people are are at least not so fanatic.

Nah, I'm fine learning from people who are actually talking about how economics works here in the real world. You just keep on keeping on.

<comment><USER4> I see. Did they teach you about the very real Gilded Age? Because that's when the US was doing things their way; it didn't turn out so well for the very real American people back then.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure what your point is supposed to be, but I suspect you don't actually have one.

You didn't even give the Mises Institute a _chance_ to educate you. If you listen to their in-depth videos on the fundamental "mechanics" of economics, but find yourself disagreeing with what they say, you're pretty much just refusing to hear anything, or simply not very bright.

They're not "fanatic", they're just explaining how economics works, in very clear terms, and in a way that obviously corresponds to reality (because it's all based on the way humans _actually_ behave).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When can I actually use Bitcoin as a currency rather than a speculative investment asset?

That's when I want to buy Bitcoin.

<comment> guard-of-terra What is "currency" for you? People refer to "currency" all the time as if it was one thing.

Cash is one kind of currency, plastic is another, bank account - yet another, savings - yet another. Converting between those is not instant and not free.

Bitcoin works OK as a bank account. That is "currency".

<comment><USER7> Converting between Cash, Bank and Plastic(Credit Cards) IS near instantaneous. It may not be free but the speediness hasn't really been in question. Also these are all instruments that store value, but are all different instruments.

Though Bitcoin is NOT yet a currency. It cannot store value, the volatility ensures that.

An example to illustrate: Part I: Cash - Bank etc. If I have $2000 in Cash, Credit Card has a balance of $1000 (maxed out) and $0 in my Checking/Chequing/Savings account (bank).

I can visit a branch that's 10 mins away, and deposit the all the money, total wait time would be < 5 mins. (transaction cost free)

I can immediately go to an ATM and withdraw $500. (transaction cost free - $0.30)

After that I can walk back to my home and access all the $1500, this can be:

a) $500 transferred from account to high yield savings account. (transaction cost free)

b) $500 transferred to grand parents using interac (transaction cost free - $1.00)

c) $500 transferred to credit card (transaction cost free) \- Note: (i) Credit cards can take up to 3 days to reflect the payment (ii) Credit Cards will consider the original transaction date as the payment date thus not incurring interest for the delay in reflecting the payment and (iii) some credit card issuers will let you make a transaction before the payment is reflected thus reducing the unfortunate "Check kiting"[1] nature of the delay in reflecting the transaction.

Part II: Cash - Bitcoin - Cash Will not go into explaining this in detail, but just answer this 1) Can you take cash and transfer it to bitcoin without using the bank? 2) Will it be nearly as quick converting between instruments as traditional stores of value? 3) In a day or two when you want to make a purchase can you guarantee or even confidently assume that the value will be the same as when you deposited it? Hell can you assure yourself that the value will be the same < 1 hour from when the transaction occurs?

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_kiting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_kiting)

<comment> guard-of-terra _1) Can you take cash and transfer it to bitcoin without using the bank? 2) Will it be nearly as quick converting between instruments as traditional stores of value?_

Yes, I can take my cash, dump it into Qiwi machine and btc-e accepts that. It will be faster because Qiwi machines are denser than bank branches.

 _3) In a day or two when you want to make a purchase can you guarantee or even confidently assume that the value will be the same as when you deposited it?_

No, but neither it is with your currency.

 _Hell can you assure yourself that the value will be the same < 1 hour from when the transaction occurs?_

Why are we again talking about day-to-day spending? I don't care about the value in one hour, I care about value in one year and Bitcoin shows pretty good performance. It's more reliable than USD/EUR and USD/RUR swing, believe it or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can't have 20-40% weekly swings in an asset and still expect to use it as currency. Neither merchants, nor consumer can trust it, and speculators just sit on it and distort the entire market. I hate that Bitcoin as a currency is almost worthless.

<comment><USER9> Every new currency has to go through that. That's unavoidable for a small, relatively new currency. With every boom and smaller bust it grows larger and more stable.

<comment><USER10> New currencies aren't born in a vaccum. When the US switched off the gold standard, the price of a bag of rice at the grocery wasn't changing by 10% every other day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Who can say whether this is a good price for Bitcoin, even after the recent drop? The author says this is the time to buy but goes on to say:

"I have no crystal ball, and can't say that Bitcoin is at the lowest price it will be at over the next several days/weeks/months. It may very well be that Bitcoin goes lower"

If you want to speculate, try the stock market. It's been around since forever, and you might actually have a bit of an understanding of the fundamentals driving some of the stocks there.

<comment><USER12> Given the difficulties in buying and selling quickly, at least with bitcoin the game is not currently dominated by HFT algorithms. I'd say that understanding the fundamentals driving the pricing of the modern stock market is at least as difficult as making good bets on bitcoin.

<comment><USER10> HFT competition is only relevant for day traders. If the author is that financially insightful, he should be stock-picking, and ignore the HFT noise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Please don't fall into these cheap speculations..Cryptocurrency itself proved that its pure speculation bubble and nothing else.Everybody saw that a few weeks ago when china central bank issued bans / warnings and the markets reaction to it.I believed in crypto currency until a month ago, but now i believe that it is literally impossible for it to take place of a daily currency.Just pump/dump games richer people getting rich, poorer people getting poor.Oh and don't expect it to be adopted by merchants/vendors as anyone who did lost money because of bitcoin's fluctuation..oh by the way out of my head i can assume that %80 of people that has bitcoin only cares about gaining fiat..

</comment><comment><USER14> What a terrible post. It doesn't justify buying bitcoins at all, it's basically squiggly lines go up and down, it just went down, so buy it before it goes back up again because that's what squiggly lines do.

At some point he equates the _price_ of bitcoin with bitcoin's _long term viability_ which is also not a convincing argument. bitcoin may have a viable future, but there's no convincing reason why that viable future can't be at $1 per bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER15> I needed 0.5 coins last week to test something so I loaned and sold them to test an auto exchange bot @$980. Just bought back 0.5 to repay the small IRC loan @$460. Sweet thanks China

<comment><USER16> How did you have the trust for someone to lend you $500 without knowing them?

<comment><USER15> IRC web of trust rating from #bitcoin-otc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> aka "I just 'lost' a 'fortune' because Bitcoin's exchange rate dropped, please buy Bitcoin for USD so I am 'rich' again!".

</comment><comment><USER18> The only problem here is that _part_ of the run up was based on the sense that China was allowing Bitcoin to flourish. That's pretty powerful in the world's second largest economy with a suspect currency of it's own (highly manipulated for political purposes) If that market opportunity is now closing then that makes Bitcoin much less valuable (at least over the short term) Less demand = smaller price.

<comment><AUTHOR> You make a good point. If China shuts off entirely then the potential size of Bitcoin's network could decrease significantly. That's not to say however that Bitcoin doesn't still have a significant and increasing network of users. There have been significant gains outside of China as well recently. A large contributor to the high was resultant from the US Senate Hearings which seemed to somewhat validate Bitcoin's legality in the U.S., the world's largest economy.

<comment><USER18> Agreed. I added "Short term" to reflect this is more of a (significant) set back than a downward march. I worry that some might deduce from the article that this is a short term buying opportunity and it'll return to it's previous highs soon. If China is in fact closed it could take a very long time to return to those levels.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had originally intended the article to be more of a suggestion to newcomers, that it may be a good time to purchase a bit of Bitcoin if you're looking to get started. It wasn't intended as advice for day traders, but rather for people with long term outlooks trying to enter Bitcoin for the first time, which is what constitutes much of my audience.

Rereading I do see how it comes across as short term trading advice though. I suppose I'll have to be much clearer in future posts. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> History is littered with the corpses of "investors" in various assets who bought all the way down because "this is a great opportunity!"

The exponential rise is price is always accepted as "rational", but the equally exponential fall is always explained as temporary or manipulation, or something.

A lot of people made money in 2009 when the stock market was incredibly cheap. But it was cheap because there was tangible value that could be calculated based on revenues, earnings, profit margins, etc. If you can't tell me what a Bitcoin should be worth, how do I know it's now cheap? That's speculation.

<comment><USER20> There's been no "investor" in the history of investment that made money by buying high and selling low.

<comment><USER21> From my limited understanding of finance, is that not what short selling is? (Followed by buying back at a reduced price).

<comment><USER7> Short selling is also buying low and selling high. You just do them in reverse order. Or quite literally you borrow the instrument, sell it to someone and then buy it lower (or higher if the position went against you) and give back the borrowed quantity.

<comment><USER21> That sounds like conventional "good" investing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Tulips are withering.

</comment><comment><USER23> Now may be a good time to revisit an old adage of investing: never catch a falling knife.

</comment><comment><USER24> I knew I should of withdrew one of my coins when the price reached 1k wouldn't covered my buy in price for 3 coins plus some, o well.

</comment><comment><USER25> If you buy it right this minute - yes, it should grow a little more, and you can make a nice profit on it. But is $600+ the price it will stay at from now on? I'm not so sure. I think it will drop to $350 soon, because there's still a lot of uncertainty in the market right now, and there could be some more European countries coming out with bad news for Bitcoin in the next few weeks.

</comment><comment><USER26> Hahaha.</comment>


Shout – Instagram meets Yik Yak for location specific sharing - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/23/shout-offers-a-new-take-on-location-based-social-networking-by-ditching-anonymity/

<comment><USER2> I think It could become more like hyperlocal twitter. What are you thoughts man?

<comment><USER3> My thoughts are that Twitter is already a niche, and this feels like even more of one.

<comment><USER2> I'd love to know more views around your thought process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This app looks awesome! Lately, I've been seeing so many posts on FB about hanging out and doing stuff locally, but I just ignore them because they're nowhere near me. If people used Shout, they could get more responses because their audience is more focused and not wide open like on Twitter or FB.

<comment><USER5> This comment looks suspicious.</comment></comment>


"Make sure we're winning" - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2012/02/27/make-sure-we-are-winning <comment><USER2> The Android tablet situation today seems awfully similar to the Android phone situation a bit over two years ago.

Remember 2009? iOS was ahead by a wide margin. The HTC Hero had just been released and Android was in that "this is cool, but could go either way" period. I remember considering buying the Hero but holding back, unsure whether the platform would take off.

It did. I don't see any reason why we won't see the same effect with the tablet market. It's just a matter of time.

<comment><USER3> But _what_ was that effect? If you don't determine the causality of Android phones' success, then its hard to apply it to Android tablets. For example, John Gruber speculated today that the reason Android phones have been successful is that when people go to a carrier retail store to get a phone, they get handed an Android (not because they want an Android). Thus, the Android tablet market won't act similarly.

Now, you might disagree with Gruber. That's perfectly reasonable. But his post is illustrative: if you can't state more clearly _why_ Android phones have been successful, you can't state with confidence the same effect will apply to tablets.

[1]<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/02/27/android-tablets>

<comment><USER4> Choice -

a)Phone with keyboard

b)One that will allow you to transfer music without a hefty itunes install

c)Phone with a large screen

d)Clamshell form factor

e)Slider form factor

f)Network effect - android phones are being sold in more places by a larger number of manufacturers. This has an effect in developing countries.

g) Network effect #2 - Till the Iphone arrived on Verizon there were some customers who had no choice but to go Android because what good is an Iphone when you know your home gets lousy coverage from AT&T. Ditto for places where Sprint or T-Mobile have a better network. The mobile network is not completely commoditised - given a particular area usually there is a single network company that provides perceptibly better coverage

h)Rate of change - something new is always launching which keeps the Android hype machine going

<comment><USER3> Sure, but that only reinforces my point. If android phones sell because they have a large form factor or a physical keyboard, I can hardly see how that means Android tablets are going to take off. Maybe you're listing those things because you dont think the success of android phone will apply to tablets?

I'm not convinced that android tablets won't, but it's fallacious to say they will because the phones did, without identifying why the cause will apply to both.

<comment><USER4> I was merely trying to illustrate that there is more to android than customers being fleeced at brick and mortar stores. As for why Android tablets might have a chance -

a) Part of what made the iPhone and the iPod touch such tough devices to compete against was the constraints imposed by the mobile form factor. Down at 600 Mhz on a 4 inch screen software efficiency and well designed software matter a lot more than on a 10 inch screen with a 1.6 Gig dual core chip with a large battery.

b) Form factors - Unless a smaller Ipad comes in.

c) Tablets are largely media consumption devices - either webpages, videos, music, pdfs etc. I dont reach out to my tablet the way I reach out to my phone to be my data connected interface in the real world. I switch it on when I have some time available and I would like to consume some media. At this point I find it easier to consume media on a Android device than I do on an iOS device ( dont need to transcode every single video out there ) and transferring files to the device is easy even on linux. Actually it would be interesting to hear from others if there are differences in app usage patterns between an ipad and an iphone of this is just a personal quirk on my part.

d) 4G - Unless Apple jumps onboard. I forgot to mention this on my earlier post - I use my phone as a data modem all the time and once you are used to 4G speeds, its really hard to go back to 3G.

<comment><USER5> a) Everything that I've heard about the various Android tablets suggests that despite being more "powerful" in absolute terms suggests that there's still sluggishness in a lot of user interaction. That's anecdotal, though. I would argue that well-designed software matters as much on a 10-inch screen as is does on a 3 1/2-inch screen. You can't simply scale a 3 1/2-inch UI to a 10-inch display.

b) This is the only real advantage to Android tablets in the real world, but smaller tablets are what you claim in (c): they're consumption devices.

c) Your use of tablets is as a media consumption device. That's not how the iPad is used (heard about Photoshop Touch?). It's also not necessary to transcode videos if you use tools like AirVideo.

d) Apple will use "4G" (that is, LTE) when the economics (price, availability, and effect on battery life) make sense, just as they did with 3G. Personally, I'll take a little slower speed now for more battery life.

Given what you've posted, I'd suggest stepping back a bit from your assumptions: they're very geek-oriented. Just because you have a lot of video you'd have to transcode doesn't mean that others do; just because you use your phone as a data modem all the time doesn't mean that others do.

I'm quite often surprised at how people use their phones, and I don't think that the iPhone is the right choice for everyone. We as geeks need to start listening to how other people want their technology want to work for them.

<comment><USER4> Could you give your version of why people buy Android devices ?

<comment><USER5> Honestly? I'm not sure, especially when it comes to the tablets.

There are the obvious reasons for phones:

\- Alice doesn't like Apple devices (whether those reasons are valid or prejudice doesn't matter). Phones _are_ as much about personal preference as technical quality.

\- Bob doesn't want to change carriers, and the only smartphones his carrier has are Android devices.

\- Charlie just wants a phone and wants the cheapest device available. Until the 3GS was made available for $0 on contract, iPhones _always_ cost more than $0 up front.

\- Denise wants the cheapest phone off-contract. This is usually going to be an Android device.

\- Eric is a specs junkie and buys things based on specs. He has to have the fastest, biggest, most capacious thing.

\- Fran has been convinced over the years that specs matter, but she doesn't have the technical knowledge to be able to tell the difference between specs that matter and specs that don't. She's also the one who will buy a 15 megapixel pocket camera because she's been told time and again that megapixels matter.

\- Gene genuinely prefers products by {HTC,Samsung,Motorola}. See the discussion about Alice.

\- Harriet goes into the store and asks the salesperson what she should buy. The salesperson (Ian) directs her to his choice in phone—which might be based on the vig he gets, not on any particular benefit of the phone to the consumer. Ian may also have any of the reasons noted above, or he might listen to the customer's needs.

For tablets, the carriers don't matter. Price might matter, but most Android devices aren't doing so well on the matter of price: the top tier tablets are as much or more than the iPad, and the bottom tier Android tablets tend to be crap. The only exceptions to the bottom tier "tending to be crap" appear to be the Kindle Fire, Kobo Vox, and B&N Nook—and those aren't counted as "real" Android tablets in any case.

Personally, I'd only recommend an Android phone if there weren't any iPhones or WP7 phones on a person's carrier—and I'd seriously suggest changing carriers if they could reasonably do so. I can't think of a single reason that I'd _ever_ recommend an Android tablet (or a Playbook) other than _possibly_ the Vox, Fire, or Nook (and even there I'd make sure that the user really wanted a tablet and not just a reader, in which case I'd recommend an eink version). I keep watching and hoping that someone comes up with a good tablet that gives Apple some competition—but it isn't there yet, and I don't see anything happening in 2012 to change that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _I honestly have no idea what Google could meaningfully do about their tablet problems._

Here's my simple suggestion: make Android Market gift cards. iTunes gift cards are HUGE sellers and have become a standard gift, especially for people you don't know well.

Someone with an Android Market gift card will be motivated to figure out how to use the market and will get used to the idea of paying for apps. To me, the lack of a gift card shows a lack of commitment to the Market ecosystem.

<comment><USER7> You really have to back that up with something substantial. I can't see how any logical person would make the connection that android market gift cards being available would suddenly cause people to start buying android tablets. The android tablet problems are far more fundamental than 'not being motivated to figure out how to use the market.'

<comment><USER8> I'm guessing here about a possible connection, although it's certainly not sudden (nor guaranteed to work):

Android Market gift cards => more money being spent buying apps => more incentive for developers to write apps => more great apps => more incentive to buy an Android Tablet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To me there's parallel's here to Windows Phone (and Microsoft in general). Positive reviews keep coming in, the company makes aggressive forecasts, yet the phone doesn't sell. There's a disconnect between what Microsoft thinks and what's actually happening. I'd use the exact same word as Marco and say that it seems that Microsoft hopes to _will_ the product to succeed (and, admittedly, the Nokia deal might just do that).

It's dangerous to be disillusioned because you never correct the problem. In Microsoft's case, it seems largely driven by a lack of vision and serious branding issues. I don't know what the deal with Google is, but they might simply believe in their own greatness too much at this point.

There are countless examples of not realizing how bad your products are, but GM and RIM are probably the most dramatic to me.

</comment><comment><USER10> To me it's mainly a tablet dilemma. Phones are pocket-sized and pack the same features, laptops are bigger and are far more functional and productive. "Just carry a keyboard around with you in case!" Well then why have a tablet at all?

I can't help but shake the feeling that tablets are just expensive toys with value only in the dewy eyes of Apple fans.

</comment><comment><USER11> "More importantly, what _can_ Google do?"

That really goes a bit too far. Oh dear, oh dear, you can almost hear the handwringing going on in Mountain View, because Google are _worried_ (!) about iOS!

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm waiting for the chrome tablet + notebook redux.</comment>


Ask HN: Remote hole and us law - <AUTHOR> Hi, imagine you find yourself in the position of finding one of the biggest remote hole in the cloud of one of the most popular tech company out there. You don't want to make money with it - you just want to solve this stuff with the right person but you know that the size of he topic could be overwhelming the employee behind the security email address and you need to find a high executive to really solve this.
Just write a mail to there security email address and pray that they do there job with already knowing that they will take up to >100 days in he past to react on issues?
Who to reach out or find the right person in the company?
Besides that, I'm not 100% familiar with us law but was the risk from law point of view if you report a remote hole?
Best
S <comment><USER2> If you don't want to deal with the company directly, get in touch with CERT and they'll liasion with the vendor for you.

I, personally, would just post the details to full-disclosure, but not everyone agrees with that.

<comment><USER3> The link to report vulnerabilities to CERT: [https://forms.cert.org/VulReport/](https://forms.cert.org/VulReport/)</comment></comment>


"Most of you steal your software" - <AUTHOR> http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/10/most-of-you-steal-your-software.html <comment><USER2> It's amazing, and frankly stupid, how many people try to justify theft. Sorry guys, regardless of what utopian ideals of OSS you have, and I have them too, you must respect the creator's wishes. If they ask you to pay for the software, then you MUST pay for the software. Anything else is theft.

Let's say you are a freelance developer. Do you think for one second that it would be ok for your clients to let you do all the work, then take your code and not pay you? I mean, knowledge should be free, right? Screw the fact that you built the software with the expectation of getting paid for your hard work.

It's one thing to create something with the intention of sharing it with the world. It's an entirely different thing for anybody to justify stealing what you have done.

<comment><USER3> > Sorry guys, regardless of what utopian ideals of OSS you have, and I have > them too, you must respect the creator's wishes. If they ask you to pay for > the software, then you MUST pay for the software. Anything else is theft.

In a legal sense, this is patently false in every country I know of. Even ignoring the point others have made that theft is not copyright infringement under the law, the assertion is false. Every country I know of has exceptions to copyright law. In the US it's called Fair Use, in many Commonwealth nations it's called Fair Dealing, in Germany it's just called "Limitations on Copyright" (Schranken des Urheberrechts). In every case, the creator's wishes are not absolute.

But more interesting to me is that we have taken a purely legal concept that was completely new just 303 years ago and turned it into a broadly accepted moral imperative. Those with a vested interest have succeeded in tying this new legal concept to an ancient moral wrong, that of theft. And they have been so successful at this, that many people would dismiss the distinction as semantic quibbling. To me, this is a fascinating sociological and philosophical phenomenon.

For anyone else who is interested in this cultural history, I highly recommend "Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars" by William Patry.

<comment><USER2> Good thing I'm not a complete idiot, or I wouldn't know or understand fair use. People tend to forget that fair use is limited in its scope. Unfortunately, a lot of people's idea of fair use is, "I want it, so I'm gonna take it." It IS a moral imperative. It IS stealing. I don't care how you sugarcoat it. In high-school and the first part of my college life, I pirated music and applications with impunity. I justified it every way I could, but at the end of the day, I realized I was stealing -- regardless of what nuanced legal argument I could come up with. It drives me crazy when people say "it's not stealing, it's just copyright infringement," like that magically makes what they are doing better.

<comment><USER4> > It IS stealing. I don't care how you sugarcoat it.

If you're going to alter the definition of "stealing" to cover things that aren't stealing, then why stop there? Why not call copyright infringement "arson" or "murder" too?

Making an unlicensed replica of another person's non-rival good _is not the same thing_ as depriving another person of a rival good in their possession. You can even hold both to be worthy of legal censure without having to advance this disingenuous prevarication.

If you're in favor of strict IP law, do you not see how playing these semantic games actually undermines your credibility and therefore your argument?

<comment><USER2> The thing is, law is nothing more than codified morality. I do believe, in a court of law, that we should make a distinction between theft and copyright. Several Supreme Court justices agree that this is the case. However, when looking and the very core of the issue, absent legal codification, I'm still taking something that isn't mine, regardless of whether or not it was merely a copy. That is where I am coming from. Responsible adults shouldn't need to split legal hairs, we should recognize that we are, at its core, taking what is not ours to take. There is a legal distinction, but not a moral one.

<comment><USER4> The law is significantly divergent from morality, codified or otherwise, and is often itself immoral.

But, that said, when looking at the issue from a purely moral perspective, the difference becomes even more clearly illuminated: again, making a replica of someone else's thing is utterly different from taking their thing away from them. This isn't a hair split in the slightest: the key component of harm that makes theft immoral _just isn't present_ with copying.

<comment><USER5> But you're not compensating them for the time they spent making it. They've spent time to make this thing, and you're taking a copy of this thing without spending a dime for their effort. It's a service. A labor. That you're not paying for.

<comment><USER4> So? You're not entitled for compensation for the time you spend making anything. Your effort is neither a service nor labor done one anyone else's behalf; it's a speculative capital investment, and your risk to bear. If I spend millions of dollars developing a new type of camera film in 2000, and digital cameras make film cameras obsolete before I earn a penny of revenue, that's too bad, but no one owes me anything. Spent a billion bucks building new houses in 2008? Sorry to hear it, but you don't get to tear down other people's houses to restore the value of yours.

And if you say that copying is different from anything else that might diminish your return because you think you already had some inherent right to control whether other people make their own replicas of your stuff, then you're begging the question; your lack of ROI can't itself be the justification for copyright if you make such an argument.

<comment><USER2> As soon as the straw man steps in, I have to step out. Good conversation, but I think we are not gonna see eye to eye here.

<comment> qu4z-2 For those of us following along from home: Care to point out the strawman?

<comment><USER2> Technological innovation in a competitive free market has nothing to do with the original point. Meh, I'm over it. At the end of the day, I feel that copyright infringement is stealing, and other people don't. I am fine with a legal distinction, but I see no such distinction from a layman's moral standpoint.

<comment><USER4> > I feel that copyright infringement is stealing

But laws and policy aren't about feelings; they rely on consistent and precise definitions of terms.

If anything here is a strawman, it's your insistence on equivocating two behaviors which are substantively and observably different in their intentions, methods, and effects, in order to apply the moral censure earned by one disingenuously to the other.

If you want to make a meaningful argument against copyright infringement _in its own right_ , please do so; I'd welcome the productive discourse. But arguing against it by calling it calling it by the name of another thing entirely - without bothering to establish a coherent connection between the two - doesn't constitute a valid argument in the slightest.

Further, my previous comment involved nothing resembling a strawman at all; you offered the position that copyright ought to be protected in order to ensure that the time and labor input into the initial design of a creative work would always yield a return for the creator, and I replied by pointing out that these are capital expenditures, to which no one in any field is entitled a guaranteed return at all.

Do you seriously regard as a strawman my classification of the advance investments necessary to open a factory and the advance investments necessary to produce a film both as capital expenditures, but simultaneously claim that your equivocation of copyright infringement with stealing is a robust and substantive assertion?

> I see no such distinction from a layman's moral standpoint

Then why do so many "laymen" actively assert this distinction?

Again, I have to point out that your methods of discourse actively _reduce_ the credibility of your position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Don't review the letter from today's perspective.

Bill Gates didn't know that his work will spread over the world and he will become one of the richest persons alive.

He didn't know that there will be a huge open source community in the future, where it is normal to develop software for free.

All he knew is that he was working fulltime on something for three years and wasn't payed for it.

For me this letter is just a snapshot of the past with an understandable point of view.

<comment><USER7> Except, the hobbyist community back then was even further removed from commercialisation than the open source market is today.

The hobbyist community back then was based around clubs of people sharing their achievements; the computers they built, software they'd written and any neat tricks they'd invented (like using the electrical interference of the original Altar to play a tune on a radio <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgYhVnmeWrk> ). The hobbyist community was very much driven by sharing ideas and code.

This is why people got annoyed at that letter. It not only flew against everything the community was built around, but also made some heavy criticisms about their members as well.

When you review that letter in the context of the community is was directed at and the time it was written, it seems even more out of place than it does today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a pity that the then Micro-soft did not have copy protection technology - if they had, they might never have established such a strong foothold in the market, and the history of computing would have been quite different.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, they look like they've really been hurting for years now...

(oh come one people, downvotes? You can't tell the OP is attempting humor, and I'm trying to acknowledge that?)

<comment><USER10> From HN Guidelines:

> Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it > makes boring reading.

<comment><USER11> Resist quoting from HN Guidelines. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

<comment><USER10> If you were right, then I would.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> ... and as a result poor Bill has lived in total poverty, only to die of scurvy in a slum. His business died with out trace and he never been heard of since. A tragic story. Yes, bad hobbyists.

Point being, despite all the piracy, there is still some money to be made. The complaint is that such folk are not making enough money. See, Bill should be twice or 3 times as rich. Man, he's really losing out.

Of course then we have to deal with the age old assumption that every person with a pirated copy would have paid for it. Which is, er, optimistic, at best. IMHO, the loss is negligible. All they the copyright owner gets in reality is the satisfaction that not so many people use their product, but those who do pay.

I'm not that happy at hitting Bill with this as he is one of the filthy rich people who actually uses his accumulated wealth for good causes. Which is ideal really.

<comment><USER13> But he wasn't, or anything close to it, when he wrote this letter.

<comment><USER14> He wasn't anything close to poverty either.

<comment><USER15> _He wasn't anything close to poverty either._

OK, if you aren't poor, give me $10K then. According to me, you have enough!

<comment><USER14> That, in 1955 dollars, would be about 1% of the trust fund one of his grandparents established for him.

Still, I think he would resist your offer. What would you do with US$10K?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Bill Gates sure is a great marketer. Igniting this issue in such direct way made people pay attention. No wonder he was able to build MS into what it _was_.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, note that the letter carefully mentions many different products that are available or coming soon

<comment><USER18> Interesting point. Didn't recognize that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yes, this is a famous letter which can be considered a foundation of Microsoft's historic hostility to any open technologies.

<comment><USER17> Its just a letter complaining about a product being pirated. It only shocked people because the idea of end-consumers paying for software was novel then.

<comment><USER19> The point is that it demonstrates the core ideas which Bill Gates put in action in Microsoft. I.e. aggressive IP methodology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There was a good write up of the context surrounding this letter in Steven Levy's book, Hackers ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution)).

It pissed off seemingly everyone in the community and seemed to be against the spirit of what the hackers were doing at the time (writing and sharing code).

I recall another programmer being irritated by the letter and writing his own basic interpreter and asking $5 for it (which was far less than what Gates was asking).

Book is worth reading for the historical context of computing if you weren't around to see it.

####

Edit [Relevant part of wikipedia page]:

Tiny BASIC: Altair BASIC was an interpreter that translated instructions from the BASIC programming language into assembly instructions that the Altair 8800 could understand. It was developed by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the founders of Micro-soft, specifically for the Altair 8800 and it would fit in 4K of memory. Unlike previous hackers and against the Hacker Ethic, Micro-Soft and MITS felt that people should pay for BASIC just like they paid for any add-on card. Many hackers had in fact put in orders for BASIC, but still had to wait for the order to be shipped. During a show put up by MITS, someone got hold of and copied a paper tape containing Altair BASIC.

The tapes were duplicated and passed around freely before the commercial product was even shipped to customers. Gates and Allen did not appreciate this turn of events since they were actually paid commission for each copy of BASIC that MITS sold. Gates responded by writing an open letter titled "Open Letter to Hobbyists" that considered the sharing of software to be theft. Tiny BASIC was a similar interpreter that would fit in only 2K of memory as it supported a subset of the functionality of Micro-Soft BASIC (which itself was a subset of Dartmouth BASIC).

It was developed by Dick Whipple and John Arnold in Tyler, Texas and distributed freely in PCC magazine. Many more people sent in improvements and programs developed in Tiny BASIC to be published. This eventually led to the creation of Dr. Dobb's Journal edited by Jim Warren that distributed free or very inexpensive software in response to Gates' claims of theft. Tom Pittman was someone else who did not take kindly to Gates' words. He wrote a version of Tiny BASIC for the Motorola 6800 microprocessor.

Although he sold it to AMI for $3,500, he retained the rights to sell it to others and decided to charge only $5 for it. He received many orders and even money from people who had already gotten a copy and simply wanted to pay him for his efforts. Pittman also wrote the essay "Deus Ex Machina" on the AI and hardware hackers and what tied them together. Lee Felsenstein and Bob Marsh banded together to create a fully contained computer for an issue of Popular Electronics that they called SOL that sold for under a thousand dollars.

####

</comment><comment><USER21> >Now we have 4K, 8K, EXTENDED, ROM and DISK BASIC.

I guess old habits die hard.

<comment><USER22> Are you referring to the obtuse names?

<comment><USER23> Probably to the tendency to produce _n_ slightly different versions in an attempt to segmentize the market.

<comment><USER24> That actually made sense when a difference of a few KB meant a difference between whether or not you'd be able to fit your own application into memory.

There was at least one early BASIC extension, for example, where you could pick the commands you wanted "a la carte", with number of _bytes_ required for each one of them listed, to pack the ones that were most important for you to fit into a specific size. You'd pay for the size you chose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Imagine if there would've been a way to force 100% of people who got Windows in China, India, and other poor countries all over the world to _pay up_ $100 or more for their copy.

If that would've been at all possible, I think Linux would've had higher than 50% market share in the PC market today. For that kind of poor countries, Windows licenses were and still are prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of their citizens, so if being _forced_ to buy Windows instead of pirating it, I think most would've just gone with Linux, and its adoption would've exploded within a few years, from the moment _everyone_ in poor countries had to make that decision. Therefore software support from the big vendors would've arrived relatively quickly.

Unfortunately for us (and fortunately for Microsoft), there was no way to force people into that decision, so we were left with a Windows monopoly for the past 2 decades.

<comment><USER26> This is the major problem I have while trying to tell people about Linux (and other open-source software). It's hard to argue against "my [proprietary software] copy was free" - when effectively, it was, since nothing will happen to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I read once where Bill Gates predicted that eventually people would buy software and that the hardware would be free. I can't remember where I read it ('Business at the Speed of Light', maybe?) but it stuck with me as just, well, ridiculous.

Anyway, the fact that he says "As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share." kind of makes me wonder how he _ever_ ended up with that thought I mentioned at the start.

And I know it sounds crazy that he would ever think that: that's why it stuck with me I guess.

<comment><USER28> _I read once where Bill Gates predicted that eventually people would buy software and that the hardware would be free. I can't remember where I read it ('Business at the Speed of Light', maybe?) but it stuck with me as just, well, ridiculous._

Have you looked at any carrier's web site recently? Tons of $0 full-featured Android smartphones, and tons of apps for sale (subsidized by service fees, of course).

We're already there.

<comment><USER27> I guess when I read it I didn't think "hardware is free as in you'll be paying for a contract of service where the cost of that service includes the cost of the hardware".

I mean, if we're to be able to redefine 'actual' costs like that, maybe my house is free... it's just included in the cost of my bank sending me a statement every month.

I do see your point, though: it definitely _seems_ that way, but surely nobody can argue that the production cost of one more piece of hardware is more 'free' than that of a piece of software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think he would say now that this letter was rather short sighted. It seems the theft of basic by hobbyists _may_ have lead to the catalyst needed for his software to dominate the commercial PC market some years later. Clearly it wasn't just him developing software for these computers. I wonder how they attributed licensing to it. Or if there even was such a thing at that time.

Funny how some things change, yet stay the same. Glad the OP posted this.

</comment><comment><USER30> I readily grant that there's a huge amount of selection bias to this, but from this remove, it's difficult not to read this as, "pirate all the software you please, we'll still end up as billionaires."

<comment><USER31> Right, if a failed company (even one which failed because of piracy) had a letter like this, you wouldn't be reading it.

<comment><USER30> My only reservation on that line of argument is that, apparently, it "caused quite a stir at the time". But yes, the selection bias here is real enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Such a great precursor to what goes on nowadays with music and such.

<comment><USER33> Except the record labels would rather hand out huge fines and jail sentences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The irony is that Microsoft made it even easier to steal stuff by forcing complete market dominance.

It's easy to steal if everything is compatible and connected i.e the DOS/Windows monoculture.

</comment><comment><USER35> Wikipedia has a pretty extensive article on this famous letter: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists>

<comment><USER36> An interesting line from that article, which I hadn't previously seen:

> _In early 1976 ads for its Apple I computer, Apple Inc made the claims that > "our philosophy is to provide software for our machines free or at minimal > cost"[23] and "yes folks, Apple BASIC is Free"[24]_

<comment><USER37> Joel Spolsky had an interesting article on this idea [1], he said "smart companies try to commoditize their products' complements."

[1] <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html>

<comment><USER38> Interesting how he predicts the reason for Sun demise.

<comment><USER39> Not really a prediction if it's something he was already observing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> "The value of the computer time we have used exceeds $40,000."

Pardon me, but wasn't a fair bit of that Harvard's computing power, ergo not directly paid for by Gates et al.?

<comment><USER41> I would assume that's why it was worded the way it was, instead of "We have spent in excess of $40,000 on computer time."</comment></comment>