IE6 Usage Falls to Under 1% in U.S. - <AUTHOR> http://siliconfilter.com/good-riddance-ie6-usage-falls-to-under-1-in-u-s/

<comment><USER2> For those (like me) who still need to support IE6 for a while again, don't miss ievms (automated installation of IE in VirtualBox):

<https://github.com/xdissent/ievms>

(it recently added support for IE6)

<comment><USER3> Great Project, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the enterprise space, IE6 usage has fallen significantly from Dec 2010 to Dec 2011 according to my own observations, but it's still not near enough zero for my own comfort:

      Dec 2009: IE 6.0 share is 37.3%
      Dec 2010: IE 6.0 share is 15.5%
      Dec 2011: IE 6.0 share is 6.8%

Still, this is a great trend.

<comment><USER4> and just for the rest of the IE figures from this particular site in the enterprise (sorry, not comfortable releasing actual session counts, all I can say it's in the hundreds of thousands of unique users):

      Dec 2009
      IE6 Share: 37.3%
      IE7 Share: 32.8%
      IE8 Share: 13.9%
      Dec 2010
      IE6 Share: 15.5%
      IE7 Share: 35.2%
      IE8 Share: 31.9%
      Dec 2011
      IE6 Share: 6.8%
      IE7 Share: 24.3%
      IE8 Share: 43.5%

<comment><USER5> Is this an internal web site, or one with a broad number of external enterprises (multiple companies) accessing it?

More interesting in the latter case, less interesting if this is the internal wiki in some MegaCorp.

<comment><USER4> External site, accessed by external companies. Granted, we only "support" the products on IE and Firefox, but the usage is still pretty varied, as they all mostly under other browsers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's still over 1% among the ~50,000 sites I track at W3Counter. That said, IE 6, 7 and 8 are all on a downward trend.

If this keeps up two years from now virtually everyone will be on IE9/10, Chrome or Firefox.

<http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php> & <http://www.w3counter.com/trends>

<comment><USER7> > _If this keeps up two years from now virtually everyone will be on IE9/10, > Chrome or Firefox._

And Opera.

<comment><USER8> I like you, you're funny.

<comment><USER7> Huh? The GGP talked about trends. Opera has been at a stable 1 - 2% for years now. Opera usage doesn't appear to be decreasing much at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great, we can use CSS3 transforms and Canvas now, right?

Oh, we still have to kill 3 editions of IE and the xp operations system (too bad, it was pretty good).

<comment><USER10> 3 ? 6 is dead 7&8 are still around and 9 is pretty decent. That leaves two more to go. I wonder if ten years from now IE 9 will take the place of IE 6 takes today...

<comment><USER11> Nope, IE 8 will take the spot of where IE 6 is currently. It's the default browser of Windows 7 whereas one currently needs to update to IE 9.

The best hope to get rid of IE 8 is the same thing that killed IE 6 for good: popularity for the recent version of Windows. If Vista didn't falter the way it did, we would have had less time on IE 6, due to adoption of Vista's preinstalled IE 7.

<comment><USER12> More importantly IE8 is the latest that can be installed on XP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Question really is whether supporting it costs less than 1% of your total revenue. John Resig has said that very little of jQuery source is IE6-specific. That is to say, supporting IE7 and IE8 is a pain in the neck, and IE6 comes along for the ride.

<comment><USER14> Which is why I don't understand the focus on IExplorer 6, as IE 7 is equally shitty and IE 8 is not that far behind.

<comment><USER15> Another major point is testing & debugging. IE6 had a basically useless JS debugger. For IE7 & 8, you can at least use IE8's developer tools to pinpoint a bug and fix it (IE8 comes with IE7's rendering engine built in). With IE6, you're very often stuck looking at Fiddler dumps or binary-chopping lines out of your programming until you've pinpointed the error.

Back when Google Search still supported IE6 as a first-class citizen, I found that very few _lines of code_ were needed to make IE6 work. However, _figuring out what those lines of code were_ could easily take more time than making it work in every other browser. Just the amount of time lost because I accidentally included a trailing comma made me want to throw my Windows laptop across the room.

<comment><USER12> IE6 did not ship a JS debugger at all, actually. You needed Microsoft Script Debugger or Visual Studio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like how ie6countdown.com renders perfectly fine on both IE6 and modern browsers.

I don't like how inaccessible HTML5 and CSS3 techniques are to older browsers. It reminds me of having to upgrade flash.

I like how we try to make sites accessible for the blind, regardless of their usage stats.

I don't like how we seem to throw away 1% of our best possible conversion rates, by fully ignoring 1% of our audiance.

I like how the web is maturing and growing.

I don't like how plain and simple information-providing websites are turning into HTML5 applications, with 100k's of javascript, hashtags and other dynamics.

I believe that in 20 years, sites that were build to render on IE6, will continue to render just fine. Sites that were build using experimental browser vendor-specific code, with AJAX and hashtags might need a special server to render. Is that progress?

EDIT: seems to be some confusion about "Sites build for IE6". I ment "Sites that render on IE6/were build with IE6 in mind". To me that doesn't auto- translate to active-x, MS-filters, conditional rules, IE7.js and CSS hacks, but I can see how others can view that. Anyway, I am clearly playing with fire, by taking these views on IE6. I'll just let this be and not delete it. It wasn't a troll or a flame, but this topic is always a heated one, so best to just let it be.

<comment><USER17> You like sites designed for IE6, but don't like vendor-specific code? Does not compute.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps because I didn't say nor mean both those things. Perhaps also because your parser mistranslates "sites designed for IE6" as "sites using MS-specific code".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how much of that 1% is web developers testing to make sure things still work on IE6.

<comment><USER19> And bots. I notice in my logs, a number of bots report themselves as being IE6, when the behaviour is clearly not that of a normal user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ha - I am part of the 1% for once (for testing, I even have WindowsME boxes).

But seriously - who is making this claim - it's Microsoft, it's "political" embarrassment?

I'd like to know what Google thinks from their user-agent logs.

I bet a good chunk of IE6 user-agents are from bots too.

But IE8 support is now the new "Netscape Navigator 4", admittedly not quite as bad.

</comment><comment><USER21> For perspective -- IE6 was released more than 10 years ago; its successor shipped 6 years ago.

<comment><USER22> It was Windows XP that led to this, and the failed Vista OS launch that took 5 years and noone upgraded. Now in Windows Update Microsoft will force an upgrade silently in the next few months to IE9/10. [http://windowsteamblog.com/ie/b/ie/archive/2011/12/15/ie- to-...](http://windowsteamblog.com/ie/b/ie/archive/2011/12/15/ie-to-start- automatic-upgrades-across-windows-xp-windows-vista-and-windows-7.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> They sponsored the last Hacker News Seattle event and made a big announcement about it then. Everyone was pretty happy to hear, and it was a great time.

Congrats Microsoft for spending so much effort phasing out an old product!

</comment><comment><USER24> Will IE7 be the new IE6, or have most of IE7-users already upgraded to IE8 or higher?

<comment><USER25> What I actually fear to become the new IE6 is Firefox 3.6 (and 4, to a degree). I've seen and talked to an unholy amount of people who flat out _refuse_ to upgrade to the newest stable release, either because they assume (or have been told) that their add-ons will no longer work[1], or because they - for whatever reason - think the new release modell is bullshit[2]. I've rarely come across a reason that really wasn't just either (sometimes willing) disinformation or flat out bullshit.

[1] Which is stupid considering that the overwhelming majority of add-ons need exactly one fix, and that's the version check, which can be disabled with the Compatibility Reporter add-on.

[2] And then proceed to switch to Chrome. Oh the irony.

<comment><USER26> FF 3.6 is at 4% and dropping. People simply won't have a choice but to upgrade once market share gets low enough because developers will stop supporting it. Google will probably stop this year.

Switch to another browser if you don't like the new FF.

<comment><USER27> "Google will probably stop this year."

I'd assume you are talking about Google search? No they won't. 100% guarantee you Google will still support FF3.6, just like Google does, and always will always support IE6. jQuery, YUI, and all the JS libraries will always support IE6 as well. You should never go to any of these major sites and see JS errors & major rendering flaws in legacy browsers. If you do, that is just careless.

The reason I bring it up is because there is a biiiiiiiiig middle-ground of "support", and developers who don't realize this, need to. Legacy users don't need, and shouldn't expect the same experiences, but they still need support. You are still talking about Web browsers here. The Web doesn't have versions.

<comment><USER26> Google Apps: Gmail, Docs, etc.

[http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/our-plans-to- support-m...](http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/our-plans-to-support- modern-browsers.html)

[Update]

Firefox 3.6 is already unsupported.

[http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=3...](http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=33864)

<comment><USER27> I know. If you are talking about some of the most advanced apps Google develops, I'm sure they will cease supporting FF10 & Chrome 20 at some point this year.

I prefaced my post by saying "I'd assume you are talking about Google search?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I love these sorts of maps, but I noticed something unexpected that I'd never noticed before: Japan's IE6 usage is almost six times higher than in the US.

For a country that I usually think of as "high-tech" (and the same place that gave us Ruby), that's not what I would've expected.

<comment><USER29> Wouldn't be surprised if the reason is similar to South Korea's:

<http://sietch.net/ViewNewsItem.aspx?NewsItemID=163>

<comment><USER30> So cant we just support SEED in more modern browsers, look ma its a real specification it even has an RFC and everything :P

Heck NSS supports it so Firefox and Chrome must be good for SEED (<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=478839>)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is it true that IE6 has survived this long mostly due to a few 'go to' proprietary web based apps dependent on IE6 in the medical field? I've heard a few programmers repeat this. Curious if this is just misinformation being repeated.

Anybody have knowledge on this?

<comment><USER32> The State of Michigan is just now upgrading off of IE6. Maybe we were the difference!

<comment><USER31> If so, every programmer in america owes you a thank you basket... full of cash they saved from coding IE6 compatible code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is the headline that so many of us fantasized about just a few years ago. The demise has been so slow that this barely feels like news. But with so many man-hours wasted on MSIE6 support, the headline's a legitimate cause for celebration.

<comment><USER34> The thing is, it was only wasted by those who wanted to be cross-browser. If all you needed to do was work on IE6, there was no extra burden.

<comment><USER33> Sure there was. IE6 support always required 2 to 3 times as much effort to support, compared with any other browser.

<comment><USER34> If you didn't support any other browser, there by definition was no extra burden. In many enterprise shops you had IE and nothing else to worry about. I myself worked on apps where we only tested on IE because that's all the client used.

<comment><USER33> You'd have been working half-days if the only browser you supported was anything other than MSIE6.

<comment><USER34> In fact this isn't true, because one thing that IE did better than any other browser was scriptable async http calls and XML transformation with XSLT in the browser. At the time no other browser could do that. We were using javascript to get XML data from the server using the ActiveX XMLHTTP object, and transforming it client side with XSLT to generate HTML. This enabled filtering, sorting, and different presentations of data all client-side. This was hugely productive compared to imperative-style Response.Write HTML building, and at the time was only possible in IE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Holy crap at 25% usage in China.

Seems like someone would look at that and consider America's advanced usage of the web as a potential competitive advantage, rather than rush through legislation to hobble it.

<comment><USER36> not to ruin it for you, but IE 6 usage is so high in China because China has a bunch of pirated XP SP0/SP1 installs; IE 7/8 is XPSP2+ only, and IE 9 is Vista+ only.

this same piracy is why the Business Software Alliance was originally a SOPA supporter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm glad I don't have to maintain sites anymore which target the chinese market.

IE 6 was a true pain point, but still, I've gained tons of knowledge on how to debug rendering issues.

</comment><comment><USER12> In fact, several countries made the list at around the same time: <http://www.ie6countdown.com/champions.aspx>

</comment><comment><USER38> It really depends on the type of customer you're targeting, but for most web apps and sites these days, I doubt someone still using IE6 is also a target customer for your service.

</comment><comment><USER39> I can't believe how happy this news makes me. I'm smiling ear to ear :>

</comment><comment><USER40> it's about time to let ie6 RIP</comment>


Financial market website Zero Hedge knocked off Twitter over coronavirus story - <AUTHOR> http://news.trust.org/item/20200202180911-1sd4x <comment><USER2> Sounds like they deserved it:

>On Wednesday, far-right news site Zero Hedge claimed without evidence that a scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology created the strain of the virus that has led the World Health Organization to declare a global health emergency. The outbreak has grown to more than 9,776 cases, with 118 outside of China. The coronavirus has killed 213 people, all in China.

>It concludes, "if anyone wants to find out what really caused the coronavirus pandemic that has infected thousands of people in China and around the globe, they should probably pay [the Chinese scientist] a visit." It also lists their email address and a phone number.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I start a small software shop? - max-a

Hi!
I am first year electronic engineering student from Poland. I really like web development, had worked on handful of small projects and I feel I could start doing software for local customers.
I have moved in here six months ago, currently I have no business contacts, except for rather large network of software engineering students.
Dear HN, where should I start to get at least mildly successful? <comment><AUTHOR> Are you sure you want to? What I mean is, are you sure you want to become a salesman rather than a web developer?

<comment><USER2> I think when he says "shop" he means it on the sense that an "auto shop" is a place that makes or fixes cars. So I think he's talking about starting a small bespoke software company.

OP can you confirm this? If so it sounds like you're half way there with your experience!

<comment> max-a That is exactly what I mean. English is not my native language so maybe I was a little bit ambiguous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Where is "here" specifically?

<comment> max-a It's a major city in Poland. Competition here is quite big, however I am not planning on fighting them, obviously.</comment></comment>


Police got multiple warrants to spy Canadian journalist's iphone – GPS included - St-Clock http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/justice-et-affaires-criminelles/201610/30/01-5036027-patrick-lagace-espionne-par-la-police.php <comment> St-Clock I couldn't find an English version yet. Basically, during an internal affair inquiry, detectives found that a police officer had contacted a journalist. They asked a judge to issue several warrants to be able to get DNR (dial number recorder) from the journalist's iPhone and, according to this article, they were able to activate the iPhone's GPS to follow the journalist.

About the GPS: I didn't know it was possible to do this (is the signal transmitted to the carrier?).</comment>


London braced for anti-Uber protests - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27783218

<comment><USER2> Interestingly protest comes right after former first in class Hailo opens up its service to private vehicles (just as Uber)

<comment><AUTHOR> The register has coverage of this one at [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/23/taxi_rage/](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/23/taxi_rage/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you prepare for PM interviews? - <AUTHOR>

What resources do you use and how do you approach them? <comment><USER2> PM as in Project or Product Manager? (there is definitely some overlap though)

I look for a couple things, and ask questions that help evaluate their:

1) Technical background

2) Product instincts & creativity

3) How they've earned leadership

4) Ability to channel multiple points-of-view

5) Ship-ability

</comment><comment><USER3> As an interviewer or a candidate?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking at this more from a candidate perspective both I think having a view from both sides is important. IE - what is the interviewer looking for in an ideal candidate and as a candidate what is the best way to prepare.

<comment><USER3> So there's lots of thing to say. Picking one I'd say have some meaningful stories to tell. Not to recite, but the interviewer will probably ask you some "situational" questions where she asks for you to demonstrate dealing with some specific type of problem in the past. So you need examples. And you won't be able to think of them on the spot. So think of them now. The format some interviewers use is STAR - Situation, Task, Action, Response. Describe what the problem was, what you had to do, what you did and how it turned out.

This is not a strategic suggestion, but a tactical suggestion. But a large number of candidates that I've interviewed don't do well at answering this type of question and it keeps me from giving them a good interview evaluation since I don't really have an answer.</comment></comment></comment>


Winning the inverted lottery - <AUTHOR> http://loy22.blogspot.com/2010/07/it-really-only-happens-to-others-true.html

<comment><USER2> Every day we win the inverted lottery. We just don't notice them all the time. There are an infinite number of ways to die at any given moment, and an infinite number of moments in any finite amount. So, living successfully through a finite period of time is effectively winning the inverted lottery an innumerable number of times.

This happens to us all daily. However, we tend to remember the times where, like in this story, the nearly-avoided death is more obvious.

<comment><USER3> This is my conclusion, too.

Accidents are almost always something very silly, stupid, and something that could just happen to anyone. It only takes a single rock in a slightly wrong position, then your ankle will slip and you fall directly against a lamp post, hit your head, and you're dead.

It is interesting that people don't so much wonder "why did it not happen to me?"—until something happens, and it is then when they're much into wondering "why did it happen to me?".

Basically you need a breath a few times a minute and getting one is largely out of your own hands. And the countless possibilities to get involved in accidents just makes it very easy to build trust in the universe, if you think about it. Nervous about your startup? You'll be just fine, because there are countless of "smaller" things in your life that could fall down before that. And mostly even they don't.

And then again, most people go long stretches without anything happening. I feel that thinking about what will keep them without accidents and what will keep others cracking their heads inevitably leads, and narrows down, to the question of what is your theology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is not as harrowing as the story referenced, and I have a memory of playing with a childhood friend around age 9 with an Erector set. For some reason, we decided to connect the metal parts (don't remember if there was a motor attached) to a nightlight (we moved the bulb). There was a spark and the house went dark. I quickly said goodbye to my friend's parents and learned the next day that we had managed to make the entire suburban block go dark. The teachers at our school heard about it. To be honest, I felt it gave me some sort of notoriety.

But in retrospect it was a really stupid WTF episode. I think my parents didn't let me play with him much afterwards. I should try to look him up on Facebook. He probably won't remember or will claim not to remember. Stupid childhood mistakes that you survive. Memory is a good thing because it can be over-written.

<comment><USER5> He is maybe the author of the blog post :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. It was a very pleasant surprise to get on the HN front page on a first blog post. I must be a lucky guy ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this was just luck, actually. Let's see him do it again.

<comment><USER7> I think that was the point of the story. Did I miss something?

<comment><USER6> Er, I think you missed the sarcasm? Someone needs to invent a font that stands for sarcasm.

<comment><USER7> Sarcasm doesn't work that well over the internet. Especially not in short bursts like tike that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had a friend who actually managed to burn down his parents home as a kid. They ended up moving cities, so I suppose if his original street is ever targeted in a nuclear explosion he can claim the inverted lottery!

<comment><USER9> I know someone who did that too. Now he is a drive time dj on a funny morning radio show. He lists that accomplishment in his bio on the station's website. Talk about making lemonade out of lemons!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there more to this than just a random anecdote? I feel like one of the nobodies that didn't seem to care.</comment>


A/B Test Yourself – Life Experiences You Wish You Could've Tested - <AUTHOR> http://unbounce.com/funny/ab-test-your-life/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the Quantum bogosort algorithm: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogosort#Quantum_bogosort></comment>


Why Are Finland's Schools Successful? - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands-Schools-Successful.html <comment><USER2> These sorts of articles always smack of cargo cultism. First we say "Holy crap, country _X_ is doing better than the US in standardized test _Y_!". Then we pick out all the ways in which country _X_ is different from the US. Then we throw out the ones which we don't like and assume it _must_ be the other ones which are responsible. Therefore, if we hold childrens' hands more then they'll do better in tests and if build a big flat area in the middle of the jungle and wave sticks in the air then a giant metal bird will land and bring us cargo.

The answer to the question of how to improve US education is obvious to everybody... unfortunately the obvious answer always seems to differ depending on whom you're talking to. Teachers' unions will say that the answer is to pay more money to teachers. Anti-union activists will say that the answer is to get rid of teachers' unions. The left will say that we need more redistributive taxation, while the right will say that we need to implement market-based reforms to force schools to compete with one another. And racists will say that it's unavoidable that the US will do worse than European countries, because the US has so many black people.

Problems are relatively easy to solve when political agendas are involved, but once you get to the stage where everybody is simultaneously shouting "This new piece of evidence clearly shows that my political agenda was right all along" then problems have become completely insoluble.

<comment><USER3> You are spot on about the cargo cultism. Ever since the first great PISA- scores, we've been getting hoards of visitors from all over the world, trying to understand what makes our system good.

The problem is, even our own politicians aren't really able to comprehend the reasons. Most politicians aren't able to look at the Finnish system in a way that would question their own political views, so all the statements concerning what makes the Finnish system good are just the same old talking points, with cherry picked details from our system to fit them.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps it would be more instructive to look at how countries improved (or failed to improve) their PISA score than at how good countries do it?

<comment><USER5> Or, as the story suggests, think about why the PISA scores are so important to us when there are many other ways to "grade" educational systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _It's almost unheard of for a child to show up hungry or homeless._

I don't see how this author can fail to make any mention of the vastly different demographics in Finland as compared to the US. Certainly the US system has problems, but acting like the solutions are so easy doesn't help anyone.

Finland has one of the most even wealth distributions in the world. The education problem in the US, as far as I can tell, is mostly in the lower class. So the larger the middle class, the smaller the problem.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_distributi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_distribution_of_wealth)

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER7> I just happen to have watched the documentary mentioned in the article (Waiting For Superman) a couple of nights ago. It found that children from the middle class are just as effected. The issue boils down to the pervasiveness of bad teachers in the system, and an inability to get rid of those teachers and reward/promote good teachers.

<comment><USER8> Waiting For Superman is right-wing propaganda. Here's a really good NYRB article that explains exactly how distorted that movie is. [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth- ch...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter- schools/)

Also, Finnish schools are entirely unionized. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_finland> Ctrl-F "union"

<comment><USER7> I don't want to get into the "right-wing" side of things, as that's overly political. Let's focus on the assertions of the documentary instead.

One of them suggested that tenure is very easy to get. In the article you posted, "tenure" appears exactly twice, neither time doing anything to dispel that notion. Furthermore, the byzantine and kafkaesque "due process" to eliminate bad teachers has been in the news quite a bit the last few years; I had heard of the NYC Rubber Room long before I saw Waiting For Superman.

Perhaps instead of downvoting my comment and appealing to a political agenda -- I have none, and ironically, most of my family are teachers -- it would be more instructive to discuss the actual issues at hand.

<comment><USER9> W4S is an extremely insidious hitpiece on teachers and unions and was universally criticized by most teachers. Like any documentary with an agenda it extrapolates a few datapoints and says, "look, here is your problem, just get rid of items 1, 2, 3 and everything will work".

The kafkaesque dismissal process you allude to is the same in most union jobs. 1: written warning, 2: written warning with training, 3: teacher review board. That's it. The administrator knows this and the teachers know this so I don't see how it is kafkaesque in the slightest. The only way to shortcut that is if the teacher did something illegal like sleep with the students or possess child porn.

I also read the piece on the Rubber Room and the reason why the teachers were there was because the administrators were too lazy to actually start the dismissal process. From the same NYT article I read that some teachers should have been fired but hadn't and others shouldn't be there at all but butted heads with the administrators. They were put there because there was a procedure in place but no one wanted to follow it.

You work at a large enough company you'll get an employee manual on ways you can be fired and the procedure in place to do so. That is what wasn't happening in the Rubber Room case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the interesting submitted article: "Teachers in Finland spend fewer hours at school each day and spend less time in classrooms than American teachers. Teachers use the extra time to build curriculums and assess their students. Children spend far more time playing outside, even in the depths of winter. Homework is minimal. Compulsory schooling does not begin until age 7."

The bit about teachers having time to prepare their lessons is one of the key observations of east Asian schools too.

[http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Gap-Schools-Japanese- Educatio...](http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Gap-Schools-Japanese- Education/dp/0671880764)

<http://www.tc.columbia.edu/lessonstudy/lessonstudy.html>

Schools in east Asia have similar staffing ratios (teachers per enrolled pupil) to schools in the United States, but they have MUCH larger class sizes, with teachers having work periods during the day when they review and prepare lessons with colleagues. That makes the teachers more effective, per teacher, and helps the teachers cope with the larger class sizes, because they teach more engaging lessons. When I lived in Taiwan a decade ago, I had a chance to see in a bookstore some Chinese-language books used by teachers to prepare mathematics lessons. They are unlike ANYTHING available in English, much richer in mathematical content and much more filled with sound, practice-based pedagogical tips than comparable books published in the United States.

Because American schools don't try very hard to engage in best practice in teacher coordination for good lesson preparation, and because many United States school textbooks, especially in mathematics, are just plain lousy, I'm able to make a living as a teacher of supplemental mathematics lessons for children who are already attending their free public schools during other days of the week. In this regard, I'd be happy if the system here changed in a way that put me out of my current job.

Another key fact from farther along in the submitted article: "Applicants began flooding teaching programs, not because the salaries were so high but because autonomy and respect made the job attractive." That explains exactly why I teach in the private sector rather than in the government-operated schools of the United States, which hobble the best teachers and coddle the worst in their employ.

<comment><USER11> American schools not only "don't try very hard to engage in best practice," that sort of thing is often explicitly forbidden. My cousins are teachers in Americorps and preparing their own lesson plans or using outside materials are not allowed under their employment contracts.

<comment><USER12> How old are your cousins? Americorps seems to recruit (only recruits?) twenty- something, recent college grads. The people I know who've gone to work for them were certainly in that age group. Other teachers I know (15+ years of teaching) seem to have a fair amount of freedom in their lesson plans and materials so I wonder if this is an issue with Americorps, younger teachers, or perhaps I've just known some fortunate teachers.

<comment><USER13> Confirming this. The experience of a Americorps recruit is barely comparable to the average experience of a professional teacher. Americorps recruits are sent to the worse schools, partly because those schools cannot afford more professional teachers.

<comment><USER14> "Worse" translates to "urban" or "rural" schools.

Think about what that means. (Hint: It's not a money issue)

<comment><USER2> That black people _and_ white people are stupid? I'm really not sure what forbidden truth you're supposed to be getting at here.

<comment><USER15> The forbidden truth is about _poor_ people ("rural"=white and poor, "urban" = black and poor.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I do not know if it was mentioned in the article as I did not read it fully, I'm Finnish and am sort of tired of reading or hearing about this particular subject, but it is worth mentioning that all Finnish teachers are required to have a Master's degree to qualify as teachers (even kindergarten ones). Since higher education is free (there are no private universities in Finland), the threshold to study to become a teacher is very small, and usually there is quite a surplus of teachers in popular fields, in hard sciences as an example.

Those that select a teaching curriculum in the university spend 1-2 years interning in schools during their studies. Most people end up taking up teaching curricula just because it is a sure way of getting employment especially if one is studying a field in which employment is scarce outside of academia, say, philosophy.

I myself am studying computer science and I plan to enroll in a teaching curriculum should life in academia turn out to be boring, mostly because a) teaching is fun b) it pays relatively well c) a three month paid vacation from June to the end of August is a plus and d) it is a respected profession.

<comment><USER17> > [..] it is a sure way of getting employment especially if one is studying a > field in which employment is scarce outside of academia, say, philosophy.

Just a random observation, but having philosophers with an educational background teaching kindergarten is probably not such a bad thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Finnish teachers make 100% of the national average for their level of education, compared to something like 60-65% for American teachers.

<comment><USER19> That's true but it's not the only problem. Teaching in America is not a high- status profession the way it is in other countries, so people who are capable tend to choose other professions. We need a new cultural value on teaching.

<comment><USER20> Some assertions w/o citation:

That's partially because many parents see school as free childcare and don't understand the value of education themselves. This in turn is because parents are (in general) spending more time away from their children trying to "make ends meet" which itself has to do with consumer culture and living beyond means. It's a complex problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Because they are full of Finns.

[http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2010/12/pisa_scores_sho...](http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2010/12/pisa_scores_sho.php)

<comment><USER2> Wow, if those numbers are true then it sure falls into the "uncomfortable truths" category:

'''

* Asian Americans outscored every Asian country, and lost out only to the city of Shanghai, China's financial capital.

* White Americans students outperformed the national average in every one of the 37 historically white countries tested, except Finland (which is, perhaps not coincidentally, an immigration restrictionist nation where whites make up about 99 percent of the population).

* Hispanic Americans beat all eight Latin American countries.

* African Americans would likely have outscored any sub-Saharan country, if any had bothered to compete.

'''

scuze me, I couldn't figure out how to italicise something when it contained asterisky bullet points.

<comment><USER22> The article specifically mentions how immigrants are helped in Finland.

<comment><USER23> Yes, but there aren't enough of them to affect the statistics. Here's the ethnic breakdown of Finland as of 2006:

      Finn 93.4%
      Swede 5.6%
      Russian 0.5%
      Estonian 0.3%
      Roma (Gypsy) 0.1%
      Sami 0.1% (2006)

Finns and Swedes make up 99% of the population. The first group that historically has trouble in school, the Roma, makes up a whopping 0.1% of the population. If schools can work anywhere, it's Finland.

<comment><USER22> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "All children—clever or less so—were to be taught in the same classrooms, with lots of special teacher help available to make sure no child really would be left behind."

I imagine this would be very frustrating for a child who is considered "clever". By lumping everyone together in the same classroom, the kids who are ahead of the others could quickly grow bored and lose interest. I live in America, and I know that I was bored as hell until 6th grade, where classes started to be filtered based on abilities. While this article focuses on standardized test scores for all students, I would be interested to see data on "gifted" education in Finland using this one-size fits all approach.

</comment><comment><USER25> Another article (<http://finnish-and-pisa.blogspot.com/>, submitted - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2918684>) suggests Finish-Ugric languages give Finnish and Estonian schools an edge in PISA results (and education in general).

The writing is regular, and vocabulary very simple - think "tear sacs" instead of whatever Latin / Greek / German / French derived term you use in English.

I like their right-wing teaching system, which seems to follow the stuff that's got some empirical backing (DI, mastery learning, no retention, etc), but there are other factors.

<comment><USER26>
      I like their right-wing teaching system

Sorry, but what has the Finnish teaching system to do with right-wing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Of course it's easier to teach a smaller homogenous group than a large diverse group.

Doesn't make sense to try to find a one size fits all solution for a problem with a multitude of unique aspects: culture, race, language, income, etc.

In Finland on the other hand it does, because they are all the same culturally, racially, economically and speak the same language.

</comment><comment><USER28> I can't wait for Finns to pop in here to tell us about the dark sides of this success. There must be some. For one, there's a tax rate that would make most Americans, and even most Europeans, choke on their latte.

I'm not sure that's bad, but this article seems to neglect to mention that nothing comes for free. This isn't just "doing it smarter", it's also investing a massive chunk of money.

Additionally, I honestly doubt it's sustainable. The example of the Kosovar kid with a language delay is telling: this will only work if there's only a few such kids in the school at once. With immigration to Finland strongly increasing over the past 5 years, the problem may at some point be more difficult to tackle the "traditional way" when, at least in certain cities and suburbs, half the classroom has trouble with the language. I don't think there's an easy solution to this.

<comment><USER29> a Finn popping up here.

I study at Aalto university, my mom is a teacher and I have thought this stuff a lot.

Dark side of success... What success? Given six million people, who all are smart as hell when 15 year olds, you could assume that there would be at least one university in Finland that would be in the group of 30 best universities in the world. Well, our best is Tampereen teknillinen yliopisto at rank 151. Switzerland has Universite de geneve at 33 while Sweden has Karolinska Institut at 51 <http://www.4icu.org/top200/>

I have heard that Finland has quite cheap engineers when compared internationally, but you can hardly speak of very high class upper education.

Teaching in Finland is far from perfect. I think these scores have a lot to do with language. As Finnish is written phonetically, average child knows how to read and write after first grade. It would be more fair to compare Finnish 13 year old with English speaking 15 year old.

<comment><USER30> Couldn't agree more! English bizantine writing system is a major drag. Sadly a spelling reform doesn't seem possible at the moment.</comment></comment></comment>


The Bad Science Behind Campus Response to Sexual Assault - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-bad-science-behind-campus-response-to-sexual-assault/539211/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Part 1 of this series [https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the- un...](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the- uncomfortable-truth-about-campus-rape-policy/538974/)

starts off with a story that sounds like a modern retelling of To Kill A Mockingbird: A white woman has consensual sex with a black man. Later she becomes worried about what other people will think and accuses the black man of rape. He then undergoes a sham trial and is found guilty and punished. The big difference is that in To Kill A Mockingbird, they at least pretended to have due process giving the accused a lawyer and allowing him to confront his accuser. The modern version doesn't even have a pretence of due process.

<comment><USER3> I see what you mean now, but on initially reading your comment I was under the impression that the man involved was convicted of a criminal offense. Just to clarify for anyone else reading, this didn't happen.

<comment><USER4> He's only expelled from the school and publicly "known" as a rapist, no big deal. But you're right, it's not criminal liability, which is why back when this was still a new thing advocates wanted it to be more than "just" expulsion - [https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/scarlet- let...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/scarlet-letter-would- mark-transcripts-of-college-students-convicted-of- assault/2015/07/14/abec2fea-2a41-11e5-a250-42bd812efc09_story.html)

Which brings us back to - why are colleges making determinations about rape? Like Professor Johnson says from that article:

"If the student is guilty, that's not anywhere near sufficient punishment," Johnson said. "But if the student is innocent, this is a life-altering thing. If they're going to put it on a student's permanent record, they need to do a lot more than they do now to be sure they get it right."

The actual criminal justice system is already horrifyingly cruel on sex offenders, even after they've served their time, and after they've registered on the "informative, not punitive" sex offender registries. Scott Greenfield covers the trampling of civil liberties under the guise of "protecting the children" here - [https://blog.simplejustice.us/?s=sex+offender](https://blog.simplejustice.us/?s=sex+offender). The punishments range from where to live, to whether you're allowed to use the Internet, and those are the _legal_ ones - how well do you think a sex offender reintegrates into society when no one wants to employ them or associate with them?

I don't see any reasons to doubt that, if left unchecked, the college system won't devolve into such a cruel and horrifying state. It's only natural - rapists are almost universally hated, so it's no big deal if we trample on their civil liberties a bit(or a lot).

<comment><USER3> I didn't say it wasn't a big deal. You're reading way too much into my post. I was just pointing out that the term "sham trial" was used in a potentially misleading way to refer to something that was not a trial within the criminal justice system.

<comment><USER5> He said this student didn't even get a sham trial. Why would you even comment on your own reading miscomprehension?

<comment><USER3> He said that there was no pretence at due process. That could just as easily mean a trial without due process (i.e. another sham trial).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You might also be interested in the Ruth Marcus op-ed in WaPo -- acknowledging that things are very broken right now in protecting the _accused_ and actively hoping that Betsy DeVos will help swing the pendulum back.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/betsy-devos-could- ch...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/betsy-devos-could-change- sexual-assault-policy-for-the-better/2017/09/08/893adc04-94ce-11e7-89fa- bb822a46da5b_story.html)

I mean, if Ruth Marcus is rooting for Devos to fix this, I'm guessing things have gotten really bad;

"But the Obama administration's move also prompted an overcorrection at some institutions that failed to do enough to protect the rights of students accused of wrongdoing."

Puts this Atlantic exposee in perspective.

<comment><USER7> WTF? I mean, read this:

> Colleges have adopted definitions of sexual wrongdoing, [Elizabeth > Bartholet, Nancy Gertner, Janet Halley and Jeannie Suk Gersenthey, at > Harvard Law School] wrote, that include "conduct that is merely unwelcome . > . . even if the person accused had no way of knowing it was unwanted, and > even if the accuser's sense that it was unwelcome arose after the > encounter."

That is insane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It isn't that uncommon for bad ideas to take root and influence decision making. And I'd say the core thesis of the article is that a bad idea has taken root ('inconsistencies and gaps in the accusation can be ignored because rape is terrible').

That doesn't seem interesting to me. But what is fascinating is considering the difficulties that have to be worked through to organise a rational argument in favour, essentially, of tightening the standards applied to potential rape victims.

I'll show my colours and say that after the James Damore business, it wouldn't be a shock if the university fired anyone who made the arguments in this article couched in anything but the most mild terms.

<comment><USER9> Anyone daft enough to write manifestos about something as sensitive as the standards of proof for rape is grinding an axe to cause a reaction.

<comment><USER10> Ched Evans is a UK football player convicted of rape and then found not guilty on appeal.

There was a lot written about the case, particularly because the appeal relied on questioning the accuser about her sexual history.

Some lawyers have written about the importance of protecting victims from abusive questioning, while also protecting alleged offenders from miscarriages of justice.

Those barristers and solicitors aren't grinding axes, they're trying to educate an ignorant public. (In this case they had to correct the mistaken impression that "not guilty" is the same as "innocent".)

(I upvoted your comment because I agree that people writing manifestos about rape tend to be grinding axes.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Everytime I read about this issue I wish we had the Scottish 'Not Proven' [0]. Many of these cases are murky and it is impossible to determine guilty or not guilty.

0\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_proven](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_proven)

<comment><USER12> There's a reason they call it the bastard verdict. A system with three verdicts creates an uncomfortable muddying of the presumption of innocence. A verdict that implies "we think you did it, but we can't prove it" might be comforting to a plaintiff, but it's potentially hugely damaging to a defendant.

<comment><USER11> It is a lot less damaging than being wrongly convicted.

The issue with almost all these cases is if the presumption of innocence was applied consistently nobody would ever be convicted. The juries are basically put in the position of trying to determine a binary outcome from an event that is often too murky to allow this.

The wiki article does discuss the positive impact of this verdict on sexual assault cases.

<comment><USER13> >> The juries are basically put in the position of trying to determine a binary outcome from an event that is often too murky to allow this.

If the event is "too murky" then I would argue it shouldn't even be covered by the criminal law (or any law). Let's convict only in cases where it is possible to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt, and leave those ambiguous, murky ones as something to settle between two adults (for lack of better term let's call them "alleged victim" and "alleged abuser").

<comment><USER11> Juries don't get to choose the cases put before them. There is also the minor issue of what is reasonable doubt.

As we have learned from the number of innocent people freed from death row in recent years juries don't always get it right. Let's give them more than a black or white option to a grey world.

<comment><USER13> When the case reaches the jury it's already too late - accused student can be suspended and otherwise punished a long time before that. We've lowered the threshold of what triggers an investigation to such ridiculous level that we are getting a lot of false positives.

Why the universities even need special internal policies about sexual abuse? Why college students cannot be prosecuted according to the same criminal laws as the rest of the society? Why do we need this ideologically biased Title IX personnel, instead of relying on police and DA office to investigate? College students are at least 18 years old - let's treat them like adults, not like vulnerable, stray children.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If universities were serious about reducing campus assaults as well as false accusations it seems as if cutting down on binge drinking would be an awfully good place to start. It seems to be implicated in every reasoned discussion of the subject, this article included.

<comment><USER15> The same author (Emily Yoffe) wrote an article about this 4 years ago, but she was of course shot down with the usual 'victim blaming' misrepresentations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> OK, I've been robbed at gunpoint. Also arrested at gunpoint. And a guy with a knife threatened to rape me, but didn't.

The first two left me very traumatized. The third, not so much. True, I would very likely have been traumatized, if he'd actually raped me.

Still, sex isn't the major issue for me. It's being powerless. But of course, I'm a guy. So maybe I'm just incapable of truly empathizing.

<comment><USER16> Rape often causes feelings of dirtiness, worthlessness, etc that other forms of powerlessness usually don't.

<comment><USER7> I guess.

Many years ago, an ex girlfriend got back in touch, and wanted sex. Just once, it turned out. Then, I was diagnosed with Chlamydia and HSV. And later, I hear from mutual friends that she was bragging about infecting me.

Anyway, _that_ I feel dirty about. Because I will have HSV for the rest of my life. Maybe that was rape, but in a devious way. And I get that forced risk of disease is part of the trauma about rape.

<comment><USER17> I don't know about whatever legal jurisdiction you're in, but in Canada that would be an open and shut aggravated sexual assault case. People have gone to jail for _failing to disclose that they have an STD_ , on the basis that you're not really consenting if they leave out an important detail like that; to _deliberately infect_ someone is far beyond that.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I'm sure that it's illegal now, everywhere sane. But this was a _long_ time ago.

<comment><USER17> Ah, ok. I tend to assume that anything people talk about on HN is fairly recent, since most people on HN were _born_ fairly recently...

<comment><USER18> Really? I fall into the assumption that most people are near my age... and I was not born too recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Emily Yoffe is not an objective arbiter on this topic. She has been writing against first the existence of, and then the response to, campus sexual assault for five years. That doesn't prove her wrong, but she does have an agenda.

I would point to several red flags regarding this article.

1st: If she sought comment from Rebecca Campbell, it's not mentioned anywhere in the piece. An article in a magazine like The Atlantic should include, at the very least (we reached out to Rebecca Campbell, but she declined to comment). (Edit: This is incorrect. She does mention a conversation with Rebecca Campbell near the bottom of the article.)

2nd: All of the people who firmly agree with her in the article are lawyers, some for those accused of sexual assault. The scientists she interviews are more circumspect. She interviews scientists who have doubts and uses lawyers to "prove" she's right.

3rd: She doesn't interview anyone who specializes in sexual assault research or work. There is no quote from anyone defending this theory or its applicability to their work. There are no interviews with people who have claimed this has happened to them, either (or who can say that's not what happened to them).

4th: There's no comment from any of the schools saying they use this research as a major part of their sexual assault prevention strategy. Once again, there's no "no comment" response either.

5th: There's not a single outside link in the piece (who is this band of self- styled experts schools are relying on? Who knows). If you look at Ta-Nehisi Coates's recent article, which is excerpted from a book, there are links, so it's not an editorial policy at The Atlantic.

This is shoddy journalism, and I encourage anyone reading it to take it with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER20> >1st: If she sought comment from Rebecca Campbell, it's not mentioned anywhere in the piece. An article in a magazine like The Atlantic should include, at the very least (we reached out to Rebecca Campbell, but she declined to comment).

This is straight from the article:

>I spoke with Campbell about all this last fall, and in our conversation, she said...

If you're not gonna read the article, you've gotta at least ctrl+f before saying that.

<comment><USER19> I'm sorry, I missed that. I'll leave it in, but I'm wrong about it.

<comment><USER11> Why don't you leave it in and add a footnote to your original post to acknowledge you were wrong?

<comment><USER19> Done.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


While many startups need less money to start, they still need money to grow - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/07/some-thoughts-on-the-seed-fund-phenomenon.html

<comment><USER2> I hate it when people put together charts (especially with labeled axes, clearly marked data points, etc.), and then say this:

 _This is an entirely theoretical chart. There is absolutely no real data behind this chart. That said, it does reflect our experience investing in about thirty "web 2.0" companies over the past seven years._

</comment><comment><USER3> But, if they have a business model from the start, they need less money to grow.

</comment><comment><USER4> these numbers aren't correct.

FourSquare didn't grow to 2m users on $1m. Last month before they publicly closed their financing, they had 25 employees and were expanding ([http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/28/checking-in-to- foursquare-a...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/28/checking-in-to-foursquare-a- look-inside-the-startup-video/)). Maybe Dennis used his own cash but it certainly cost more than $1m.

</comment><comment><USER5> The Foursquare example is great, they got traction first then went for a seed round. It's a helluva lot easier to raise money that way.</comment>


The Flare-On Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://www.flare-on.com/

<comment><USER2> This seems like a really bad idea - a link to download a potentially malicious .exe from a group of malware researchers. Or is this a test to see if anyone is crazy enough to run it?

<comment><USER3> The instructions say to run it in a virtual machine because some of the challenges may be malicious.

<comment><USER4> It is actually the "terms and conditions" (which people are far less likely to read than the instructions (which they are also likely to skip)) that say that.

I hope (but don't suspect) that they ran this by a lawyer for potential liability analysis should their test malware do something particularly bad.

<comment><USER3> I doubt the first program does anything malicious, and you have to crack that one to get to the next one. Hopefully they designed the challenge so that you really have to know what you're doing before you get to anything bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having just reversed and bypassed licensing (my trial had run out and I was waiting for them to send me my license key having just purchased it) my first piece of software (ILSpy decompiling a DLL and recompiling) I think I'll give this a crack. I've created hacks for games which required a little bit of reversing with Cheat Engine's disassembler in the past, so I think this'll definitely be a challenge!</comment>


Apple, Google Launch Covid-19 Notifications Without Need for App - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-01/apple-google-launch-covid-19-notifications-without-need-for-app <comment><USER2> I wonder how you would register a positive case, since every public health authority has a different system for doing that part. I suppose you just have to download the app in that case?

<comment><USER3> It seems to not require an app. Apple calls this an App-less experience -- as if having an app was the still supported but the legacy way. In their description of "step 5" at the below link, users can enter an eight digit code or follow a url to inform their phone of an infection.

[https://developer.apple.com/documentation/exposurenotificati...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/exposurenotification/supporting_exposure_notifications_express)

<comment><USER2> Ah, thanks. I was under the impression that this was something that each contact tracing app set up separately, but I guess not.</comment></comment></comment>


EA Joins the Sony EULA bandwagon - <AUTHOR> http://www.ngohq.com/news/20584-eas-new-user-agreement-bans-lawsuits.html

<comment><USER2> The legality is not even the point; the point is to weed out as many people as easily as possible from even trying to sue.

If there's the slightest doubt as for whether you can even sue you'll be fighting on two fronts: first against the question of whether your lawsuit might be void and then the issue you're suing for itself.

Lawsuits are PITA and lawsuits for the sake of just suing are doubly so. Everybody knows it. It's just logical to try to scare people off unless you subscribe to the school that tries to minimize legal hassle by not giving too many reasons for people to sue you. But still some assholes will if you operate in litigious cultures.

</comment><comment><USER3> Has the legality of these sorts of things ever been tested? I can easily imagine that the courts wouldn't actually stand for the idea that someone can throw away their right to sue by clicking on the bottom of a thirty-page ALL CAPS agreement.

I'm not even sure whether someone can waive their right to sue by signing a single sheet of paper labelled "Waiver of right to sue".

<comment><USER4> It's not a waiver of a right to sue, or any disclaimer of liability. It's an agreement not to be in a class action lawsuit. Some of them can also force you to use an independent arbiter instead of suing. But wither way, they can still be held accountable.

<comment><USER5> Forced arbitration clauses, with an arbiter of the companies choosing, are in no way "holding them accountable". They are pretty much the definition of an unjust kangaroo court.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Of course, the real question is: is this legal? Not just in the sense of whether EULAs in general are enforceable, but whether one can really give up their right to sue with a clickthrough.

</comment><comment><USER7> Stopped reading as soon as I hit "civil rights"; the second sentence.</comment>


Erlang Doesn't Fit The JVM - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.hypotheticalabs.com/?p=452 <comment><USER2> _At it's heart the JVM is designed to run OO languages very efficiently. This is why languages like Ruby and Python are (mostly) easily ported to the platform...

However, the JVM is less suited to running non-OO languages. Languages like Erlang, Haskell, and Scheme provide features, like tail recursion, closures, and continuations, which are not prominent in the mainstream OO world the JVM targets. They depart far enough from the OO model to make the JVM a poor platform choice._

That's strange, because all of the Smalltalk VMs are capable of closures and many of them can do continuations, yet Smalltalk is often cited as one of the purest OO environments. (I'm also fairly sure that tail recursion can be done as a compiler trick.)

That said, there are real limitations of the JVM. Most Smalltalk VMs can be targeted by a Java compiler to do a dandy job as a JVM. It's much harder to target Smalltalk for a JVM, unless you limit the capabilities of the environment. (Particularly runtime compilation.)

<comment><USER3> I get the impression that Smalltalk is very late-bound, whereas Java is sort of half-late-bound[1]. Late binding enables you to do pretty much anything.

[1] For example: in Java, methods with the same name but different argument types ("overloaded") are statically bound; whereas in Smalltalk, they are dynamically bound. Java dynamically binds methods with the same name and same argument types that are defined in a subclass/implementation ("overridden"). Sounds like a performance tradeoff to me. (Is Smalltalk performance C-like or Python-like?)

<comment><USER4> smalltalk is generaly slow, and it has the same calling system as ruby.

in smalltalk, methods with the same name don't exist. every method on a object has an unique selector. The selector plays exactly the same role as the signature in java there is no difference on this aspect.

<comment><USER2> _smalltalk is generaly (sic) slow_

In what context? I've seen implementations of block encryption in Smalltalk that ran 3% faster than a DLL written in C! You wouldn't want to do heavy numerical integration utilizing lots of double precision floating point in Smalltalk, but for a lot of the sort of programming I do, several of the available Smalltalks are very snappy and responsive.

<comment><USER4> No, if I say "generaly" I don't give context, sorry. Don't answer to a rule of the thumb with anecdote.

More specificaly, _on the same algorithm_ :

It's generaly slower than C/C++ (because of the method calls and the tagged arthmetics), unless you use the GC against the staticaly compiled code and slow allocator, but you need special cases. C/C++ "generaly" have faster method call.

It has few chances to be faster than java/.net who have the static types to get longer monomorphic specialization chains appart from corner cases, and generaly better GCs. And those can do deoptimization if the profile change, it's been a long time I left smalltalk, but the last time I checked VisualWorks couldn't.

<comment><USER2> In 11 years of Smalltalk IT consulting, I have _never_ run up against the _message send_ being a performance issue. For me, it's accessing the disk, the database, middleware, poor design with regards to network latency, or poor algorithm design.

<comment><USER4> I take your message, and change the "Smalltalk" by any other language, and I get a generic excuse for any language.

You can take a prominent ruby website, they will never admit ruby is slow, they cache everything everywhere to do the trick and then blame the algorithm too. Where on a JVM/.net platform the guys could recompute the same stuff 300/s without even needing to think about it, and still having the IO as a bottleneck. The same algorithm would'nt even be necessary in the first place.

BUT there are actually great differences in execution speed (or memory consumption) in languages _for the same algorithm_.

When your language pales in the benchmark, then you have various choices : \- dismiss the bench as not "real life" \- rewrite the algorithm to bank on the strength of your language (for smalltalk I would bet on the GC) \- count the lines of code (readability is not an objective metric so you can kill it for free). "Yeah but mine is more maintainable". \- admit that this is one weakness of your language and learn other languages for the day you'll need them.

I'm not dismissing your experience (far from it, actually I tend to like "slow languages" too). I've worked with smalltalk and some friend did crazy stuff with it performance wise, I did crazy stuff in java too.

But \- smalltalk have a slow message dispatch time \- ruby have slow message dispatch and no real GC \- java have too big memory footprint and is too verbose \- O'caml and haskell have unreadable type error messages when you play with inference. And they are statically compiled. \- etc.

perfection doesn't exist, live with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> first class closures are not a JVM problem, but a language problem. Moreover, closures (lexical closures) exists in java itself: an annonymous inner class captures (well, on demand, for perf reasons) all the lexical terms visible at the point of use.

the tail call is a bytecode security problem. Looks like this problem has been solved and will be merged.

<comment><USER5> Anonymous inner classes aren't really closures in the more traditional sense, since they require that the captured variables be final; that makes them more restricted than closures generally are in other programming languages. That might not be a problem for Erlang given its write-once variables, but it is a problem for other languages.

We've been working on generating JVM bytecode for our in-house language, which does support a less-restricted version of closures, and we work around that by wrapping closed variables in one-element arrays, though you have to do for both the initial declaration and on every reference to that variable, even outside the closure, which gets really annoying when the closed variable is something passed onto the stack as a function argument, and probably in other cases I'm not thinking about right now. It's definitely workable, it's just messy and incurs more overhead than is ideal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel your pain with java serialization.

The fact that you cant serialize exceptions to notify systems connected to a JVM that something blew up is just insane.

All objects should be able to be serialized (in binary) from one system to another as long as JVM versions and class libraries match... end of story.

<comment><USER7> They can... you just have to do it yourself that's all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Isn't LLVM a more interesting universal machine to target anyway?

<comment><USER9> Isn't part of the reason for targeting the JVM the ton of libraries you get for free?

<comment><USER10> How many of them fit idiomatically into the language you choose to use on the JVM?

<comment><USER11> Clojure does a good job of introducing new idioms specifically for Java support.

From their docs:

      (doto (new java.util.HashMap) (.put "a" 1) (.put "b" 2))
      (.. System (getProperties) (get "os.name"))

<comment><USER10> So, in other words, it doesn't fit into preexisting languages idiomatically. You want to introduce new idioms into Closure to make it integrate better with the JVM.

That's fine, but it also means that if you want to do a direct port of, say, Ruby or Python or Erlang, you'll have several rather large warts compared to new languages designed to run on the JVM and use the Java class libraries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Erlang's VM is unmatched scaling above 16+ cores (for example process migration [http://unlimitednovelty.com/2009/01/cutting-edge-of-vm- desig...](http://unlimitednovelty.com/2009/01/cutting-edge-of-vm-design.html) ) this is something that the java vm hasn't even begun to look at.

<comment><USER13> That is untrue.

Check <http://blogs.azulsystems.com/cliff/> for really impressive work on jvm that works on 800+ cores ... oh yes, and you have constant time garbage collection.

<comment><USER12> Azul's system is proprietary and only runs on special hardware. The openjdk that's in common use has had essentially no work done on green threads.

And from your link _"we have a lite microkernel style OS; we can easily handle 100K runnable threads"_ it's not the VM that's handling it.

<comment><USER13> You are correct, I was pointing to cliff click's blog as he his giving back to the community.

Look at [http://blogs.azulsystems.com/cliff/2007/03/a_nonblocking_h.h...](http://blogs.azulsystems.com/cliff/2007/03/a_nonblocking_h.html) : an implementation of a non blocking hashmap _without lock_ that scales beautifully on a bunch of cores without the need of their hardware (<http://sourceforge.net/projects/high-scale-lib>)

As per actor on the JVM open source projects are blooming around such as <http://code.google.com/p/actorom/>.

Alex Miller did a nice review here of the solutions out there: [http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-03-2009/jw-03-actor- co...](http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-03-2009/jw-03-actor- concurrency2.html)

<comment><USER12> I remember his hashmap when he published it, state machines are a great way to do concurrency.

The Erlang way of handling concurrency is to spawn millions of "processes" (threads) obviously these can't be hardware threads so Erlang is hitting problems OS schedulers would handle (or not be able to handle) in the JVM's case.

I would argue that the JVM is eventually going to have to handle the threading itself if it's to support any actor based programming. OS schedulers have other uses they need to be fast for and hardware threads will always have higher overhead. Python's Stackless is perhaps an example of the amount of work it would require.

<comment><USER14> You might want to take a look at e.g., Scala and how it implements actors on the JVM.

It's basically doing a MxN actor to thread-pool scheduling.

<comment><USER12> The dispacter is probably a bottleneck, looking at the paper <http://lamp.epfl.ch/~phaller/doc/haller07actorsunify.pdf> I can't really tell how it's implemented.

How does the Scala run queue work? eg have a look at the Erlang article I linked to in my first post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> SISC targets the JVM with tail call optimization with some trickery. <http://sisc-scheme.org/>

</comment><comment><USER16> Why would you even bother doing this in the first place. Erlang's VM is one the things that makes it interesting, Not the syntax.

The only reason I can see is the OTP libraries, but then again, why not just use the Erlang VM as you get so much great stuff for Actor based concurrency out of it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Ruby language on the Erlang VM -

[http://on-ruby.blogspot.com/2009/03/reia-new-dynamic-languag...](http://on- ruby.blogspot.com/2009/03/reia-new-dynamic-language-on-erlang-vm.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> If you want a VM that's totally geared towards "dynamic languages" you should definitely check out Parrot ( <http://www.parrot.org/> ).

<comment><USER18> Erlang isn't a dynamic language in the sense that Parrot is optimized for, either. Erlang-on-Parrot wouldn't be able to use any other libraries developed for the Parrot ecosystem as they would depend on mutable languages any better than it _already_ can (it would still have to go through the Erlang ports), eliminating a major reason to go to a given VM, and the Parrot VM optimizes a lot of cases that Erlang doesn't care about while missing out on many it does.

Erlang's data structures are not manifestly typed, but in most other ways it is a static language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> He doesn't mention the Erlang scheduler and processes. Shouldn't be that hard to hack into the JVM, but as I've commented elsewhere, that's only half the battle...

<comment><USER16> Yah process scheduling is trivially easy...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If these are real limitations of the JVM, what does that say about Clojure?

<comment><USER21> I barely know Clojure, but from what i know it has a workaround for the lack of TCO: <http://clojure.org/special_forms#toc10>

<comment><USER14> This isn't a complete solution but does handle a lot of cases that non-FP developers will write.

Alas, even though there is TCO in MLVM, it doesn't look like that will get through the JCP in time to get into Java v7. :-(</comment></comment></comment>


FBI flight hacker claims queried by security experts - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-32780513

<comment><USER2> Last year's DEFCON had a talk about this that is worth watching: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy3nXXZgqmg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy3nXXZgqmg)

tl;dr The systems are too separate for hijacking from the entertainment system to be realistic.

</comment><comment> X-Istence It is rather shocking to me that people actually believe these systems to be secure. Flight control systems are old and outdated, and new stuff is bolted on with no regard to security what so ever.

Chris is a friend of mine, and I find it very disheartening how much the security community has taken the FBI's warrant at face value, and condemned Chris when he hasn't even had a chance to respond.

The security community itself knows how vulnerable all these other systems are, so why is it such a surprise that airplanes are also vulnerable?

<comment><USER3> I think people are having a hard time with the idea that someone could posit that there is a security vulnerability and then actively tamper with the IFE systems while in flight. I know he says he hasn't done that, but I'm not sure I believe that story.

If he did in fact try to inject traffic into the network that would affect the flight management computers, then I think he's a fool and a criminal.

Highlighting a vulnerability in this fashion is like setting fire to a home to prove it really is flammable. Claiming that you only want to improve fire safety is just a canard. We all know that there are vulnerabilities in every system we use today and it's good for us to RESPONSIBLY work towards improving them. I'm just saddened that this person didn't think anyone was taking him seriously enough that he had to take matters into his own hands.</comment></comment>


SSDs cost half of what they did in 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/index/~3/j1XNJ40m48I/

<comment><USER2> Interesting comment about the minimum size of flash storage being 18nm here: [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/why-ssds-cost-half- of...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/why-ssds-cost-half-of-what-they- did- in-2011/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+All+content%29)

Can anyone provide more information on the nature of that limitation?

I did find reference to this article from 2 years ago: [http://features.techworld.com/storage/3211959/is-nand- flash-...](http://features.techworld.com/storage/3211959/is-nand-flash-memory- a-dying-technology/)

It just seems like it's talking about the usual ongoing issue of, "we're near the cutting edge of lithography techniques", but that's kind of a given (you always build on the best lithography method that can scale, which tends to be fairly close to the best lithography method period). We've been in a similar state for CPU's and RAM for decades now. Is there something different about SSD's?

<comment><USER3> It's different this time (and I cringe saying that), because we're rapidly approaching fundamental limits to scaling down silicon.

The concerns in the past have been mainly to do with lithography; eg, when the feature size of the silicon went below the wavelength of the light we were using, we had to make masks that utilized difference patterns. This is a mere manufacturing problem.

But now we're getting to fundamental limits. Even if we had the ability to place the atoms however we wanted them, there's an intrinsic limit. You can't make a transistor out of half an atom.

We already hit a wall with frequency; for the longest time, it looked like speeds would go up and up. It's not an apples to apples comparison, because the Pentium 4 had a long pipeline, but a 3.8ghz Prescott was released in 2005 - which is exactly the maximum turbo frequency of the 2011 Sandy Bridge 2600k I'm typing this now on. Ivy has it beaten by just 100mhz.

Now, that's not to say that computation will stop progressing. But it's not going to look like last year's CPU just smaller for much longer; some pretty fundamental changes are going to have to be made. Dynamically reconfiguring memristor circuits are what excites me, but it's just as likely to be something else instead.

As far as flash memory in particular goes, I'm no expert, but cell durability is falling substantially with each shrink (on average; Intel bucked the trend with their 25nm flash), and so the usable limit to feature size may come more quickly than with standard transistors.

But the industry has managed to push through walls that seemed just as intrinsic before, so I wouldn't bet my life savings on it.

<comment><USER4> > We already hit a wall with frequency

This is true, but the way you wrote it ignores the fundamental problem - it's not we can't make transistors switch any quicker, it's that doing so causes such an increase in temperature that we risk damaging the device. That's why you can read about overclockers using things like liquid nitrogen to run chips at 8 GHz.

Cooling mechanisms like microchannel cold plates and, as we continue with 3D-ICs, interlayer cooling, can allow for higher frequencies.

<comment><USER3> I don't think better heat extraction would really change that much for today's CPUs (certainly when we head towards 3D chips it will become critical).

Gate delays are smaller at low temperatures; those LN2 overclocking runs aren't just fast because of efficient heat dissipation from the CPU, they're fast because the chip is being actively cooled to below room temperature.

So while heat dissipation is a factor, we're also close to the electrical limits as well. Otherwise water cooling (replacing the stock heat spreader) would get closer to LN2 runs. ALUs run at higher frequencies than the rest of the chip, but they're designed to do so (you'd have to shorten the gate pathways like a P4 to do that to the entire chip).

But ultimately, performance per watt is almost universally optimised for these days. It's critical in servers, laptops, mobile phones - The demand for 6ghz, 300W CPUs would be limited to workstation chips, even though we could probably engineer them to be reliable.

Power consumption is always going to increase super linearly with respect to frequency, probably as a fundamental property of any method of computation we use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a nice table of SSD prices on Newegg: <http://edwardbetts.com/price_per_tb/ssd/>

SSD is definitely one of the best upgrades I've ever purchased for a computer.

</comment><comment><USER6> What I would like to know is what are the expected future prices? Are they expected to continue to fall, level off, or is this expected to be a temporary low?

</comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone data on the price development of Apple SSDs?

Since newer Macs doesn't allow for an SSD change, the initial SSD price is very important. I suspect that the fact that you have to max out your SSD on purchase if you want to use your Mac for a longer time, SSDs in Macs have actually become more expensive.

In the past, you could buy a Mac with a small SSD or even a HDD. After one or two years, you could replace your small SSD or your HDD with an up-to-date SSD and could usually benefit from lower storage prices …

<comment><USER8> Which newer Macs do you have in mind?

<comment><USER7> MacBook Air and the latest MacBook Pro with Retina display and of course the iMac.

For iMac and MacBook Air, upgrade options are available but they are pricey and non-trivial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As someone who bit the bullet and bought at 256g SSD in January, yes, I've noticed this rather dramatic drop recently. I paid about $420, and could get a 512 gig for $399, IIRC, going by last week's pricing. Ugh.

I wished I'd waited a bit, as switching _again_ to a 512 would be... I dunno - not sure if it would be worth it again, but I _am_ running out of room a lot on a 256.

<comment><USER10> Where did you find a 512 for $399? I haven't seen anything near that

<comment><USER9> Yes, as the other poster said, it's crucial:

[http://www.compusa.com/applications/SearchTools/search.asp?k...](http://www.compusa.com/applications/SearchTools/search.asp?keywords=512+ssd)

But others manufacturers sub 500g are coming down: [http://www.compusa.com/applications/Category/guidedSearch.as...](http://www.compusa.com/applications/Category/guidedSearch.asp?CatId=5298&srkey=ssd)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The perceptual performance increase from a SSD in a laptop or a desktop is tremendous, and there's no going back once you make the leap. Hopefully, HDDs will shortly follow DVD-ROMs down the memory hole for portables.

<comment><USER8> Yo say it like you hate having an option to have either. I like options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> SSDs bring a different set of assumptions to the table than spinning hard drives. What would an OS designed from the ground up in the world of SSDs and the cloud look like?

<comment><USER13> SSDs are fast, but they're still orders of magnitude slower than RAM in terms of latency. Keep in mind, back in the day, the spread between dram and spinning disks wasnt as bad as it is today.

The next great performance challenge may be the so-called "memory wall" wrt the performance of CPUs vs the performance of RAM. Id be curious to see what that would do to performance if it underwent the same dramatic improvement as nonvolatile storage.

<comment><USER3> We may actually see them both happening at once; one of the things R. Stanley Williams talks about in his excellent memristor talk is a method they developed for stacking hundreds of chips on top of a processor, which he says may end up providing just as much benefit as the memristor itself.

The possibilities that could be opened up by having a terabyte or more of extremely fast non volatile storage attached by a bus as large as you care to make it directly on top of a CPU are mind boggling.

Then when you consider that you can use them as FPGAs for computation instead and dynamically reconfigure them... wow.

Memristors are only a year or two away from commercial availability, though it will probably be a while after that until they live up to the hype. We live in exciting times.

The talk:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> And harddrives cost exactly the same as they did in 2011 (probably depends on which drive you look at, a 3 TB drive cost about the same and a 4 TB drive costs more now).

[http://www.isuppli.com/Memory-and-Storage/News/Pages/Hard- Di...](http://www.isuppli.com/Memory-and-Storage/News/Pages/Hard-Disk-Drive- Prices-Not-Expected-to-Return-to-Pre-Flood-Levels-Until-2014.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER15> Where are Seagate and WD SSDs in the market? Why are they sitting on the sidelines while Intel, Samsung, and smaller players eat up market share?

<comment><USER16> Classic innovator's dilemma.

(They actually have SSDs, but they're not competitive in the consumer market. See [http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/solid-state- hybr...](http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/solid-state-hybrid/) and <http://wd.com/en/products/solidstate/embedded/> )

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> And they're still too expensive.

Getting a rMBPro with 768GB is $1000 more than the 512 option. Thats just absurd

<comment><USER18> Apple charges way more than market rate for storage and memory upgrades. A stick of memory that costs $40 on Newegg might cost $200 from Apple.

In the past the sensible option was to buy a Macbook with stock memory / storage and upgrade it yourself, but of course that's no longer possible with the rMBP. Still, that says no more about the actual cost of SSDs than the price of a hotel room says about beds. :)

<comment><USER19> I love this analogy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems flash drives go for about $1 a gigabyte or less. If the prices drop in half twice more they will be down to the $0.25/gigabyte I was paying for hard drives when I first started tracking prices in 2008. At that time, SSDs were $9.38 per gigabyte.

</comment><comment><USER21> So where's my 1TB solid state disk to replace the 256GB one I've been using in my laptop for 3 years now? It seems as though all innovation in storage stopped in 2009, and we've been coasting ever since. And don't even mention there's still no 4TB hard disks. My blu-ray rip collection isn't getting any smaller and our storage systems aren't getting better anywhere near fast enough.

<comment><USER22> You don't need a solid-state drive for your movies. That's just wasteful. Mechanical hard drives are fine for data that will only be read, and only sequentially. Plus, they're still 10x cheaper, even given the currently inflated hard drive prices and record low SSD prices. There simply isn't a market for a 1TB consumer SSD. What you're really looking for is a hybrid drive with 64+ GB of Flash.

EDIT: Also, at the end of 2009, TRIM support was just hitting the market, and SandForce-based drives were just being announced. Since then, TRIM has become universal, as has 6Gbps SATA support, and most controllers have been through at least one other iteration. SSD caching has also hit the market in a variety of forms.

<comment><USER17> Excuse me, but some of us don't like carrying around externals with our main laptops because we happen to have more than 100 songs in itunes.

<comment><USER22> Hence, hybrid drives. Better yet, save yourself some money by ripping out the optical drive in your laptop and use that space for a second internal drive.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Don't be evil  - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2009/06/dont_be_evil.cfm <comment><USER2> The thing i don't like about articles like this, is that there seems to be a cadre of haters out there explicitly bent on tearing Google down unjustly.

There are things that i criticize Google upon (the capriciousness of algorithmically generated decisions, say on flagging Google Checkout accounts), but the stuff that articles like this point out are intentionally bad indicators.

The fact that you are being sued, does not indicate that you are a monopoly. It means that someone has enough political cover for the government to go after you. Both Microsoft and Google are large tech companies, and the fact that their battles are being borne out in government is not a surprise.

It also does not mean that Google is guilty of bad, abusive, or monopolistic behavior. If someone were to invent a better ad system, and/or a better search engine... i don't see Google going out and trying to stomp on the competition.

<comment><USER3> Well... this particular article is not hating, it's pointing out that Google is attracting attention from regulators, and that it is talking _very_ disingenuously about its market position.

I have competed head-to-head with Google in the ad market, and they don't play nice. Neither does Yahoo. (Funnily, MSN was the nicest in Latam because they were the weakest player.)

The problem is not that Google is evil. The problem is that when you have overwhelming marketshare, every time you shift your weight someone gets crushed. We expect and eventually demand that monopolists be more civilized and careful than everyone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> All you need to do is watch my parents use the internet (Google search and adsense laden sites) to realize that a HUGE portion of Google's revenue is based on tricking non-geeky folks into clicking on things that they didn't know were ads. While the right-hand ads are somewhat clear, the top ads (nearly white, right near the #1 result) are NOT and novice users when routinely click on that ad when asked to click on the first result.

Adsense advertisers are constantly rewarded for walking the fine line between blending in and just outright tricking their users.

While maybe this isn't outright EVIL, it certainly is disingenuous.

<comment><USER5> The top results aren't just ads, they're still relevant results and sometimes it's just another good result in the list. It doesn't cost the user anything to click on it, so I don't exactly follow why this is evil trickery...

<comment><USER4> Wait, what? A paid ad posing as content isn't trickery?

First of all, that argument would extend to adsense... What's wrong with a web publisher making ads look like legitimate content?

It'd also extend to more search results... What'd be wrong about having the first 10 results be ads instead of the first 1-2?

Oooh, it'd also extend to paid editorials. How about I pay the New York Times for a positive review of my company? Should that be labeled as an ad?

The point is that there is an implicit promise with content that it's there based on its merits rather than based on who paid to have it there. There's no victim if the ad is approximately as relevant as an organic search result-- but if it's going to the highest bidder, there's no guarantee that this is the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recently tried cuil again. When I first tried i, I was very disappointed, but now I find it quite nice. Not on par with Google yet, IMHO, but not much worse.

And they respect privacy. They don't even keep IP addresses. (Except, I just looked at their privacy policy and they say that may change in the near future. That would be disappointing.)

And I like the fact that sites don't have to be popular to get to the top of the search, just relevant...

<http://www.cuil.com/>

</comment><comment><USER7> But then again, Google's argument (saying they only influence 2.66% of the advertising market) is also correct, given they also do TV advertising

<http://www.google.com/adwords/tvads/>

...and have dabbled in radio ads

[http://google-tmads.blogspot.com/2009/02/google-exits- radio-...](http://google-tmads.blogspot.com/2009/02/google-exits-radio-but- will-explore.html)

If they didn't do either of these things, I would find fault in their argument, but lucky for Google, they have.

<comment><USER8> _If they didn't do either of these things, I would find fault in their argument, but lucky for Google, they have._

So you're letting them off on a technicality then.

<comment><USER7> _So you're letting them off on a technicality then._

I wouldn't say Google are getting off on a technicality. I'm just saying that the premise of the article is false given that Google has shown in the past that they are trying advertising in many sectors (not just online) and so, their market position argument can be assumed to be correct, regardless of whether they dominate one area of the total market that they address.

<comment><USER8> Well, talking about having a 2.6% market share of.. all of advertising is disingenuous at best. If they do something morally incorrect, it happens in the market segment they _totally own_.

It's just a distraction. The bigger a company gets, the closer the probability that they do something evil gets to 1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> soon apple will be on the line for being anti-competitive for having a large app store, a market which they created.

as microsoft stock continues to tumble, we'll see more stories like this. i tried to place a short-sell order for MSFT today and was greeted with the message: Currently, there are no shares of MSFT available for shorting.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just this morning, I clicked for the first time on the small 'Ads by Google' link above a picture advertisement, and gave Google a piece of my mind on it. It started by the pic being of battered and shot young men ("beat up your friends").

Around here, they're showing ads by those scammers who promise free phone games or whatever to the young and naive, who then find themselves enrolled in a paid weekly subscription, charged to the phone account. Someone made them put a small cryptic price-tag on the pics, but still ...

This kind of scam is also all over the free (and not only) newspapers. The ad- carriers smell the money and do it, but the real fault is with the telecom operators, who are allowed to act as currency issuers, and get a nice fat cut.

P.S. My last line to Google, about the scammers, was "Cut them off. The stench clings." That goes triple for the telecom operators. They get the money now, and the guys in charge get their bonuses. Their name being mud doesn't seem to get to the bottom line, but it will.

P.P.S. The carrier with a clear 'no scams, no money transfers' policy will get my kids phones in a couple of years, and possibly the rest of the family. Companies would probably also appreciate it. Rub two brain cells together, marketing guys.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'll be surprised if the DoJ tries anything much on Google.</comment>


Learning Ally – Audio Books for Dyslexia and Learning Disabilities - <AUTHOR> https://learningally.org/ <comment><USER2> I used to volunteer for this fine organization!

There's 200 hours of my textbook voiceover work available through the system, and every time I remember that it puts a spring in my step for the day.

<comment><AUTHOR> nice! congrats!!</comment></comment>