California ballot measure to decriminalize adult use of hallucinogenic mushrooms - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-updates-proposed-ballot-measure-could-1503707569-htmlstory.html <comment><USER3> This will be a much harder sell to the public - cannabis legalisation had been helped by decades of "Medical Marijuana" \- but there has no such inoculation of public opinion for mushrooms yet.

Under MM a voter will likely have known a friend or a relative who tried MM and had a positive impression - this was someone who did weed who wasn't a pusher, lowlife or degenerate. But of all the people I know who have done shrooms: those that aren't exactly poster-children for legalization tend to the type that are the most vocal about effecting change. In short: we need more white, middle-class, middle-aged married couples to openly talk positively about doing drugs!

Until then, I think a better proposal would be a law that strikes down the DEA's concept that drugs can "...[have] no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States." when quite the opposite is true - it damages the credibility of drug enforcement agencies to parrot these lines when there is evidence of both medicinal value and the politicalisation of prohibition (namely [http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman- richa...](http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard- nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html) ).

Remove the dogma - and irrational stigma - from drug laws first, then begin more specific targeting for legalisation and regulation.

<comment><USER4> It's starting to happen, ecstasy was recently designated a "breakthrough therapy" for people with PTSD in early trials.

[https://www.axios.com/ecstasy-to-treat-ptsd-fast- trackedl-24...](https://www.axios.com/ecstasy-to-treat-ptsd-fast- trackedl-2478801847.html)

<comment><USER5> starting?

MDMA was orignally used heavily in psychological experimentation in the 70s and then later became popular recreationally in the 80s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fact of the day: fresh shrooms were legal in the UK up until 2005. You could buy them easily at Camden market in London for example and while I was at University around then some bright spark started offering and advertising deliveries of them to the uni and surrounding area with posters all around campus. Great fun, and no one went mad or gets violent (unlike with booze). I don't think 'sitting on your sofa listening to reggae and thinking about the mysteries of the universe' should be a crime...

LINK: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4691899.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4691899.stm)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm all for it, and this is a great example of the benefits of direct democracy.

I don't think it'll pass, but still, well done getting real drug law reform on the ballot.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Psilocybin is considered a Schedule I drug by the California Controlled > Substances Act and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

> These drugs have no accepted medical use and a high potential for dependence > and abuse, according to the DEA. Heroin, LSD, and marijuana are in the same > category.

Well, if you do psilocybin as recreation, I suppose that's "abuse". Because all good Puritans know that it's sinful to have any fun ;) But seriously, there's a risk for dependence with psilocybin? There is tolerance, in the sense that using too frequently increases the required dose. As with LSD. But, other than coming to like the experience, I can't imagine how there's a risk for dependence.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think this actually COULD pass in California...

But this just being on the ballot will really hurt Marijuana legalization in the rest of the country. People in middle America are only afraid of pot as a gateway drug.

This ballot will prove to conservatives that once you legalize pot the floodgates are wide open.

<comment><USER10> Mushrooms seem to be even safer than pot, but I agree re the general public opinion.

Drugs aren't the problem, addiction is.

Errr..

Addiction isn't the problem, unprocessed developmental / Shock trauma is.

<comment><USER5> > Mushrooms seem to be even safer than pot

Physically perhaps.. Psychologically I'm not so sure..

They've usually been a more middle class bourgeois sort of drug - start making them one of the choices for a 'quick high' at the corner drugstore and I could see this not ending up so well - esp considering there are a lot of mentally unstable people on the streets with hampered intellect/self-control issues..

<comment><USER11> > Physically perhaps.. Psychologically I'm not so sure..

I mean, they can both give pretty unpleasant experiences when taken in too high a dose. Here's a journalist writing about their experience after eating a cannabis candy bar in Colorado[1]:

> I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from > the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the > next eight hours. I was thirsty but couldn't move to get water. Or even turn > off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service > waiter knocked and I didn't answer, he'd call the police and have me > arrested for being unable to handle my candy.

> I strained to remember where I was or even what I was wearing, touching my > green corduroy jeans and staring at the exposed-brick wall. As my paranoia > deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me.

I don't think this justifies making psilocybin or marijuana illegal, however. I do think it justifies regulating what products get sold to people (for instance, we'd never allow something that is called hard cider and tastes like hard cider but is 80% alcohol).

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/opinion/dowd-dont- harsh-o...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/04/opinion/dowd-dont-harsh-our- mellow-dude.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Some notes:

1\. This will have a 180 day signature gathering window, beginning soon after the California Attorney General gives it an official title and summary. It's my understanding that this window will begin within the next 65 days (I think the AG has 50+15 days to get the summary + title)

2\. Signature gathering is incredibly expensive. A cost estimate for this ballot initiative would be $1-5 million just to collect enough signatures to get it on the ballot. And then either it needs to have really good initial polling (perhaps 60%+ in professionally done polls), or needs to have millions of dollars for ad spend.

3\. To make this win, two things are likely needed: Firstly, comprehensive polling to figure out if this will even get the votes needed if it gets on the ballot. 60% polling would be ideal. _If_ it polls well, then it'll need massive numbers of volunteers to collect the ~365,000 signatures from California registered voters.

If you want to help: Nothing is needed yet, unless you can directly help Kevin Saunders - though soon, signature gathering help will be needed. Once the signature gathering window starts they'll either need $1-5mm in donations, or a massive number of volunteers. If you know Kevin Saunders who proposed the initiative, perhaps encourage him to do professional polling with likely voters, as there's a possibility that it could make things worse off if it gets on the ballot and fails. Also please encourage him to reach out to groups like the Drug Policy Alliance to get their expertise, if he's open to learning from them. Contrary to how it may seem, my understanding is it's not good to have a ballot initiative make it to the ballot and fail - it would be better to not have it on the ballot at all.

Read about the process here [http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot- measures/how-qualify-...](http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-measures/how- qualify-initiative/initiative-guide/)

Also if you're a philanthropist with interest in this space, there's serious possibility to do good things right now, particularly given the increased democratic turnout that the 2020 Presidential election will bring - <USER2> initiatives for Drug Policy reform will have a one-time advantage in 2020. If you're a large donor looking for something valuable and underfunded that could make the world better, I'd suggest reaching out to Ellen from Drug Policy Alliance. If you're a large potential donor I'm also happy to help and answer questions over email based on what I know and share my notes, email in profile.

Lastly, pretty exciting that drug medical research and policy news has been all over HN recently. As a commenter in another thread noted, these (i.e. MDMA, Psilocybin) are genuine examples of suppressed technologies - so it's exciting to see them progress.

<comment><USER13> As a non-US citizen, can I still participate as a volunteer in gathering votes from eligible voters?

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure: check out [https://ballotpedia.org/Residency_requirements_for_petition_...](https://ballotpedia.org/Residency_requirements_for_petition_circulators#tab=California), which gives some idea but not a clear answer.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the resource, I had a brief look into the laws of California. As it is, I am not a lawyer, so don't take my word as truth.

According to California Elections Code, Sec. 102 and 2101, those circulating petitions are required:

\- to be a citizen of the United States \- to be at least 18 years of age or older \- to be a resident of the state \- to not be in prison or parole for conviction with a felony.[0]

So I think that rules out my own involvement. I'm bummed I'm excluded from participating in an activity that I want to lean about. This, despite the fact that I do, on virtue of paying taxes and actively participating in civic live, support the government and country. I should have an avenue to learn about how these institutions function in government, even if my role is strictly participatory and non-voting.

0: [https://ballotpedia.org/Laws_governing_the_initiative_proces...](https://ballotpedia.org/Laws_governing_the_initiative_process_in_California#Restrictions_on_circulators), Section on Restrictions to circulators.

<comment><USER12> Bummer. Agreed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This seems to be a strange one to be on the list of illegal substances. Of all the drugs which were listed in my textbook in my health class in high school, this is the only drug which I could pick in the wild. Marijuana might have grown in those areas, but someone had to go through the effort of growing the plants. There are places in the US where marijuana grows in the wild, but I don't think you can get high from it (though you still might get busted for carrying it).

<comment><USER15> Marijuana is a weed and grows easily in the wild.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> To me, it's obvious that if you give unrestrained access to something and increase its availability, more people are going to use it. I'd be leery of reports that say otherwise. In fact, the current opioid epidemic is a testament to this.

Mushrooms are not for everybody. I don't want my kids using them. Should they be illegal? I don't know. I'd take them being illegal over making them easier to obtain.

<comment><USER17> I think you are being unfairly downvoted for your opinion. I upvoted you though I disagree.

I'd like to know, how do you feel about the legality of cigarettes and alcohol. Presumably, you don't want your kids smoking cigarettes. Would you like them to be illegal to sell?

I'm also not really sure your thoughts on availability really hold in the way you are thinking. Take for instance glue and paint. These are both widely available for getting high currently, but are rarely used to do so because people understand the negative tradeoff associated. Under your view though, it would seem you prefer these be made illegal to prevent availability?

<comment><USER16> Thanks

> I'd like to know, how do you feel about the legality of cigarettes and > alcohol.

I wish they were illegal. I don't see any societal benefit with cigarettes, and I don't drink alcohol so am only left to deal with its consequences.

> but are rarely used to do so because people understand the negative tradeoff > associated.

I don't think the masses are good at making decisions. You have to weigh the benefits of glue and paint against the small number of people who are going to injure themselves with them. I think we've gotten along fine without psilocybin, and any societal benefits are outweighed by the problems it can cause.

I don't think mushrooms are all out bad. If they're used responsibly, they probably help you think about things in a more intelligent way. But I don't want my kids eating psychedelic mushrooms. They can be horrifying and torturous for 8+ hour stretches of time.

<comment><USER8> > I don't think the masses are good at making decisions.

What you mean, I think, is that the masses aren't good at taking the decisions that you would take. That way lies authoritarianism.

<comment><USER16> There are elements of authoritarianism that aren't categorically bad. The example that comes to mind is Lee Kuan Yew who took the city-state of Singapore from a swamp to having one of the highest GDPs per capita through benevolent dictatorship.

<comment><USER8> Authoritarian states can be successful, for sure. But they're still immoral. Rome did really well with slaves, for centuries. Does that mean that slavery is good?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well Terence would've loved this! Anyway... Besides his stoned ape theory he might've mentioned little green elves and perhaps twenty or thirty hours of other things, all of it erudite, fractalizing, novel, and utterly fascinating. Be a lot more Terence in the world if this passed, leading mushie workshops, spinning mind-blowing yarns, experimenting with consciousness...

</comment><comment><USER19> > These drugs have no accepted medical use and a high potential for dependence > and abuse, according to the DEA. Heroin, LSD, and marijuana are in the same > category.

This is a pretty absurd comparison, grouping marijuana and heroin in the same category.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash It was entirely political. The Nixon administration made drugs highly illegal to badger hippies and blacks.

<comment><USER20> Downvoters: this is _literally true._ Quote from Nixon policy chief John Erlichman, also in the sibling comment's link:

"You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities," Ehrlichman said. "We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

<comment><USER21> Fact check,

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

Was convicted of perjury. We're supposed to believe what he says?

[https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it- all/](https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/)

Wait, it's not what he said. It's what Dan Baum said he said, 22 years after he supposedly said it, 17 years after Ehrlichman died. Since John isn't around to corroborate the story, I guess we just have to take Dan's word on it?

Not impressed.

<comment><USER20> Yes, Erlichman is known to have lied to support his political goals. The quote in question supports that claim.

A quick wiki search finds numerous clinical marijuana and LSD trials conducted in the 50's and 60's suggesting therapeutic applications. The CSA of 1970 classifies these drugs, counter to the then growing body of evidence, as _having no known medicinal use_.

We know that later, the CIA bought Nicaraguan cocaine specifically to sell in American black inner cities.

We know the US peddles _patently absurd_ , fear and lie based anti-drug propaganda to school children in the form of the DARE program.

We also know, well, everything we currently know about various psychoactive substances.

The consistent thread this weaves is a bit more convincing to me than, "this politician lied about some stuff. Maybe I can't believe anything he's said?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That shit can really screw you up. See e.g. this case right here: [http://gawker.com/5941532/mma-fighter-who-ripped-friends- hea...](http://gawker.com/5941532/mma-fighter-who-ripped-friends-heart-out- and-cooked-it-pleads-guilty-to-murder)

<comment><USER23> Sounds like we better ban alcohol, a substance much more likely to elicit violence than psilocybin.

<comment><USER22> There are different kinds of violence. Dude ripped out the heart from his friends chest while he was still alive and then cooked it. When discovered by police he didn't see anything wrong with what he did.

<comment><USER23> Going out on a limb here, but I think there may be more to the story than they both ate a couple of magic mushrooms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Possession and transportation should be legalized, cultivation and sale shouldn't be. If people aren't willing to spend the time to learn how to identify them in the wild, they're probably not responsible enough to use them safely.

<comment><USER25> So the cultivation and sale should be totally unregulated? (By which I mean, status quo - it's on a DEA "schedule" and outlawed, so growth, sale, consumption all occur outside the bounds of regulation.)

<comment><USER24> I don't think psilocybin should be scheduled, and I think folks should be able to buy pure psilocybin, psilocin, 4-ACO-DMT, etc. online under the driver's license model. But I don't really see any reason for mushrooms themselves to be legal to sell, given that it's just an unknown dose of psilocybin that comes in a form that's mainly of interest for historic and spiritual reasons. It seems to me that selling mushrooms themselves should still be at least a misdemeanor and come with a substantial fine.

<comment><USER26> I think your top comment is being interpreted as "not responsible enough to use [any form of psilocybin]" \- that's how I read it until I saw this comment, which makes me think you were actually referring to dosage safety and presence of toxins.

I strongly disagree with the first interpretation: I can't imagine any connection between identifying plants and having the introspection and self- criticality to know if, when and how much of a psychoactive substance to use. But I agree on the dosage/toxicity aspect. Way more stochastic than what your everyday recreational alcohol or marijuana user is probably used to.

<comment><USER24> > I can't imagine any connection between identifying plants and having the > introspection and self-criticality to know if, when and how much of a > psychoactive substance to use.

So the precedent I'd cite is with Hindu ashrams, where they're not going to impart any sort of esoteric spiritual training unless you're already brushing your teeth every day, keeping your room tidy, can hold a job, etc. The connection is that a lot of the higher-level practices can be profoundly destabilizing, so ensuring that people are continually performing the baseline tasks necessary to be a semi-functional adult is a good way to reduce the likelihood of people completely losing their shit.

With mushroom identification you need to join a community of likeminded people, put in the time needed to learn, scout the correct terrain, go to the right place during the right weather conditions, etc. It's not super complicated, but it's a good baseline to weed out the sort of people who become statistics after eating a handful of random drugs without knowing what they are, the dosage, the expected effects, etc.

Whether it's making people pass a driver's license type test, making them identify the plants or fungi in the wild, making them extract or synthesize the substances themselves, etc., I think the best drug policy is policy that allows anyone to consume any substance but which discourages people from impulsively swallowing handfuls of random stuff.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Potential Hulu deal with Disney increases ads, value to prospective buyers - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/24/potential-hulu-deal-with-disney-increases-ads-value-to-potentia/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm at my limit with the ad quantity on Hulu already. I cancelled my Hulu+ account after one month when I discovered that none of the shows in my queue were available for mobile devices. I would consider subscribing again if the Plus subscription included an ad-free option.</comment>


Why Microsoft Word must die - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/10/why-microsoft-word-must-die.html <comment><USER3> > _Microsoft Word is a tyrant of the imagination, a petty, unimaginative, > inconsistent dictator that is ill-suited to any creative writer 's use._

Microsoft Word was never designed to be an ideal tool for creative writing, programming, or any such thing. It was designed to help office workers produce business documents (a) quickly, (b) in a format that integrates with all the other programs in the Office suite, and (b) in conformance with whatever formatting and workflow requirements their employer already had in place. Microsoft probably consulted with a bunch of Big Business customers when they designed Office. Yep, the kind of Big Business that uses Java classes like EnterpriseBusinessInterconnectInterfaceFactoryFactoryFactory.

Type a few word, hit "Save", and automatically get reasonable default fonts and margins? Check. Type a few more words, make some typos, have them fixed automatically? Check. Certain words need to be italicized or underlined? Check. Certain words need to be in a different font? Check. Who cares if it's consistent, the boss wants it bold so just make it bold. Indent the first line by X inches, double-space here, single-space there? Check. All accomplished with a few clicks of the mouse. No need to learn any command-line programs, formatting \Syn\\{TaX}, or keyboard shortcuts. It's exactly what the majority of office workers need. Bonus points if it also helps clueless parents design their daughter's birthday party flyer in pink and purple Comic Sans, but I don't think MS really cares because that market is miniscule compared to Big Business.

> _I hate Microsoft Word the way Winston Smith hated Big Brother._

At the end of that novel, <SPOILER> Winston loved Big Brother. </SPOILER> Because he probably realized that no other program but Big Biz MS Word would fit the use cases that it was designed for. LibreOffice? Call me again when it gets the Review function right. Your average college professor isn't going to learn how to use a version control system to suggest changes to his student's thesis-in-progress.

<comment><USER4> > Your average college professor isn't going to learn how to use a version > control system to suggest changes to his student's thesis-in-progress.

Word has version control though, and it's appreciated by many in academia. Version control for humans is a Big Startup Idea, I wouldn't be surprised if Dropbox and Github were trying to tackle it (from 2 different angles: Dropbox from the "how do we get average the user to get features for nerds", and Github from the "how do we get the average non-nerd to use us")

<comment><USER5> No offense, but using git for collaborative writing? That's like using nukes to get rid of mosquitoes. SVN would be a poor but better choice, but you'd rather use stypi, google docs or something like that.

<comment><USER6> I can not think of any scenario where svn would be preferable over a distributed vcs such as git or mercurial. They can both be used exactly the same way as svn if you feel for it but come with tons of other benefits. I even think there's less friction to start with for non techincal people because you are always working in "everything always checked out"-mode and there is no need for a common server. Just let them edit in peace and when you want to merge then pull from their local repo.

I don't know the state of visual tools for git but tortoisehg for mercurial is quite easy to get started with.

<comment><USER5> >I can not think of any scenario where svn would be preferable over a distributed vcs such as git or mercurial.

After forgetting to push after commit and then dropping your laptop, you'll know.

<comment><USER7> What? The result would be exactly the same, right? You don't have your unpushed commit if your laptop is broken, neither with svn nor with git. The only difference is that you still can use your local git repository if your server burns down, but you can't do that with svn.

<comment><USER8> With SVN a commit _is_ a push. You can't forget to push after you've committed.

<comment><USER9> No but when I used svn I committed way less frequently so it ended up to be the same thing. With git I forget to push with svn I forgot to commit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised nobody mentioned Pages on a Mac. It's a style sheet-based tool, where the styles are quite easy to work with.

I've been using it for years now and it does almost everything I need it to do. I realize there are people who _absolutely need_ every little feature in Word, but for things like letters, technical reports, briefs or software documentation Pages works just fine, and produces nicely-formatted documents. You need to ignore the Apple marketing, for some reason they think Pages and Numbers are used exclusively in a home setting for producing toy documents.

I just wish Apple devoted more time to Pages and Numbers, because the tools become annoyingly slow with larger documents (larger meaning a 60-page report with tables). I'd much rather see the existing tools optimized and working fast than new features.

And yes, I know this is not a perfect solution. I just think it's better than Word. But I will also point out that LaTeX (or plain TeX) isn't a good solution either. For people who don't know it well, it doesn't produce the results they want. And for those experienced with it, it becomes an unbelievable time-waster because you spend inordinate amounts of time tweaking things for no good reason.

<comment><USER11> So if I use LaTeX and it gives me the results I want and I don't find myself spending inordinate amounts of time tweaking things, does that make me an intermediate user? I guess I had better stop learning.

<comment><USER12> I love LaTeX, I wrote a physics PhD thesis in it and many papers as well. It works phenomenally well up until the point it doesn't work at all. And when you need to go fix something it is a deep and frustrating rabbit hole in my experience.

<comment><USER13> The point where something is unfixable in LaTeX is much more complex than the point something is unfixable in Word, where I seem to jump down the rabbit hole on relatively simple documents.

<comment><USER14> That is a matter of opinion. I think the lack of source code is a problem of incredible complexity, in that overcoming that hurdle would require one to somehow force MS to fix something.

I think LaTeX starts marginally easy, gets complex and fiddly but then pretty much just stays at the same level of complex and fiddly. Word starts very easy, gets complicated quickly and eventually presents un-fixable problems, no matter what your skill level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The truly irreplaceable product is Excel. It is fraught with quirky bugs and limitations and odd conventions (how many people actually end up storing dates before the magic February 29 1900?), yet no alternative can hold a candle to Excel. On the other hand, there are solid alternatives to the other products in the office suite

<comment><USER16> How much would it take to replace Excel with an open source alternative? $100K? $1MM? There has to be a dollar amount where you can buy enough developer time to replace it.

<comment><USER15> LO and other openoffice suites are progeny of StarOffice, originally released in 1985. Even with such a long development history, there are deep compatibility issues which make it unacceptable for the "power users" that comprise the most profitable segment of the market.

And if you really want to go down that rabbit hole of perfect compatibility, it's an absolute clusterf*ck. There are more than than 20 different 100+ page specs (some exceeding 500 pages) needed to properly parse excel files. An incomplete list (which you can find by searching for the keyword):

MS-XLS, MS-CFB, MS-ODRAW, MS-ODRAWXML, MS-OGRAPH, MS-OFFCRYPTO, MS-RMPR, MS- OVBA, MS-OSHARED, MS-CTXLS, ECMA-376, MS-OLEDS, MS-OLEPS, MS-DTYP, MS-XLSB, MS-OFORMS, MS-VBAL, MS-OAUT, MS-DCOM, MS-XLSX

But if you are looking to contribute to an open source project, consider some of these reasonably active projects (I'm sure I am missing some really good libraries here, so don't consider this a comprehensive list):

[https://github.com/tealeg/xlsx](https://github.com/tealeg/xlsx) (go, xlsx read)

[https://poi.apache.org/](https://poi.apache.org/) (java)

[https://github.com/Niggler/js-xlsx](https://github.com/Niggler/js-xlsx) (javascript, xlsx read)

[https://github.com/Niggler/js-xls](https://github.com/Niggler/js-xls) (javascript, xls read)

[https://phpexcel.codeplex.com/](https://phpexcel.codeplex.com/) (php)

[http://www.python-excel.org/](http://www.python-excel.org/) (python, based on openoffice )

[https://github.com/randym/axlsx](https://github.com/randym/axlsx) (ruby, xlsx write)

[https://github.com/seamusabshere/remote_table](https://github.com/seamusabshere/remote_table) (ruby, xls/xlsx read)

<comment><USER17> >> But if you are looking to contribute to an open source project, consider some of these reasonably active projects

Anything I've ever needed any of the OpenOffice/LibreOffice tools to do have worked fine. I don't think it does anyone service to suggest to projects which keep the proprietary Microsoft Office suite alive.

<comment><USER15> To successfully replace the office suite, in the beginning you must be able to interact with office files.

Joel Spolsky (member of the office development team) attributed their success to this:

> Microsoft Office ended up beating its competitors because it was able to > read and write to file formats other than its own. For example, Excel was > able to read files from Lotus, and was able to save the file without losing > any information. The important lesson in order to gain market share was that > in order for new users to try Microsoft Excel, they had to be able to work > with the files their coworkers were creating.

> Lesson: You don't want your customers to feel locked into using your > software. It helps with sales cycles because customers know that they can > switch away if they so choose. While customers will be willing to try your > product, they think two steps ahead. They want to ensure they can easily > migrate to a new system.

[http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/05/07/spolsky-on- sof...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/05/07/spolsky-on-software-on- both-sides-of-the-table/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Arguments raged internally: should it use control codes, or hierarchical > style sheets? In the end, the decree went out: Word should implement both > formatting paradigms. Even though they're fundamentally incompatible and you > can get into a horrible mess by applying simple character formatting to a > style-driven document, or vice versa. Word was in fact broken by design, > from the outset -- and it only got worse from there.

Replace "Word" with "HTML". Now is it still the abominable dichotomy the OP is claiming?

Although I think Word sucks in many ways, letting users combine style sheet and local formatting doesn't seem like the Original Sin from which all evil flowed.

</comment><comment><USER19> "The .doc file format was also obfuscated,... it was effectively a dump of the in-memory data structures .... It's hard to imagine a corporation as large and [usually] competently-managed as Microsoft making such a mistake by accident "

They didn't use a binary on-disk format by accident, nor was it a mistake. The folks who wrote word knew that what users would want to open and save files as fast as possible, on hardware thats weak and tiny by today's standards. Going for a format that resulted in the smallest possible files and the fastest possible reads and writes makes sense in those conditions.

<comment><USER20> Indeed, disk transfer speed mattered a great deal in the early days. People used to save all their data to floppy disks, and use their hard disks only to load programs.

Say you had a large document of 600 KB size. Floppy drives wrote at 45 KB/second. Imagine waiting 13 seconds for your file to save out. You might save less often -- which means that you ran a correspondingly higher risk of losing data.

The .DOC file is a binary format so that it could contain document "sections," with pointers between the sections. This is what made "Fast Save" possible. If you only made a small change to an enormous document, Word would simply append the changes, and then change the pointers in the rest of the document.

Instead of waiting 13 seconds, you'd get the save in under a second.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Word is IMO just fine for most uses. It has lots of features and lots of ways of writing and designing documents because users wanted them. You can't blame a product on its users.

And note the 'IMO' bit: Why on earth do people think that because they don't like a piece of software, they want to force all the other happy users to stop using it. It's just selfishness and self-importance. The world won't just use the pieces of software that you want, you are going to have to live with other people's choices.

<comment><USER22> > The world won't just use the pieces of software that you want, you are going > to have to live with other people's choices.

Choice- singular. The real problem with Word, as highlighted in OP's post, is its longstanding market dominance & attitude of outright hostility towards interoperability.

<comment><USER21> Just read the rest of the comments, there are plenty of alternatives. The author isn't complaining about a lack of choices, either. Instead, he is moaning that other people have made a different choice from him.

<comment><USER23> No. Look, I'll read the last paragraph for you:

"The reason I want Word to die is that until it does, it is unavoidable. I do not write novels using Microsoft Word. I use a variety of other tools, from Scrivener (a program designed for managing the structure and editing of large compound documents, which works in a manner analogous to a programmer's integrated development environment if Word were a basic text editor) to classic text editors such as Vim. But somehow, the major publishers have been browbeaten into believing that Word is the sine qua non of document production systems. They have warped and corrupted their production workflow into using Microsoft Word .doc files as their raw substrate, even though this is a file format ill-suited for editorial or typesetting chores. And they expect me to integrate myself into a Word-centric workflow, even though it's an inappropriate, damaging, and laborious tool for the job. It is, quite simply, unavoidable. And worse, by its very prominence, we become blind to the possibility that our tools for document creation could be improved. It has held us back for nearly 25 years already; I hope we will find something better to take its place soon."

\--TFA

So, you can disagree, but the "why" of your first comment is pretty directly addressed by the author.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of writers were less technically savvy, happiest writing in Word, or simply wouldn't know how to write in any other format. It makes sense from the publishers point of view to pick one format and stick with it, so they have a consistent editing style and ability, and only have to deal with converting one format into a final publication.

I do feel that this is one of those cases where you should be able to write in the way you feel best for you, and if the publisher insist on having the final document in a word format, it should be straightforward to convert your chosen representation to theirs. It's hard to say without knowing precisely how the publisher expects the file to be formatted, but if it's fairly straightforward, there are libraries that will write to doc files for you, or there are open formats that MS Word already knows how to convert into .doc files that you could target instead.

<comment><USER25> Arguing this is the exceptional case misses his point, I think.

He is intelligent, eloquent, and absolutely correct.

In _any_ field except "business letters and reports" there are numerous talented, creative people who use other software and understand his lament: "the major publishers have been browbeaten into believing that Word is the sine qua non of document production systems."

Some examples:

∙ Hard science research are the poster child where "Word slave labor" happens daily

∙ Math research, fortunately there's a lot the web can do but still the Word drudgery

∙ Engineering research

∙ Self-published and indie writers (Scrivener definitely has made a splash)

∙ Law

Who cares? Well, if you want to make a lot of money, these people would throw their money at you if you could ease their pain a little bit.

The publishers get a lot of bad press for other things they do (like Aaron Schwartz), but they're still wrong about MS Word being a publishing platform.

<comment><USER26> Wordperfect still is very popular in law offices. Lawyers love the "make it fit" feature, which word doesn't have. Lawyers are always trying to put 17 ounces into a 16 ounce glass.

<comment><USER20> > _Wordperfect still is very popular in law offices. Lawyers love the "make it > fit" feature, which word doesn't have. Lawyers are always trying to put 17 > ounces into a 16 ounce glass._

Word does not have a "Make it Fit" feature, but it does have a shrink-to-fit feature. You do have to shrink it one page at a time. You start with 13 pages and shrink it to 12, then shrink 12 to 11, etc.

However, the feature has been removed from the default Ribbon UI -- probably because only lawyers were using it. (College students tend to want to _expand_ their documents rather than shrink them.)

[http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2664217](http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2664217)

WordPerfect has clung to a niche in law offices because lawyers are inherently conservative. Even then, Word still has a majority share in law offices.

<comment><USER26> I didn't know about this feature. The documentation says it just reduces font size. WP did that but also increased kerning, reduced linespacing as well as a few other tricks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> (about stylesheets and codes) "Word was in fact broken by design, from the outset -- and it only got worse from there."

No. That's the "developers" point of view (and a false dichotomy)

Word is focused on the user. If the user wants to italicise one letter, it's _OK_ to let him do it. Sometimes it's a _requirement_

Of course, the problem with Word is that you can't debug the mess it creates when it doesn't work the way you wanted.

<comment><USER28> You can italicize one letter with styles. It's not a requirement to have two completely different methods of doing so.

<comment><USER20> Imagine looking for a style every time you needed to italicize a letter. Body text, italicized. Header, italicized. Subtitle, italicized.

Why not let the user italicize, and then let Word itself find the style? Because that's what happens behind the scenes. If you italicize some Header 2 text, Word will create a new style "Header 2 + Italics." If you italicize some more Header 2 text, Word will _reuse the existing style_.

You can actually open the styles palette and decide to change all "Header 2 + Italics" to be boldface instead of italicized.

Word is a styles-based word processor internally. All the ad-hoc formatting you do gets turned into an anonymous style.

<comment><USER28> Sounds like a UI problem then, rather than a core logic problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Monopoly or not, it's the only wsywyg text editor I've ever found truly usable. I now prefer Google docs for convenience but it's not quite there yet for composition/edit experience. Hoping for more good alternatives, if anyone has suggestions.

<comment><USER30> LyX isn't WYSIWYG but rather WYSIWYM (the "M" stands for "mean"), but I found it the most usable visual editor for word processing.

Edit: Why the downvote?

<comment><USER31> The concept of WYSIWYM, which you casually tossed around, is really hard to grasp at a glance, which is mildly frustrating.

(I did not downvote nor think there's reason enough for it. Just speculating)

I took a look at the LyX web page, and it really didn't shed much light on the issue. "writing based on the _structure_ of your document" added zero information to me. The screenshots look like a weird middle ground between WYSIWYG and TeX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Long have I said, " Word processors are to words as food processors are to food,"

The root of the trouble is that word processors intermingle the tasks of writing and the task of formatting. This might be fine for the odd office memo, but is ill suited to almost anything else.

That said, word processors are nothing compared to the hell that is writing comments on a touch screen with a predictive text algorithm that refuses to swear!

<comment><USER33> > The root of the trouble is that word processors intermingle the tasks of > writing and the task of formatting.

I completely agree. Software developers and even physical product developers have (or attempt to have) development workflows that separate the content creation from the style.

There is a good reason for that: it is far easier to focus on these things separately than all at once.

You would think Word and other tools for writers would adopt the same ideas in an effort to make their users more productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I didn't really appreciated MS Word until I started using Apple Pages: Pages has no draft mode! Suddenly clunky Word seemed to have a better interface. The problem is that over the years Word has become a poster child for feature creep, but that said for each feature that you detest there is someone else who is fan.

</comment><comment><USER35> I still have Word 2003 (and Excel 2003) installed on my PC, still very useful when I need it, and it is still my first choice when I need to prepare some serious documents, otherwise, I will use Google Docs. It is quite amazing as they are software written 10 years ago, providing all the features I need as of today.

In general, for office suite, I still can't find any opensource alternatives that can compare with these 10 years old software. Yes, they are proprietary, they are not open, blah blah blah, but when you have used other latest alternatives like LibreOffice (Mac), they even can't make the basic Cmd+F search work as expected [1], can you tolerate? This is the question you need to ask.

[https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49853](https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=49853)

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm disappointed to see that MS Word has become the default for publishers. Back in 1999 I authored a web programming book for O'Reilly. At the time, their technical folks would begrudgingly accept Word files, but they strongly preferred FrameMaker.[1] Some of that probably had to do with the propensity for large Word files to become corrupted, but it's also because FrameMaker helped authors generate documents with much cleaner styling than Word. It's a shame that Adobe let FrameMaker languish.

FrameMaker allowed you to do ad hoc formatting, but it was designed for a stylesheet approach. The difference is analogous to creating a web page and declaring styles inline (how most folks use Word) vs. using a stylesheet (how most folks used FrameMaker). It is possible to pop open a style inspector in Word and use that instead, but it feels like an afterthought.

Pages also has a style inspector, which is my favorite feature (despite the old-school NeXT-style drawer). For a reason that I can't easily articulate, using styles in Pages feels cleaner than Word and more like using FrameMaker. So if I have to create a large Word document I will typically do so in Pages, then export to Word.

[1] I believe O'Reilly also accepted alternative open source formats such as DocBook and LaTeX. And though these might be great formats, I could never find an editor that I could stand using for more than a few minutes -- let alone the months needed to write a book.

<comment><USER20> > _I 'm disappointed to see that MS Word has become the default for > publishers. ... FrameMaker allowed you to do ad hoc formatting, but it was > designed for a stylesheet approach. ... It is possible to pop open a style > inspector in Word and use that instead, but it feels like an afterthought._

How long has it been since you used Word? The styles are now right on the Home tab in the Ribbon. On my monitor, it takes up over half the width of the Ribbon. You don't have to "pop open" anything to use styles, but you do need to open the styles palette to define and change styles.

A publisher could supply a Word template to its authors, and forbid the author to make any other formatting changes. They could also enforce this by opening the styles inspector and checking for any unauthorized formatting.

An author could also apply a different stylesheet to reformat a text to match a different publisher's stylesheet.

Word is a styles-based word processor, internally. If you boldface some text, Word will create a new anonymous style that's simply the existing style, plus boldface. You could even use the styles inspector to change all instances of that anonymous style back to the original style, or to turn it into a named style.

You can use Word like Framemaker (sans frames) if you want. It's just that most people don't.

<comment><USER36> I still use Word regularly, and yes there are styles in the ribbon, along with a panel which can be opened as well. But the ribbon only shows six styles (until you pop it open), it doesn't do a good job of warning when you have overridden a style, and it confusingly mixes default styles with user-defined styles.

There are a couple other big fundamental differences with how Word supports styles:

1\. Copy/paste behavior. If you copy formatted text into a Word document, it brings the styles with it. If you pull a lot of styled content into your document (including HTML), you must constantly work to restyle the imported content. FrameMaker (IIRC) helps you remap the pasted text to existing document styles.

2\. Character styles in Word have always seemed like neglected step-children relative to paragraph styles. Both FrameMaker and Pages treat character styles as full peers of paragraph styles and give them separate picker lists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've yet to encounter a better method of tracking changes than the one Word uses. Makes it trivially easy for me to take a document, make a bunch of changes, and then have the originator see exactly what I've done to it.

<comment><USER38> I've found a better method to be creating documents in plain text with some suitable formatting markup, and then apply a diff tool such as meld to see changes made. The way word does it, if I recall, involves sort of mashing the two versions together (or rather, having the change data saved with the document), with red font and strikethrough and so forth used to indicate changes, which is far harder to follow than what meld presents (the two documents side-by-side with coloured sections indicates changes, additions and deletions, joined with little lines between the documents to show locations, and a sensible scrolling mechanism to keep them coordinated).

I haven't used word for a few years, though, so if it's changed, disregard :)

<comment><USER39> Word can do a side-by-side diff.

And really, a lot of business people are more comfortable with the mashed up version. We don't say we red-line a contract because Word presents it that way. Red-lining has worked that way for years prior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is an interesting article and has generated some good discussion, but blaming Word for mixing style sheets and control codes seems off to me.

 _> Arguments raged internally: should it use control codes, or hierarchical style sheets? In the end, the decree went out: Word should implement both formatting paradigms. Even though they're fundamentally incompatible and you can get into a horrible mess by applying simple character formatting to a style-driven document, or vice versa. Word was in fact broken by design, from the outset -- and it only got worse from there._

Back in the 80s and early 90s, WordPerfect was the market leader - not MS Word. And WordPerfect 5.0 supported style sheets when it was released in the 80s, alongside the existing control codes that were already a core feature of WP.[1] Even after it supported WYSIWYG editing, WP still enabled users to Reveal Codes - essentially toggling from WYSIWYG to the underlying markup.

I'm not defending MS Word as a program - I hate it too. I wish WordPerfect or something better had won. But I don't see how Microsoft alone can be blamed for deciding to support both control codes and style sheets.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect#Styles_and_style_li...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect#Styles_and_style_libraries)

</comment><comment><USER40> It should.

Word's roots reach back to an era when the primary way to share documents was by printing them out. And that heritage is deeply ingrained in so much of it. But that's not the way documents are shared today. I'd be surprised if even 1% of all documents created in Word in 2013 are printed out, yet all of those optimizations and compromises are still there. Unfortunately, not many people have come up with unambiguously superior replacements, yet, so Word continues to hold on to its position of dominance.

<comment><USER41> kids printing school papers has to make that number > 1

<comment><USER42> My students _never_ print school papers. Submissions are all by email or the learning platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Right now the word processor choices are Word or open-source Word clone, so I don't see the point for the end user. I use Libre/NeoOffice, but it's no easier to use than Word. I'd like to see a word processor more like old ClarisWorks/AppleWorks.

<comment><USER44> Or you could just use LaTeX with the text editor of your choice. Yes, you can write letters in LaTeX, yes, that is easy and yes, it takes me roughly one minute to get a perfectly-formatted simple letter, which is roughly equivalent to the time it took Word to start the last time I tried it (~2008?)

<comment><USER26> If you're going to work in LaTex you might want to use Lyx. Otherwise, working in a LaTex compiler is full of problems. Texshop is forgiving, but where is the Zoom view feature? Other compilers simply halt without letting you know why. As a word processor, Lyx is not bad at all. Exporting from Word to LaTex is not easy.

<comment><USER44> If you're new to LaTeX, I presume that Lyx might be a good start, but personally I prefer AUCTex with standard Emacs – the zoom feature being in my PDF viewer (evince-gtk for simplicity).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> My experience with libreoffice scripting was painful: [http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/37291851878/makin...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/37291851878/making- the-history-of-worlds-religions-map)

<comment><USER46> I agree that trying to force open source alternatives on your workflow after using Microsoft Office for a long time can be difficult. I tried to switch from Microsoft Office to the other open source alternatives and while I did like Open Office, I found I couldn't use it beyond 'average' tasks. As soon as I needed advanced analysis I had to go back to Excel. I find that switching between R and Excel 2013 works well for me. Also I feel that Microsoft has done a good job with Office 2013 and I like what they've done with PowerPoint animations on the ribbon. Frankly though Office is expensive so if you need the features not available in open source alternatives you've just got to pay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I agree with the article in general, but this isn't true: _" Each new version of Word defaulted to writing a new format of file which could not be parsed by older copies of the program."_

The first part of the sentence is true, and the second part, _" which could not be parsed"_ is also technically true, but false in practice, since Microsoft releases free tools to convert new formats into old formats.

I use Word 2000 on Win XP to exchange documents with my clients and it's fine, really; they can read what I send them, they send me back .docx files and I edit them without a problem.

(Not to say that MS Word is not horrible; it is, but the particular problem of file formats isn't real).

</comment><comment><USER48> _" Word is, I'm told, horrid, but it talks to publishers, which is really all I use it for."_ [1]

It is the lock-in. We can use our preferred tools (vim/LaTeX or Gedit/markdown) but collaboration requires capitulation. I can get away with PDFs a lot as I work as a teacher and my work is consumed on paper in very small editions.

[1] [http://william.gibson.usesthis.com/](http://william.gibson.usesthis.com/)

</comment><comment><USER49> > But somehow, the major publishers have been browbeaten into believing that > Word is the sine qua non of document production systems.

Is this actually true?

I accidentally checked just a few days ago, and amazon's self publishing platform allows using a simple html file.

Also I clearly remember that D. Hofstadter's books were typeset with latex, and at least in my country they are published by one of the biggest publishing companies.

So, maybe the stranglehold isn't so tight?

<comment><USER50> I think at least some non-fiction authors have to supply a "camera-ready" manuscript, which is basically typeset and laid out by them and not the publishing house and so doesn't have to go through the Word-based workflow fiction publishers like Stross' use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> The reason many publishers prefer MS Word is that it is the best choice at the editing stage. It is much easier to find copy-editors who will be able work efficiently with Word than any other system, with Adobe Indesign/Incopy being a distant second.

It would be possible to grow a tool infrastructure around Latex (and/or Context) to eliminate the practical problems working with that system, but at present it does not exist.

Word's support for change tracking is very good. Change-tracking is a very different thing to version control: version control is about storing and reconciling difference versions of a file, while change tracking is about communicating the changes made for the other person to check. If I edit your text, I can switch change tracking on and off, so that the relevant changes I have made to your writing are visible for you to step through one-by-one, while the changes my macros made to make font choices consistent are untracked, so will not waste your time when you review the text. If version control and change tracking overlap somewhat in functionality, they have different uses and fundamentally different semantics.

</comment><comment><USER30> Government forms served as Word documents with complex table-based formatting and "fields" made out of underscores are truly the worst.

They are sadly ubiquitous throughout Eastern Europe, much like mathematics typeset using Word and MathType.

<comment><USER52> Which is the fault of the users, not the applications. Microsoft Office offers much better ways to do that sort of thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I think MS Word is fine; they just need to use an open standard document format.

<comment><USER54> .docx is an open format, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML)

<comment><USER55> It's a _published_ format. Open, not so much: to parse .docx properly you've basically got to re-implement Word -- they carefully drafted the standard to make it hard for rival XML processors to work on their files.

<comment><USER56> That's actually a load or horse shit (excuse my French). I've worked with both ODF and OOXML extensively as we write document templating software and I'll pick OOXML over ODF any say. It's less quirky, there are decent COTS tools to handle it and the output rendering is consistent regardless of which tool you pick to do the rendering. It's also better documented and way more intuitive.

I really don't know where you are getting these facts from other than the usual spiel that Microsoft does only evil.

The standards are open, published and free to implement (look for Microsoft open specifications). The documentation is way better than anything else out there.

So LibreOffice obviously reimplemented lotus 123, wordperfect and wordstar did they as well?

<comment><USER57> > there are decent COTS tools to handle it

Of course there are - Microsoft's ecosystem is huge. And tools can use Office as a library

> output rendering is consistent

That's not a format problem

> It's also better documented

Now that's just wrong. It's more extensively documented (the spec is an impressive stack when printed) but there cannot possibly be a better specification than freely available source code. If you really want to know how to read an ODF document, you can always read LibreOffice's source code. And use it too.

<comment><USER56> _there cannot possibly be a better specification than freely available source code_

That's even more horse shit and a poor excuse if there ever was one for not documenting something properly.

The source code by nature covers a subset of the standard as it can't cover every logical edge case and it isn't verified. At least the documentation is the verification source.

Not only that, I've delved into the LibreOffice source code and it's horrible, convoluted and a rats nest from hell.

<comment><USER57> I think you are not paying attention. In addition to the documentation you found confusing, ODF comes with a reference implementation. While sometimes the LibreOffice source code can be daunting, especially if you are not that a good coder, it's runnable and evidently usable. I'm not advocating not writing documentation (I take great pains not only to document my code but to also provide comprehensive tests for it).

I don't know what kind of code you do, but your lack of faith in the clarity of your code and your tests as a form of documentation is disturbing. I hope your clients can't identify you from your comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> LibreOffice is fighting the good fight and for most things it's a great substitute for word.

But I've always wondered what would happen if something like Latex were to become truly user friendly - I mean pre-compiled distributions that are easy to download and work without tweaking, relatively good wysiwyg viewers and a less obtuse maze of packages.

<comment><USER59> I don't think the fight here is Word vs LibreOffice vs Latex vs whatever, it's that it sucks when a very specific format (and workflow or tools, when the format is too complex to be universal like plaintext) is imposed on you even though the task at hand could be easily completed with dozens of different tools. I hate when msword .docs are imposed on me, and I'd hate it just as much if latex or libreoffice was imposed on me the same way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I came to similar conclusions but didn't like Scrivener, so I scratched my own itch instead. The result is [http://dreamwriterapp.com](http://dreamwriterapp.com) \- it only works in Chrome, but it can handle 100,000+ word novels without performance tanking like it does in Google Docs.

<comment><USER61> I get nothing but a spinning icon.

<comment><USER62> Same here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Unfortunately the author clouds the facts and his mostly correct findings with his emotions. What could have been an interesting reading remains a rant.

</comment><comment><USER64> I will not at all say MS Word is perfect, but I still haven't seen a program that works better for me. Spelling and grammar is not what I am best at, and English is not my first language so I take the help I can get. I have used OpenOffice/LibreOffice and am using Google Docs, but none of them comes close to Word in helping with my spelling and grammar. I did type this comment in Word to get rid of the most obvious errors, and I do even type my master thesis in Word and copy the text to my latex editor for formatting. For me it was worth it to pay for Office instead of using any of the free alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER65> Since I left MS a year ago, to join a small games company, I've used Microsoft Word only twice; both times, to make signs like

DANGER: ZERO GRAVITY AREA

for the doors of one of the server rooms here. In other words, we don't use Word.

We use Outlook a lot; I can't imagine not using it (there is quite a bit of email traffic, and Outlook is pretty good at scaling). I've also used Excel a fair amount to do analysis and "little database" work.

But Word, PowerPoint, Visio: Nada.

</comment><comment><USER13> MS Word still can't kern very well, and can't really hyphenate for double- column justified papers. LaTeX is still my tool of choice.

</comment><comment><USER66> I can understand the frustration with publishers who choose to use .doc as their standard.

This is not as bad as the _government_ adopting it. In Israel, so many online documents provided by government and public funded organizations are .doc/.docx format.

(disclaimer: I moved out of Israel in 2002, so things might have changed and I do so some shift to pdf, but I believe a lot is still .doc based)

</comment><comment><USER67> My problem with Microsoft Word is, that its core task, formatting text documents, is completely buggy. Instead to get the core engine right, Microsoft added tons of less important features. It's really hard to write a half-complex document of, say, 40 pages and not to run into a multitude of editing, display and formatting problems.

</comment><comment><USER56> Everything there could be applied to pianos but you don't see people lining up to rant about them on blogs.

Word is "good enough" which is more than both the macro-driven systems (i.e. LaTeX, troff) have mustered and the opposite end of the spectrum with the layout based tools.

To be honest, every time I use Word, I'm relieved it's not HTML.

</comment><comment><USER68> I'm a litigator who continues to be amazed by the page formatting requirements in courts around the country. Especially at the appellate level, it can take hours to find and then implement all of the requirements. Worse, all documents are then converted to PDF, making them even less useful.

What's crazy is that most briefs are actually just a series of links: cite to Case A, B; cite to document C; cite to statute C...Sometimes attorneys will make "e-briefs" to actually link PDFs, but those usually cost thousands of dollars to manually generate.

I'm working on an open-source court filing project that would let attorneys and the court write and post everything in an electronic format for easy linking and search. Think of it as a free, universal ECF/PACER for state courts. If anyone is interested in helping, feel free to drop me a line.

</comment><comment><USER69> The reality is that Word is really-really good. That's why it's a monopoly. Just like Apple products.

</comment><comment><USER70> My personal annoyance with Word is how terrible it works on a Mac. There are simply things I expect _any_ text box to do (including this one that I am typing in to post this). Things like:

1: If I highlight text with my cursor and mouse, and I scroll using my trackpad (MacBook Air), I expect the text to be highlighted with the scrolling. Word fails at this. 2: I expect different my basic OS X commands to work, ctrl+e, go to end of line, ctrl+a, front of line, etc. These don't work in Word. 3: Scrolling is not smooth, typing is not smooth, and many other small annoyances.

I understand that OS X isn't nearly as big as Windows for a market, but I would love it if the software crafted for it wasn't so bad.

</comment><comment><USER71> > a programmer's text editor (such as ed

YES. Clearly the capricious abregation of Ed was where we went wrong. Let the faithful return!

[http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.txt](http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed- msg.txt)

</comment><comment><USER72> Without putting too much thought into the subject, the state of Office in the enterprise upsets me. Over the last six years I've gradually rolled away from Outlook and Word in favour of Google Apps / Drive. True, it's not perfect, but for the 'lay user' (students per se?) it is sufficient and the barrier to entry is low.

My real concern with Office comes from what if in the future I'm not in a position where the company I work for is still tied to the Office Suite of products. Productivity wise, switching back to Office (even Office365) is a real killer for someone that is proceeding efficient at the former.

</comment><comment><USER73> Oddly enough, when I was a corporate intern technical writer, everything was being done there in DocBook XML. We were using PTC Arbortext products which were very expensive per seat.

It's inevitable that the publishing industry will dump Word, but I don't think it's realistic to expect it all at once. First, they have to offer the ability to use other formats and they may require that the industry adopts a standard software package and document flow that does exactly what it needs. This sounds like an awesome open source project for someone who knows that industry's exact needs.

</comment><comment><USER74> Why has google docs stopped being developed?

</comment><comment><USER75> Nice piece; unfortunately it's not just about MS Word. It's pretty common for inferior/hurtful-in-the-long-term products to get leading positions in the market and become "unavoidable". The first easy guess is that marketing people are doing a great job for these products; the second one would be that the majority of us are too stupid/busy/unwilling-to-consider-long-term- consequences to spot their game and go for smarter choices. TL;DR: Please run humanity.upgrade(), we would think about their word processors l8r (:

</comment><comment><USER76> Being locked into some vendor is one thing, but I find worse is people insisting to send something in .doc (or other rich text format) while plain text or texts in the body of E-mail would just suffice.

<comment><USER77> try .docx since it's an open format. It's interesting to see OP and you both talk about .doc. It shows your familiarity with the details of the topic.

<comment><USER76> Oh I meant to be more of general statement... I'd be as frustrated if it was odt if use case wouldn't warrant it.

Though docx has its own problem -- a lot of free implementations do not handle it correctly and MS implementation of OpenDocument is largely incomplete (as far as I know from 2007's implementation...) Honestly, using LibreOffice day to day with other users being MS Office users, ironically doc seems to be most complete interchangeable format with these users.

I think some of those come from ambiguity of spec so I guess there are mulple parties to be blamed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> FrameMaker - or a new, open source ground up rewrite of it - for the win!

</comment><comment><USER79> Word is an end user product - not open source - not developer friendly - <USER2> a developer friendly format - work with ODF or similar entities pushing open standards. Word does its job fairly well.

<comment><USER80> There are many better open source alternatives for end users. Being locked into one product is not a good thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> In my school I'm trying my best to push students away from using Word. If they're making quick notes, I ask them to do it in a text editor. If they're presenting work for review I ask them to write it in markdown. This is only for my CompSci classes, but it's a start. My next mission is to break the stranglehold that PowerPoint has on my students.

<comment><USER48> _" If they're presenting work for review I ask them to write it in markdown."_

Perhaps a git repository to track feedback and changes?

Do they need to use diagrams or images at all?

<comment><USER42> git is something I'm working towards. Ideally I'd like github to be our learning platform.

<comment><USER48> I thought that might be the direction that you were moving in, and I think that is a really good idea for your particular students to get used to a source code repository and version control quickly.

One thing I have not looked at yet but may do in the future is git-annex [1] and the associated GUI [2]. I'm hoping I can use git-annex to sync folders between laptops just using an external drive.

[1] [http://git-annex.branchable.com/](http://git-annex.branchable.com/) [2] [http://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/](http://git- annex.branchable.com/assistant/)

That will allow music/video/images to be synced as well as text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> 4dl0v3-p34c3 We kinda had this talk, but it proved useless, since most users hardly change habits (the real reason to µ$ Word stagnation): [http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/1mt8a5/nearly_everyon...](http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/1mt8a5/nearly_everyone_who_is_new_to_emacs_hates_it/)

Even IE6.

</comment><comment><USER81> There is until now no mention whatsoever in this thread of Openoffice, and I'm baffled as to why not. Sadly, they use the MX paradigm rather than improve the UXperience greatly, but, well, it's a start.

</comment><comment><USER82> For me its MS Word's "outline mode" I'm not sure I could write a document longer than a few paragraphs without it.

</comment><comment><USER83> This is a pathetic rant. I'm surprised it got as many comments as it did.

Oh wait, this is hacker news. No, I'm not surprised then.

</comment><comment><USER84> I bet you could raise money to buy word.ms domain and point it to this post :p

</comment><comment><USER85> "It's a poor workman who blames his tools."

You may not like Word, but I find it helpful for certain tasks. You want it to die? A bit dramatic and non-constructive. Basically, "I don't like it, so no one should use it."

</comment><comment><USER86> Why stop at Word?

</comment><comment><USER87> try libreoffice.

</comment><comment><USER88> worse is better

</comment><comment><USER89> so what should I use?

</comment><comment><USER90> It's part of the current human condition, where people want instant gratification and don't want to take the time to figure out or learn a properly designed editor.

</comment><comment><USER91> "The reason I want Word to die is that until it does, it is unavoidable." I don't know what he would think about air with this hipster mentality.

<comment><USER59> If air was a big, expensive, complex, hard-to-use, proprietary product that we could perfectly well kill off and do without, I'd loathe it.

<comment><USER92> The author's argument that Microsoft Word in unavoidable because doc format is de facto standard in his problem domain seems bullshit to me. You can't substitute a document editor with document format like that. I mean, you can totally avoid using Microsoft Word for creating doc files by switching to latex/markdown/org/... with [pandoc][1] converter, for example, or use any kind of MSWord-like word processors, e.g. OpenOffice Writer(if this somehow change something). The author didn't mention any other problem with Word, except it's local ubiquity, which i don't find a problem at all. So, why hate so much?

[1]: [http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/)

<comment><USER52> You're right, it's bullshit. Apart from anything else, Word saves in a ton of formats. I use Word all the time but I very rarely use doc/docx. I use rtf instead.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01068-3 <comment><USER2> Not having advanced medical equipment or doctors is one way to have a health system that doesn't work. Not hiring a programmer to write you a script to connect two systems during the worst unemployment event in almost a hundred years is another one. As are so many of the other reasons here. We are finding out that our healthcare system really isn't up to par not only because we don't have equipment, but because due to lack of regulations that benefit profit seeking, the system barely works. If only we had some sort of over arching entity that could force all these disparate systems to work together based on a set of rules ... you know, a government and specifically a government that works not one that's constantly being dismantled by idiots who think the corona virus is a hoax. In the end, the crisis always boils down to not having an effective, functioning government and leadership. This would be unacceptable in many places, but the US has extremely low standards in general so it's business as usual.

</comment><comment><USER3> Take that with a pinch of salt, things aren't clear yet, but:

Well, I read today we have a problem like that in Belgium: it seems small bio labs aren't allowed to test even though they adapted their equipment and workflow. Only big pharma are lined up.

</comment><comment><USER4> I live in nyc and have a brother who lives in Vietnam. When a person in my brother's building tested positive for the coronavirus the government quarantined the building, tested every single person who lives and works there, stationed police outside to enforce the lockdown, and delivered food for two weeks. If someone had tested positive they would be relocated to a hospital facility for treatment. When the tests for everyone else in the building came back negative the government let them all resume the normal social distancing rules and going to the grocery store again.

Contrast this with nyc where the virus is outta control, few tests are being done outside the hospital system, and there is no sense of a comprehensive presence of government effort other than the police harassing people who quarantine together when they take walks in public.

America is finished if this is the best we got.

<comment><USER5> Quarantine and testing is the way to fight the virus and be able to return to the normal as soon as possible. Western countries fear it's not possible to do this and regulate the people much more than they usually do. But the problem is, without quarantine the virus is going to spread and shutting down the economy like they did now will have much bigger consequences over the long run. Too many people live from paycheck to paycheck.

<comment><USER6> > Quarantine and testing is the way to fight the virus and be able to return > to the normal as soon as possible.

What you are describing is a way to handle flare ups and it only works in police states. At the current time the only way to fight viruses is with vaccines. It is extremely unfortunate that even during this pandemic our experts keep avoiding repeating this.

<comment><USER7> Oh come on, please stop this "it only works in police states" rhetoric. It's not true, nor is the slippery slope argument.

Asking people to undergo testing and voluntary quarantine is perfectly within democratic bounds of civic duty and anyone with a iota of ethic is more than willing to collaborate. It's also fair for a democratic society to compensate for any economic loss incurred.

It's not necessary to use the iron fist except for the most egregiously anti- social deniers, but that's the same as with the neighbors that refuse to turn down the volume of their music after 24:00

<comment><USER6> > Oh come on, please stop this "it only works in police states" rhetoric. It's > not true, nor is the slippery slope argument.

Vietnam is a police state. Singapore is a police state. South Korea is a police state. China is a police state. HK is a police state.

> Asking people to undergo testing and voluntary quarantine is perfectly > within democratic bounds of civic duty and anyone with a iota of ethic is > more than willing to collaborate.

 _Asking for a voluntary quarantine_ is different from quarantining people. US states have _asked people to voluntarily quarantine_. The argument that is being offered is that voluntary quarantine is not enough.

> It's not necessary to use the iron fist except for the most egregiously > anti-social deniers, but that's the same as with the neighbors that refuse > to turn down the volume of their music after 24:00

It is a civil and not a criminal violation.

<comment><USER8> > Vietnam is a police state. Singapore is a police state. South Korea is a > police state. China is a police state. HK is a police state.

Taiwan is not.

I'm not Taiwanese but one sentence I used to hear when I was little was:

"The extent of your personal freedom goes as far as it starts endangering other peoples personal liberties"

The reason why the US and Germany are resorting to police state techniques is because:

1\. The countries have been pushing there boundaries for at least a decade now and this is the perfect opportunity to use.

2\. Even though Germans are happy to police you crossing a red light in the middle of the night, there is no sense of communal unity in society and there is even less trust in Government because there is zero transparency in communication. Basically the Government assumes everyone besides them is an idiot. Social shaming is the weapon of choice in Taiwan.

<comment><USER6> For practical purposes Taiwan is a police state which is rather understandable considering that its neighbor thinks it is a rogue province.

Neither US nor Germany resorted to police state techniques. In a set of the Western democracies only France is getting close to it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


BBC Documentary – GCHQ: Cracking the Code (2010) [audio] - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rmssw <comment><AUTHOR> Walkaround and high level interviews with GCHQ staff about their work including Clifford Christopher Cocks ('Inventor' of public key cryptography) and Katharine Gun (whistle blower who leaked the NSA request to bug UN diplomats)</comment>


FBI to Probe Fraudulent Tax Filings - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-to-probe-fraudulent-tax-filings-1423614826

<comment><AUTHOR> I just realized much of this article is behind the WSJ.com paywall. Here are some of the key points:

\- The Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened a probe to determine whether a computer data breach led to the filing of false tax returns through TurboTax software, according to a person familiar with the case

\- FBI investigators are still working to determine exactly how personal information was obtained to file bogus returns in about 19 states and whether that information may have been stolen from TurboTax or somewhere else, the person said

\- Some state tax officials and security specialists said they have seen cases of fraudulent state and federal tax returns that apparently include data obtained from 2013 tax returns. Some state officials have said problems seem to be concentrated in returns submitted through TurboTax

\- Officials at competitors H&R Block Inc. and TaxAct, a unit of Blucora Inc., on Tuesday reiterated statements that they haven't seen unusual levels of fraud activity recently.

\- "We don't know where the information is being taken from, as no one wants to admit that they have had a breach. But this is absolutely the biggest year ever for the theft of information from prior tax returns being used to file fraudulent returns, and this problem is getting worse," Mr. Abagnale said. As a young man, Mr. Abagnale was convicted of fraud-related crimes and served time in French, Swedish, and U.S. prisons. His early life was portrayed in the film "Catch Me If You Can."

\- Dave Harmon, a business owner in St. Louis, is one TurboTax user who found a fraudulent federal return had been filed in his name and with data that seemed to come from his 2013 return. He said he received an email on Jan. 22 from TurboTax congratulating him on finishing his federal return, although he hadn't done so. When he printed a copy of the fraudulent return from his TurboTax account, he found that the numbers on Schedule A for itemized deductions were the same as on his 2013 return. Someone "had to have access to everything in my return" from last year, he said. He said his password was "relatively complex," with one capital letter, six other letters and four numbers.

\- Craig Hollowell, a salesman for TranSouth Logistics in Douglasville, Ga., discovered he was a victim on Saturday morning, when he called TurboTax with a question about downloading tax information from a brokerage account and was told that someone had filed his federal return two days before.

\- The IRS has estimated that it paid $5.2 billion in fraudulent identity- theft-related refunds in the 2013 tax season, while blocking attempts to collect another $24.2 billion. "We closely monitor incoming tax returns, watching for fraud indicators and adjusting our systems as necessary," the IRS spokeswoman said. "Preventing and detecting identity theft and refund fraud remains a top priority for the IRS."

\- South Carolina has isolated 96,000 TurboTax returns to check them for fraud, according to Rick Reames, director of the Department of Revenue. He said the number of returns filed through TurboTax is about 15,000 higher than at a similar time last year. In 2012, the South Carolina department had a data breach that exposed information from 3.9 million state tax returns.

edit: formatting</comment>


Pet Containers: You're Not Doing It Wrong - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudworldseries.com/2016/12/07/pet-containers-youre-not-doing-it-wrong/ <comment><USER2> I strongly disagree with this.

Pet usually means there's a whole lot going on the server (or the container, for that matter), and you need more tools in order to maintain whatever that is. PostgreSQL for example. In order to run it "properly", you need to manually set up replication, backups, failover scenarios, monitoring, logging, etc,... And most containers are kept simple so they only run one process (or very few of them) - and they often come with very little extra libraries installed, which makes any kind of advanced setup much harder.

Pet containers are stateful, and that state is often data. Data that is crucial to your business. I wouldn't trust a container to handle it, it's just too dumb (by design, I guess?)

</comment><comment><USER3> yes you are, and so is the author.</comment>


DEAP is hunting dark matter - <AUTHOR> http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/shh-deap-is-hunting-dark-matter

<comment><USER2> WIMP dark matter search is nearing the end. Race for more sensitive detector can't go on much more, because there is a fundamental limit: neutrino wall. No one knows how to eliminate noise from neutrino, and now detectors are nearing sensitivity enough to detect neutrino from the Sun. Since neutrino from the Sun is the noise floor that can't be eliminated, below that _even if there is a signal_ we can't find it.

[http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2014/02/weekend-plot-arms- ra...](http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2014/02/weekend-plot-arms-race.html)

<comment><USER3> The _terrestrial_ search is nearing the end, but that's not necessarily the end for all of time, just the end for a few generations of particle physicists. We're at 1AU from the sun. Titan is at 10AU from the sun, has a thick atmosphere to aerobrake into, has remarkably varied topography (including pools of liquid one could submerge detectors in), and will have one hundredth the solar neutrino flux. Neptune is at 30 AU: Add another order of magnitude if you figure out how to work a gas giant to your ends (and a beer on me). If you can work in vacuum there's not only Triton, but with microgravity operations, the whole Kuiper Belt & Oort cloud out there to use as in-place shielding against GCRs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Huh, I was a summer student with DEAP back in probably 2006. Exciting that they are now on the verge of what they've been working towards all these years.</comment>


Khan Academy Computer Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=36E7A2B75028A3D6

<comment><USER2> I've really enjoyed watching the MIT 6.00 course (Introduction to Computer Science and Programming): [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6U-i4gXkLM&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6U-i4gXkLM&feature=related) The Khan videos seem to be about programming instead of computer science.

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure that Khan will add some pure comp-sci videos later; there's no problem starting with plain programming and describing how programs run, is there?

Edit: Already (on his second day of making videos) he is starting to branch into algorithms: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCzQvQr8Utw>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm glad Khan finally got around to adding some CS videos! I knew that Khan was a programmer himself, so the lack of videos on the subject always escaped me.

</comment><comment><USER5> CS was probably the first field where anybody with an internet connection and a lot of time could get an education on par with a decent college degree. I did exactly that around 2001-2005, thanks to high school being boring, and the resources available now make the internet of that time look horribly impoverished by comparison.

Someone who wants to learn CS can find no shortage of introductory material on programming (along with communities of people to do it with), stuff on algorithms and data structures and the relevant math, more advanced topics -- it's like being offered a free education at a really good college, for people who are willing to do the work.

I would really like for other subjects to become similarly open to interested people over the internet. CS has definitely been leading the way here. Wouldn't it be amazing if people in (say) archaeology, or botany, had a fraction of the free resources and helpful communities that hackers have had online for years?

<comment><USER6> Adding to that is MIT's OCW (<http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm>), an amazing step in the right direction for learning.</comment></comment>


Swift now available on FreeBSD - <AUTHOR> http://www.freshports.org/lang/swift/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for your work on this swills. It's much appreciated.</comment>


Ask HN: What to do if your CTO is the least technical person on the team? - <AUTHOR>

He's one of the three founders and was put in that possible because out of the founders he's the only technical person but has no real CS background and it shows <comment><USER2> Depending on his personality and willingness to listen, this may be workable. He may need to add a Mgr, Sr Mgr, or Director level of software dev/engineering if the team needs direct leadership or are more junior. If he is arrogant, you may need to find a greener pasture.

<comment><USER3> To expand a bit on @blaineri's thoughts, the role of CTO encompasses both internal technical leadership and external technical representation functions. To work, he needs to delegate his internal technical leadership responsibilities to a VP/Director of Engineering, listen to his technical staff, and be capable of representing the technical aspects of the company competently to customers, partners, and investors. If these three conditions are in place, there is no concern. Otherwise, run, don't walk, away.</comment></comment>


Stark, Spare, Beautiful Midcentury British Safety Posters - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2016/09/16/modernist_british_safety_posters_from_the_middle_of_the_twentieth_century.html <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the Work Projects Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project whereby the government employed artists to create posters for various events/programs etc. Library of Congress has many online. [http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?st=grid&co=wpapos](http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?st=grid&co=wpapos)

<comment><USER3> The background I use for the "Public Presentations" account on my laptop is a WPA-produced public health poster. They're excellent.

<comment><USER2> I have a few printed and hung on my walls. I work in infection prevention so people aren't surprised when they walk into my bathroom and learn about smallpox and syphilis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A most often cited parody British council related to this kind of PSA : [http://scarfolk.blogspot.com/](http://scarfolk.blogspot.com/)

<comment><USER5> If you like this you might also love the framley examiner [http://www.framleyexaminer.com/museum/technology.html](http://www.framleyexaminer.com/museum/technology.html) (warning - humour)

<comment><USER6> The paper version of the Framley Examiner is one of the funniest things I've ever read - although you probably need to be familiar with British local papers to savour it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm reminded of these, from _Dresden Codak_ :

[https://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code...](https://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=DC- AWARENESS-PRINTS&Category_Code=DC)

[https://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code...](https://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=DC- AWARENESS-PRINTS-S02&Category_Code=DC)

[https://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code...](https://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=DC- AWARENESS-PRINTS-S03&Category_Code=DC)

And also these, from _Scary go Round_ :

[http://shop.scarygoround.com/product/don-t-tit-about-on- ladd...](http://shop.scarygoround.com/product/don-t-tit-about-on-ladders- print)

[http://shop.scarygoround.com/product/rules-of-the-pool- print](http://shop.scarygoround.com/product/rules-of-the-pool-print)

<comment><USER8> Note that that last one is based on a real poster which existed at many swimming pools when I was younger.

<comment><USER7> Comics related to that poster:

[http://scarygoround.com/?date=20120124](http://scarygoround.com/?date=20120124)

[http://scarygoround.com/?date=20120125](http://scarygoround.com/?date=20120125)

The second one has the poster you're probably referring to below it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Similar to Erik Nitsche's series for General Dynamics in the 1950s. Absolutely beautiful and retrofuturistic. A whole slew of them were made to promote the peaceful use of atomic power; hence the "Atoms for peace" slogan appearing in a bunch of them, in different languages.

[http://www.internationalposter.com/artist- detail.aspx?id=181...](http://www.internationalposter.com/artist- detail.aspx?id=1815153394)

They don't make James-Bond-esque military-industrial conglomerates like they used to!

</comment><comment><USER10> What annoys me with British PSA's is that they're always stick rather than carrot.

I know it may sound like I'm whining, but hearing for the 50th time today that I'll get fined some stupidly high amount for not doing as I'm told can get weary after a while.

<comment><USER11> I had that problem visiting California, where so many signs also list the law that applies. Even the little cart to take people to the top of Alcatraz has a sign "don't board moving cart", seemingly simple advice, then it lists the relevant law. The effect felt a bit police-statey, I found.

<comment><USER12> This post contains characters known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seems to be a revival of these kind. See some Soviet ones here: [https://www.buzzfeed.com/copyranter/11-wonderfully- violent-s...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/copyranter/11-wonderfully-violent- soviet-work-safety-posters)

<comment><USER14> Those are all terrifying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone interested in this era/design would do well to look at other Railway posters of the age[1]. There's something so utterly charming about this bye- gone era. A lot of the original posters change hands for not-inconsiderable amounts of money and one can see why, true design outlasts the fashion of the day.

Those with access to BBC should also checkout the 'Age of Travel' episode of Antiques Roadshow that was on Sunday, very relevant.[2]

[1] [http://www.nrm.org.uk/ourcollection/posters](http://www.nrm.org.uk/ourcollection/posters) [2] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0822pdm/antiques- roads...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0822pdm/antiques-roadshow- series-39-10-golden-age-of-travel-special)

<comment><USER14> What currency is this? [http://www.nrm.org.uk/ourcollection/posters/CollectionItem?o...](http://www.nrm.org.uk/ourcollection/posters/CollectionItem?objid=1987-9108)

gns?

<comment><USER16> I was curious too - apparently it's a "Guinea", equal to 1.05 GBP:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinea_(coin)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinea_\(coin\))

"Even after the coin ceased to circulate, the name guinea was long used to indicate the amount of 21 shillings (£1.05 in decimalised currency). The guinea had an aristocratic overtone; professional fees and payment for land, horses, art, bespoke tailoring, furniture and other luxury items were often quoted in guineas until a couple of years after decimalisation in 1971.[9]"

<comment><USER17> England initially had what was effectively three independent monetary systems, with three independent uses, though interchangeable and with exchange rates periodically re-fixed.

Copper (pennies) for retail purchases. Silver (shillings and pounds) for wholesale. And gold (guineas) for finance (and government) transactions. Kind of.

That's partially based on my reading of Adam Smith (who spends a tremendous amount of time on coinages) and partially my own speculation, though it seems to have at least some merits.

Keep in mind that pennies went down to the farthing (a quarter penny).

For labourers (ag, day, general, messengers, miners), annual wages were ~17 - 31 pounds/yr, roughly, as of 1700.

For some historical wages and costs:

[http://rootsweb.ancestry.com/~irlcar2/wages.htm](http://rootsweb.ancestry.com/~irlcar2/wages.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What makes these beautiful to you? Such stark, spare design is not what I personally consider beautiful. Educational and clear? Sure. Beautiful? I don't think so!

<comment><USER17> Design should serve its purpose.

Here, the purpose is to clearly and effectively convey that there are hazards _which can maim or kill_. And the design has to _both_ convey that message _and not get in the way of it_.

As models of effective, and yet elegant design, I think they're worth studying.

The general concept of messaging and how various systems for it work is a quite general one. E.O. Wilson in his book _Letters to a Young Scientist_ talks of his own work with ants, and in determining that danger signals were small, light, volatile molecules -- they spread quickly and dispersed relatively quickly (no use in spreading alarm after the danger's passed), but might also be detected by other species (not a real concern -- alarm is alarm).

More complex messages -- food trails or colony identity, were larger, more complex molecules, which didn't spread so far (you _don 't_ want your "the trail is this way" signs pointing off in all directions or getting moved to where they don't belong), and are more specific to species (no use telling the competition where the gold is buried). It's something of a molecular grammar.

There are times for highly ornate graphics. There are times for something blunt and to the point. Knowing when (and how) to use either is the mark of an accomplished graphic artist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There are some French safety posters here, photographed in an abandoned thread mill in Lille: [http://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/main/overseas- sites/10150-mo...](http://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/main/overseas- sites/10150-mossley-sartel-lille-france-april-2009-a.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> Reminded me of the Nasa JPL space exploration posters - [http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the- future/](http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Compressed air kills?

<comment><USER22> Overpressure blowing up a container or piping isn't pretty. Air compresses very well, so it gains _a lot_ of volume quickly and gives flying debris a lot of energy compared to e.g. a bursting water tank.

<comment><USER23> You don't need a failure for compressed air to be dangerous. The air itself can damage you in all kinds of ways:

[http://www.aircontrolindustries.com/dangers-of-compressed- ai...](http://www.aircontrolindustries.com/dangers-of-compressed-air/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Where can I source reproductions?

<comment><USER25> Perhaps here: [http://www.rospaprints.com/view_all](http://www.rospaprints.com/view_all)</comment></comment>