Do Not Eat, Touch, or Even Inhale the Air Around the Manchineel Tree - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/whatever-you-do-do-not-eat-touch-or-even-inhale-the-air-around-the-manchineel-tree?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=theatlantic <comment><USER2> I thought the mention of water hemlock near the end was interesting. Actually, common poison hemlock (which is related) grows all over the U.S. midwest like a weed and it is very deadly. You will see it growing in fields and at the side of many highways if you drive through Ohio. It is commonly mistaken for wild carrots (aka queen anne's lace). It famously was used to poison Socrates, and it kills a lot of livestock accidentally in modern times.

[https://www.ars.usda.gov/pacific-west-area/logan- ut/poisonou...](https://www.ars.usda.gov/pacific-west-area/logan-ut/poisonous- plant-research/docs/poison-hemlock-conium-maculatum/)

<comment><USER3> I didn't realize that was hemlock. We have it growing in our back yard in a bad patch of weeds we need to clear out.

<comment><USER4> I've actually cleared it out before and didn't even realize what it was. I volunteer to clean up invasive species, and we end up pulling a lot out when we clean up buckthorn along with garlic mustard. I probably knew it was hemlock at one point it time, but it didn't really stick.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you live in central/north Europe, beware of Heracleum Mantegazzianum: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleum_mantegazzianum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleum_mantegazzianum)

<comment><USER6> When I was young, these grew in our neighborhood. I remember my parents giving me very stern warnings not to touch that plant. I found it strange that such a nasty plant was allowed to grow in a neighborhood with little kids around, but then again there's lots of nasty plants in German gardens.

After I made the mistake to touch a stinging nettle, I took such warnings more seriously.

<comment><USER7> To be fair, touching a stinging nettle is standard fare of childhood, and isn't really bad for you other than the pain. If you spend lots of time out and about in green spaces in certain parts of Europe, getting stung by some nettles will be unavoidable.

<comment><USER8> At least in Russia, it was almost a rite of passage to have "nettle-fights" \- you and your friends all put on a pair of gloves and some shorts, everyone grabs a nice nettle, and then you start whipping each other with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Every spring I google "poison ivy" so I can remember exactly what it looks like. And every summer, I get a poison ivy rash.

Now that I know this tree exists, I have little doubt I'd die after a hike in the Caribbean.

<comment><USER10> Here's a handy video that can help you stay rash free next summer [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oyoDRHpQK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oyoDRHpQK0)

Basic idea is that you need to clean yourself with a washcloth or loofah. The oil from the plant is like automotive grease. You need to scrub it off.

<comment> semi-extrinsic IDK about poison ivy, but for automotive grease, Dawn Ultra works wonders even without a scrub.

Like my dad says, "you haven't been proper dirty till you've had to use Dawn as shampoo".

Brake dust, OTOH, now there you need to scrub, preferrably with a stiff nail brush.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I read somewhere that, if you get stranded somewhere and your last option is to eat some natural plants/fruits that you don't know, the rule was to take a small bite and wait for few hours. Most poisonous things would not kill you this way but will give you a hard time so you know it's not safe. Otherwise it's safe-ish to eat

<comment><USER12> I remember a more incremental approach:

1\. Mash it and hold in the pit of your elbow for an hour. If no irritation, go to step 2.

2\. Hold it in your mouth for an hour. If no irritation, go to step 3.

3\. Eat a bite and wait a few hours. If no irritation, go to step 4.

4\. Eat a small amount and wait a few hours. If no irritation, it's probably safe to eat.

<comment><USER13> One exception to these rules.

It will pass all your tests without causing any irritation but still kills you in the end:

"There are no negative symptoms from eating this fungus until 6–24 hours after ingestion"

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

<comment><USER14> Unknown mushrooms though, should really be your very last recourse, only if there's really, really nothing else to eat at all where you are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _" The toxicity to humans, though, that's a mystery. "There really isn't an > evolutionary answer to its being toxic, other than to just say it's a > biological mistake because it certainly doesn't gain anything by being toxic > to humans"_

I am quite puzzled by this quote, in evolutionary terms, humans are very recent. I highly doubt that humans have been around for long enough for plants to evolve to suite humans specifically, rather than mammals in general.

<comment><USER16> Corn has.

<comment><USER15> There is a big difference between evolution and selective breeding by humans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Gympie Gympie plant is also not nice. [http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science- enviro...](http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science- environment/2009/06/gympie-gympie-once-stung,-never-forgotten/)

<comment><USER18> I have been stung by stinging trees and it is not pleasant (Australian understatement).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reminds me of the Devil Tree (Triplaris americana) found in South America[1]. Anything that touches its bark (bird, insect, human) is ferociously attacked by colonies of venom squirting red ants.

Learned about this fascinating tree in the equally fascinating book "1491" by Charles Mann[2].

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

[2][http://amzn.to/2hKn6Ly](http://amzn.to/2hKn6Ly)

<comment><USER20> Your comment makes me think that the Latin speaking world likes to attribute bad plants to the devil.

There's a drug that Colombians call the Devil's Breath[1]. Which is believed to be scopolamine[2], which had previously been used as truth-serum. The rumors go that the drug makes you "zombified" and compliant, willing to do whatever is suggested to you. It's my understanding that the drug is extracted from belladonna[3] though it's hard to know what is actually true about the rumors. Vice has a video about it[4], though I haven't had the opportunity to watch it yet.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/society/shortcuts/2015/sep/02/de...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/shortcuts/2015/sep/02/devils- breath-aka-scopolamine-can-it-really-zombify-you)

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

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

[4] [https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/worlds-scariest-drug- colo...](https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/worlds-scariest-drug-colombian- devil39s-breath-part-1/55ef5be749b3d5591cf227c4)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The quoted article by the radiologist was discussed recently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12257523](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12257523)

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if the plant exhibits (or will eventually) the Edge Effect [1].

Poisonous plants such as poison ivy often do because people will avoid the plants but will tromp on others (thus the poison plants survive readily on the edge since there is less competition).

That being said if the plant is exceedingly a nuisance like mosquitos it might prefer not to live on the edge (as humans will actively destroy it).

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

</comment><comment><USER23> Someone with minor poisoning: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=364GFrNa3wA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=364GFrNa3wA)

> Yeah I was thrashing around in pain, until I cracked a joke and felt > emotionally better. That's why I picked up my camera and decided to > chronicle my adventure. The thing about unbelievable pain is that sometimes > it's so unbelievable that you can't believe it and there is some humor in > that. For people like me anyway.

Takes it pretty well, but it sure does look painful.

</comment><comment><USER24> Ooohhhkeeey, "manzanilla de la muerte" slept under one during a hot afternoon in a nature reserve in ecuador. Great shadow at that point, had some red dots on my arm and back later... And yes, there were huge signs not to touch the tree and eat the fruites, but it was the only shadow around.

</comment><comment><USER25> Could the poison fruit be to prevent fish from eating them while they float through the ocean?

</comment><comment><USER26> [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127797/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127797/) is a recent report of tourists eating manchineel fruit.

<comment><USER27> It was linked to and directly quoted from in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So apparently the wood from its similarly-toxic relative [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metopium_brownei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metopium_brownei), "black poisonwood", is in use in things like musical instruments? [http://www.bonedrymusic.com/Chechem-Rhythm- Bones-s/283.htm](http://www.bonedrymusic.com/Chechem-Rhythm-Bones-s/283.htm)

</comment><comment><USER29> Ironically, 'Manchi neellu' in Telugu language means, 'fresh water'

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if the fruit was eaten by an extinct (or locally extinct) animal. Any plausible candidates?

</comment><comment><USER31> And this is a walnut tree: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juglans_regia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juglans_regia)

Compare the fruit, leaves, and bark.

<comment><USER32> Even if one couldn't tell the leaves apart, the bark of the trees is completely different. One is smooth, the other reddish. And of course there's no way you would mistake the brown-green husk of the walnut for manchineel fruit - they are smaller in size, the husk is often cracked near maturity.

Not that we don't have issues with walnuts, either..

<comment><USER31> It would help to link to some photographs, and make pronoun references unambiguous.

I've never seen a manchineel tree. Perhaps they do look quite different in real life. But based on the photographs I've seen (e.g. on [http://psytreasure.com/little-apple-death-deadly-plant- used-...](http://psytreasure.com/little-apple-death-deadly-plant-used-torture- instrument/)) there's a risk of confusing the two plants.

From what I can tell based on photographs (here walnut = Juglans regia):

Leaves: Individual leaves are very similar but walnut leaves have a pinnate arrangement, manchineel don't.

Fruit: If they're shaped like apples, or are yellowish, they're manchineel. However, manchineel are often more oval and coloured similarly to walnut (see photo on psytreasure page).

Bark: There's enough overlap here that I wouldn't rely on it.

Location: Manchineel trees are usually located on the coast or near water. Walnut trees can be found anywhere.

Range: Manchineel trees are located around the Caribbean Walnut is Eurasian, but has North American relatives (e.g. black walnut).

Advice: If you're near the Caribbean and see what looks like a walnut tree, avoid it.

More general advice: If you're not sure what a plant is, don't eat it.

<comment><USER32> > More general advice: If you're not sure what a plant is, don't eat it.

Solid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Add this to the "Nature is Terrifying" list...

<comment><USER34> Sometimes nature fakes it.

[https://cdn.ampproject.org/ii/w1200/s/img.rt.com/files/2016....](https://cdn.ampproject.org/ii/w1200/s/img.rt.com/files/2016.11/article/581b7fefc361888a2f8b46a1.jpg)

Pretty harmless, but they've been known to drag away mice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'll make sure not to eat the air around this tree

</comment><comment><USER36> IMO this title would be better if it were broken not to be so parallel:

"Do Not Eat, or Touch, or Even Inhale the Air Around the Manchineel Tree"

</comment><comment><USER37> Chemical data is missing though.

</comment><comment><USER38> Up next on Brave Wilderness...

</comment><comment><USER29> Ironically, 'Manchi neellu' in Telugu language means, 'fresh water</comment>


Show HN: Themes for Bootstrap - <AUTHOR> http://wrapbootstrap.com/ <comment><USER2> I like the idea, and I hope it does well. But what I would pay money for is a series of lessons on how to customize bootstrap. The whole reason I'm using bootstrap for my site redesign is because:

      - I can't find off the shelf themes that meet my needs.
      - I want to learn how to do it myself.
      - I want a solid foundation to start with.

A codecademy for CSS "cooking" with bootstrap would be great. A quick mover with good design skills could probably make a decent amount of money in a short period if they sold tutorials with focused content. _[I'm just throwing this out there in case someone wants to bite.]_

<comment><USER3> You should not start with bootstrap in that case. I think especially in the beginning when you are learning CSS you should build something from scratch. Otherwise you have to learn both, CSS and how bootstrap is constructed.

CSS is not hard. I don't consider myself good at css, not at all, but give me a mockup and I can reproduce it, with a lot of Googling and trail-and-error. At least for me, though, what is really difficult is to make something from scratch without a mockup. It might be because I am not much of a visual thinker. I am a coder after all, not a designer. A professional designer might already have this mockup in her head. I don't.

So what I need to do is create the mockup in Photoshop first. There I can experiment, move stuff around, change colors, shadows, etc. When I am done, I reproduce it in css. I guess when you are either a very strong visual thinker or you are already very good at css, you don't need Photoshop. Otherwise I recommend you start with a mockup and then make a pixel-by-pixel reproduction of it. That way you can solely focus on the How, not the What. If you do that it's not hard at all, and you don't need a code academy for it. [That said I like the idea of a code academy for building a website from scratch for non- coders]

<comment><USER4> I will vehemently disagree with you on this, CSS is very, very hard.

And you even admit it yourself without realising it!

Trial-and-error is no way to code something. Programming novices use trial- and-error. But saying CSS is easy when you're still trial-and-erroring stuff just shows how incredibly hard it is. It's admitting you don't know what you're doing. And that's CSS all over. Few people can use CSS to do exactly what they want and know what they're doing.

Everyone else just finds something that kind of works and do the same thing over and over.

It's only recently been the case that you can view the source of websites posted here on HN that aren't a mass of nested divs just to get the layout right.

<comment><USER5> CSS is not "very, very hard" - I learned Rails after HTML css, and its simple as pie. I wouldn't classify myself as super smart. I just think the structure is such that is straight forward, <div class="something"> to .something {}

If you can code, then you should really be able to write CSS... and if you can't code, I don't think any of these products are really targeted at you anyway.

Edit: tpyo

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would be good to be clearer about licenses. It just says "Single Site" right now but it would be good to have a page that clarifies exactly what you mean just in case my idea of what that means differs from yours.

Will exclusive and multi-site license options follow?

Also, on your /sell page there's a heading that says sellers earn between 55 and 75% but in the text of that block it says the non-exclusive share is 35%.

Anyway, as I said below this is awesome and I wish you the best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've moved this up in the queue. Right now the seller can choose whether an item is sold with a single or multi-application license, but in the near future I would like to change that to an option that can be chosen at buy- time.

As for the earnings text on the sell page, I'm working on cleaning up the wording there so that it better conveys what I mean.

And thank you!

Edit: Updated the earnings text

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is great. I would love a nicer home page for <http://www.sharelatex.com>. I looked at ones on theme forest but didn't want one framework for my homepage and one for everything else. Will defiantly look at what comes up there.

On stealing the css: your market are people who know the effort it takes to build something and are probably likely to pay $15-$50 for a big time saver.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope to get some more sellers on board soon so there's more to offer. I'm glad most everyone seems to feel the same way about stealing the live previews. There is honor out there.

<comment><USER7> I've not looked properly but future suport is quite important. I have been upgrading to bootstrap 2.0 and there are a lot of breaking changes, having future versions available would be something I would want to see, even if it requires and upgrade fee.

<comment><AUTHOR> Upgrading from 1.4.0 to 2.0.0 was kind of a pain. I definitely am on the same page as you. Sellers attach a version number (of their own invention) to the items they upload. When a seller comes up with an update to their item they would upload it and update the version. At which point anyway who has purchased it in the past would be able to upgrade for free. (I don't like the idea of buying a theme and then paying to get the latest changes.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just wrote a blog post on "theming" bootstrap by overriding CSS (as opposed to using Less, since I use SaSS). Might be useful for people interested in customizing their Bootstrap: [http://blog.pamelafox.org/2012/02/theming- twitter-bootstrap-...](http://blog.pamelafox.org/2012/02/theming-twitter- bootstrap-without-less.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Just wanted to give you a head up. On the /sell page it says earn 55% - 75% on each sale but then in the paragraph it says you earn 35% if you sell it non- exclusively.

Edit: Sorry to be annoying but the sign-in link has a padlock icon next to it which usually indicates a secure connection/SSL neither of which you are using.

Great concept btw.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for bringing that up, I'll get that wording fixed right away.

Regarding the padlock icon: That was an item on my todo list that I moved to "not critical for launch." And then someone mentioned it. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So, this is great and all, but:

How are you going to prevent people from stealing the themes instead of buying them? One can grab the full HTML and CSS from the preview views.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't prevent people from stealing the themes. It's a necessary risk. Without a live preview you'd never want to buy a theme and live previews are basically standard at this point (see themeforest.net). If someone saves a theme from the live preview and if it's discovered then the course of action would be a legal one.

<comment><USER11> You could use obfuscated minified source for the previews and sell the original readable CSS and HTML. Everybody needs to customize their theme.

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be a fantastic way to go about it actually. Thanks for putting it in my head!

<comment><USER6> If it becomes a problem for you and you think there are people who would steal them without that but pay you with then go for it. But it will make it harder to evaluate themes for people who do actually want to buy them.

This is an awesome idea by the way. I love the choice on Theme Forest but I the flexibility of Bootstrap is brilliant too. I'm also using Bootstrap whenever I prototype anything and being able to just buy and use a theme later on would be incredibly useful (obviously it's not _quite_ that simple, but it could be close). I will almost certainly be buying lots of themes from you assuming you get designs (which I'm sure you will!).

I'm surprised ThemeForest don't have a Bootstrap section yet actually...

<comment><AUTHOR> True, any obfuscation would make it impossible to judge the quality of the source. Good point.

I'm surprised that ThemeForest hasn't jumped on this yet either.

<comment><USER12> You could perhaps partially obfuscate the code. But it'd probably be tricky to ensure that at least some interesting parts remain untouched. Perhaps let the template author markup those areas?

<comment><USER13> Meh. I'd say don't bother to obfuscate it. There's a real cost, and no obvious benefit (anyone making a real site would be stupid to steal their theme; anyone interested in stealing would just steal from a theme purchaser's site instead of you if you obfuscated).

From a dev's POV - I won't believe you on the elegance & quality of the source unless I can see it, and that's very much what I'd be interested in paying for (an elegant/clean/flexible UI base). Obfuscating at all is somewhat like selling a fabulous custom car but hauling a dirty tarp over it before letting the prospective buyer get a closer look.

Besides, it's HTML & CSS. De-obfuscating (unless it's seriously mangled, which seems dangerous) is as easy as copying the DOM and composed CSS from Firebug, I imagine, or cut/pasting the files into a good editor and auto-formatting.

Or something; I can't say I've ever de-obfuscated a webpage before; when I check the source, if it's crap I don't keep reading. Which may be part of the point, here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Love your idea and really hope you're able to be successful with it. As a developer with absolutely no design ability, bootstrap + some nice-looking themes could really improve the way I build websites - and I certainly wouldn't hesitate to shell out cash for them.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER15> Very well executed, IMO. Some other people have mentioned that themeforest doesn't obfuscate and they're doing just fine, which is true, but they also have additional assets that are needed in addition to CSS. Namely, PSDs.

One way you could increase incentive to buy instead of steal is only show CSS on the preview, but download the LESS file on purchase (if the author used LESS). I'd certainly be more interested in a LESS file.

In the end, I wouldn't worry about it too much, like someone said, people who are gonna pay are gonna pay.

OT: Are you using some sort of "food ipsum" generator for the StackLayer theme? I love it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

Yes, the additional assets are the big gotchas (especially with themes that have text embedded in images) and I like the idea about including the LESS source. I'll get on adding that to the StackLayer theme!

By the way: Veggie Ipsum. It's awesome. <http://veggieipsum.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can we get some sort of live preview option to see the same site with different bootstrap themes, similar to csszengarden? Would be very helpful to see how one similar site will look with different bootstrap themes.

Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not a bad idea. Wouldn't work for everything though. For example, when the theme uses custom classes or components that aren't part of Bootstrap. But in general it would be a very handy way to gauge the differences between styles.

<comment><USER16> It may compel theme writers to adhere to a standard and stretch what they do to make it more apparent in your marketplace that their themes will require as little work as possible to integrate.

Thanks.

<comment><USER17> This would be awesome. I bought a theme off of themeforest the other day and they essentially wrote a mini-cms in js that would have been way to much work to tear apart and turn it into a static site.

This morning, I'm working on adding a grid framework to another theme I bought off of themeforest. That's the one thing I hate about themeforest is you can't see the "bones" of the theme before you buy. I've bought 4 or 5 themes off of theme forest with about 3/4 of them being of decent quality. With decent quality being the ease at which I can modify them for my own needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is such an awesome idea. It will be interesting to see how many themes you get. I would never have thought of making a marketplace like this because it seems too niche. But I won't be surprised if you prove me wrong!

Shameless plug: I'm trying to get a new community project going, so please consider sharing this on there - <http://swym.me/>

<comment><USER19> What's the goal / point of swym?

<comment><USER18> It's mostly sharing and discovering cool projects, tools and people.

I explained some more here - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3579260>

Basically, you know how people often ask on HN how did you make that? What stack did you use? It's the same thing, but the tags give you a fun way to find out about other projects built on the same technology. Plus, you might find other creative people you may not have found otherwise.

<comment><USER20> I love the idea. I think adding a description field to the project and tools pages would make it a lot more interesting.

<comment><USER18> Thanks! You can add a description to your project after you've created it. I wanted to keep the initial form as short as possible. I will add a description to the tool pages as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> great idea, and excellent timing as well tbh. The TW Bootstrap look is getting very common out there. My site is built on it and I can see the vanilla TW Bootstrap look ageing very fast.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, a lot of people have started to complain that they can see Bootstrap everywhere. Here's to fixing that!

<comment><USER22> Seeing Bootstrap everywhere is actually a _good_ thing. It makes me hope that the Web is finally maturing to the point of having a common, uniform UI patterns for its applications. If Bootstrap helps to alleviate the design & UX bonanza that many of the present day web apps still is, it will be just another stone in its awesomeness bucket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was hoping there'd be a free version of this - though with a paid version you'll certainly get higher-quality options ---- but I can see free versions being useful enough, where there's not too much customization.

Perhaps have a free section? It would be a good way to get free traffic which you can use to upsell to paid versions.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting idea, and one that I think would work too. A few years ago I bought an admin template called Adminizio (<http://www.adminizio.com/>). At first I downloaded the free version and got a feel for it. I like it enough to buy the full version $50 and I've never regretted it.

Good thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great idea. But starting with just 1 theme will make it hard to convince potential customers and potential theme creators to use the site.

Perhaps send an e-mail to a couple of handpicked theme creators from one of the other sites to come over - maybe even convert some of the themes for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it is difficult to start any marketplace. A chicken or the egg problem. I was hoping that by releasing early I could get some sellers on board. It's considerably harder to get a designer to create a work to sell on a marketplace that isn't even launched yet or validated by buyers. However, I've made a couple sales (literally, 2) and hopefully I will get more, enough to attract the sellers.

I have emailed a few handpicked designers already so I will see what the response is. :)

<comment><USER24> Offering to convert themes for free to the first few designers (and just give them money per sale) might help you get out of the chicken/egg problem.

Best of luck with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the idea, I'll certainly take it into consideration. I could see that being the 'tipping point' for many sellers since they wouldn't have to do the work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Biggest problem with Bootstrap was non-distinct visual design. All sites created with bootstrap had same loon and feel which is bad for visual distinction and mind-space.

Themes will be useful in solving that problem. Way to go.

</comment><comment><USER26> The preview page for themes still has the Paypal link to sandbox <http://wrapbootstrap.com/preview/WB00TO920>

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops! Thanks for pointing that out -- I just fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is a great idea and I'm sure you'll do well. The one template that's available and your site itself look very well designed.

However - wasn't the whole point of bootstrap to make it easier for developers to create their _own_ stuff, thus avoiding the need to buy a template? If you want a templated site, just buy one from ThemeForest, because that's exactly what you're getting here except it's built around 'standardized' markup instead of the designer's own.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

>>that's exactly what you're getting here except it's built around 'standardized' markup instead of the designer's own

That's kind of the point. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's a good idea, considering the popularity of themeforest I'm not surprised to see this. But, if you want to charge 20 bucks you'll need to offer multiple pages of samples, the landing page sample doesn't really tell me what a form might look like with those theme elements, or blog post, image gallery, etc...

Good luck with it though.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point. A style guide/reference would be very useful to include in the live preview. I'll definitely be adding more to the StackLayer theme and all customers receive updates for free.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Excellent idea. Too bad that it's just one theme for now, but I'll take a look at it tomorrow, and might just buy it :)

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> I released early with just one theme, but I'm adding more soon and we'll see if some of the people who signed up for selling today upload some items as well. I'd like to get some competition going!

Thanks and stay tuned :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is this for landing pages only? I generally think landing pages are a waste of time in general, however this site seems to address my main criticism of them which is that start ups invest far too much time in making them. Good luck with it, looks like a nice well made site!

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, the site is for all kinds of themes (Wordpress, ecommerce, blogs, etc.) and templates (e.g., button packs). A landing page is just a theme I chose to start out with. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is eerie! I was planning to make complete websites with themes using Bootstrap just yesterday! :-) .. Here is what I launched about an hr back on my own site! <http://bit.ly/zn9Wxc>

</comment><comment><USER32> Really don't get the point.

Bootstrap is open source. Most of these themes would be paid. (not good for me)

Don't have much in support of my point, but I would not use this service unless some really _amazing_ designs are put up.

<comment><USER16> So it's open source. So use it. Just because the source is available doesn't magically make people able to make really nice looking site designs with it. However, it does _allow_ some people who are already good with design to make reusable and largely understandable designs available for your project. And you can pay for those layouts. People who want nice designs on top of a bootstrap base win. The designers win. End of story.

Interestingly, you say it's "not good for you", but then you say you'd use the service if some "amazing" designs were available. I presume "amazing" designs _would_ be good for you, hence you'll use it.

Not even sure what the point of your comment was, except to say "I don't pay for stuff" (with a hint of "everything should be open source" seeming to lurk underneath).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Great idea! I would love a valentines day bootstrap theme.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder if it isn't a good time in the webs evolution to come up with or popularize a theme standard, and if bootstrap isn't a good step in that direction. This might help accelerate adoption and popularity of themes, especially open sourced themes, saving everyone a lot of time. This is the kind of thing I don't feel proprietary about at all, and would rather share my designs with others to improve and extend than re-create the wheel.

I'm working on a web application platform (coffeescript running concurrently across a cluster of nodes, basically). I'm still working on the backend, but once it is released publicly, I want to start building out a built-in frontend. To that goal, I'm planning to ship a web framework built in, and Bootstrap is the leading candidate right now.

I know popularly you buy themes which are collections of HTML and CSS and that they make it easy to have a nice layout without having to swipe a 37signals page-- you just change the content to suit what you want.

I see bootstrap coming from one end- a cohesive framework to make developing pages easier-- and themes being going a step further-- specific designs for everything but the content.

And I wonder if it wouldn't be a good idea to have a sort of theme architecture for bootstrap.

What I'm imagining is that themes could be specified, and developed in such a way that they could be traded as tar balls and quickly and easily used by projects. Much the way wordpress themes are standardized and plug into wordpress, these themes could be standardized and plug into bootstrap. Hell, the bootstrap page has an almost theme creator that lets you customize bootstrap. (<http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/download.html>)

I'd love to have the ability to point my web platform at a github page, and have it suck in the latest version of an open source theme for people.

I'd love it if themes became a popular open source item. You may think this is a bad idea, but I see it as taking the framework idea and building another level on top of it. Sure, some people will just use stock themes, others will make custom themes.

... and a lot of people will learn web design by taking apart themes and understanding them.

Does a standard format for bootstrap themes make sense?

(Please don't flame me if I've missed something here- this is an idea, and I admit to not being a bootstrap expert.)

<comment><USER35> Personally I like that Bootstrap is NOT Themed. It's minimalistic and still very flexible. I believe it should always stay as a BASELINE. I want to build amazing designs on top of it, and save time by not having to copy code again and again for round corners, shadows, forms, tables, etc.

<comment><USER34> Right, I see themes as collections of components. They should be anyway, such that those individual components can be used, mixed and match, the way bootstrap gives you components like shadows, forms, rounded corners, etc.

I'm thinking a theme would be a collection of one level higher things like buttons, menus, a picture showing widget, or whatever.

And each component would have no other dependancies other than bootstrap, hopefully.

<comment><USER35> Agreed</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What are the biggest reasons for not using Smalltalk? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I use Pharo as my primary personal projects development language (Racket is a close second). What slows me down is the lack of documentation. This has had the effect of making me seriously consider contributing to the project, given time and energy of course.

I am building several small web applications based on Seaside, JQuery, Bootstrap and SQLite. With very cheap hosting (e.g., Pharocloud, DigitalOcean) I am planning to throw lots of these things up and see which ones stick. I like this strategy better than the usual start-up strategy of spending lots of time and energy on one thing at a time. With Pharo, this is comparitively faster - reuse is easy, deploying an image is easy, and building apps with Pharo is easy. I love Pharo.

</comment><comment><USER3> Coincidentally, there is another thread going on right now, "A Eulogy for Objective-C".

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10003438](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10003438)

Since Obj-C is considered a descendent of Smalltalk, it's pros and cons are briefly mentioned as to the motivation behind Obj-C.

Here's an excerpt:

        But there was a problem, once again, with this idea of the whole image that took over everything. You had to really swallow the whole Smalltalk build, you had to go all the way in to this world, and you were going to give up everything you had ever done before to become part of the Smalltalk image. Then, when you were done, you would ship this image to people, they would start it up on their computers, and it would take over everything.

</comment><comment><USER4> No enough jobs in the market. Of the 800+ posts in this month's who-is-hiring thread none mentions Smalltalk. I can imagine you were hoping for insights into the syntax, data structures, speed or available library but for a lot of people job prospects/making money will be a reason not to start to learn or use Smalltalk.

</comment><comment><USER5> I enjoy the interactive development experience, but the idea of stashing all this code around a running system in a large team in a way that makes it hard to tell exactly what you have strikes me as dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER6> I poked around at it in the past, and the biggest impediment I found was the need for opaque and specialized development tools. This may not be universally true, but from what I saw, most Smalltalk environments require you to use their specific IDE/editor, and then it saves your code in some proprietary (binary?) format. So it's not as simple as just editing a file with Emacs or Vim and running

#> smalltalk myfile.smtlk

or whatever.

Beyond that, it's just quite a bit different from a lot of other languages people might be familiar with, like, say, C or Python. OTOH, it's not any _more_ different than Lisp.

I always heard good things about Smalltalk, but there was never anything so compelling that it swayed me into investing the time to learn it. But I'm open to being convinced, even now.

<comment><USER2> Take a look at Pharo. I did and Pharo is now my primary personal development tool. Another thing that convinced me were videos by Laurent Laffont. Laffont uses Pharo, IMHO, the way it is supposed to be used - he uses the debugger intensively during development to prompt him to for the next step. His development workflow is guided by a general outline in his mind, and the details are filled in by the debugger prompts. His videos can be found at Pharocasts.

<comment><USER6> OK, I'll check it out. Thanks for the heads-up.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why Do Some Posts On The Homepage Have No 'Points' And 'By'? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> YC backed for-hire postings.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Makes sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think it's because they're sponsored posts of sorts. The one's I've seen so far all seem to be promoting some start-up, probably that are connected to y-combinator</comment>


Ask HN: Why is docx 3 times smaller in size than pdf? - <AUTHOR>

I've noticed that the size of a docx file is now almost 3 times smaller in size than the corresponding pdf saved in Word 2010? Is this something MS is doing consciously to prevent people from saving in PDF? <comment><USER2> 1) depends on content - is this just text with some formatting? Does the PDF embed fonts? Are there images? Etc.

2) docx format is wrapped in a zip file, so there is built-in default compression; PDF is not compressed by default

3) does it matter? Most documents I see these days are <1 MB; assuming that universal compression ratio of 3 is achieved, the PDF file would be 3 MB large - not very significant in absolute numbers.

I'd say it's not a conspiracy, just a different format - and that the size difference is not very significant. (Now, a 200 MB docx versus a 600 MB pdf might be significant; but if you are routinely handling 200 MB documents, I'd suspect Something Is Horribly Wrong anyway).

</comment><comment><USER3> This is actually relevant, though it may not seem so at first glance. The ratio between well-compressed and not-compressed document types declines as the quality of the writing improves.

Obviously one of these document types routinely uses compression. If the user composes prose carefully, and avoids repetition, the contrast you cite may be much less.

The gold standard for compressible text is political speeches -- they tend to say almost nothing with as many words as possible. I've always thought part of the decision process leading to voting for someone should include an attempt to compress his speeches.

<comment><AUTHOR> hahaha.. Very interesting points, conveyed with humor but have a strong base in CS fundamentals. I guess my original question was not very well framed. I am writing a CS conference paper (on the ACM SIG template) and four pages in docx is 90 KB and the same saved as PDF came to 260 KB. I was so far using a much older version of Word and only recently upgraded to Word 2010. Hence, my older pdfs used to be converted via a free utility and for the first time used the Word 2010 pdf converter.

I loved your analogy in political speeches. I actually have a friend who tracks politician (on www.mumbaivotes.com) - I might actually share this idea of your of compressing political speeches to identify the uniqueness in what is said in the speech ;-)

<comment><USER3> Oh -- I forgot to ask an important question: what happens when you compress the PDF? If you can compress the PDF so it more closely equals the word document in size, the practical difference between them sort of evaporates, at least as to storage size.

To me the advantage of a PDF over a Word document is that the former is now open-source. And it is universally regarded as the "correct" format for technical writing.

> ... I might actually share this idea of your of compressing political > speeches to identify the uniqueness in what is said in the speech ;-)

The intriguing part is that it's an objective measure, in a field that's called "political science" but isn't remotely scientific. I'd like to see a thorough study comparing political speeches in this easily conducted, almost automatic way.

Another, perhaps more difficult, study would analyze advertising copy for use of words that have no objective meaning, words that appeal only to emotion. My favorite advertising word is "zesty", a frequently-used word with no information content whatever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think the idea behind offering you the PDF option is to "prevent" you from using it....

In fact, it was Adobe that tried to prevent you from saving to PDF. It threatened Microsoft with legal action (especially in Europe) for trying to offer the "open" PDF format in Office 2007. This was widely reported at the time, but see, for example:

[http://betanews.com/2006/06/02/adobe-to-sue-microsoft-for- pd...](http://betanews.com/2006/06/02/adobe-to-sue-microsoft-for-pdf-feature/)

<comment><USER5> How else could Adobe keep milking people for Adobe Professional?

Cost quote from them in 2009/Early 2010: 1K to 2K per user depending on features.

I passed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just a guess, but doesn't PDF have to embed font info, and DOCX don't?</comment>


The Taming of the Crew (Worker Management at Lucky Dogs) (1999) - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/magazine/19990801/830.html <comment><AUTHOR> Excerpts:

"But Strahan demands virtually nothing from his employees, which is why he has survived 28 years in a position Job would have quit on the second day. As general manager for the approximately _$3-million hot-dog-vending company_ , Strahan rides herd on a workforce lousy with drifters, alcoholics, insubordinates, petty thieves, not-so-petty thieves, brawlers, and the occasional psychopath. To tat a profitable enterprise from these loosest of loose threads, he has learned to be endlessly patient, flexible to the point of fluidity, and content to take his victories where he finds them."

[...]

"But at Lucky Dogs rules are made to be broken, not to mention laughed at, ignored, or simply not understood. "We make a set of rules and they're good for about 10 minutes," says Strahan. "You have to set rules, you have to semi- enforce them, you have to be very forgiving when they're not followed; otherwise you don't have carts out. You can't eliminate the madness. Sometimes you can control it."

[...]

"Between calls, Strahan tries to explain the strange mathematics by which-- even though staff appear and disappear without warning and no one can predict who will show up on any given day--there are always enough bodies to keep hot dogs flying off the company's 22 carts. "The key to being successful in this type of transient business is to have enough dependable people who know how to do enough different things so that there's always someone in control..."

[...]

Replacing people is made easier by the fact that there's not much to learn: in many ways the 52-year-old Lucky Dogs is still a 1940s business. Vendors need no skills beyond making change; managers must be able to set up carts and count the day's takings. Technology presents no learning curve because, aside from the PCs that Strahan and owner Talbot use, _there is no technology_.

[...]

Three out of five is dandy by Strahan, who dismisses the traditional code of business behavior as impractical for Lucky Dogs. "Most companies will say, 'If you don't show up for work, you're fired. If you show up for work drunk, you're fired," says Strahan. "Here, if you show up for work drunk, at least I've got to give you a C minus because you showed up."

[...]

"With pickings so meager, Strahan doesn't turn away many applicants. Anyone who is clean, reasonably personable, can make change, and has an ID--even the occasional prison ID is OK--gets a cart. The general manager doesn't check references, although for years he gave the names of all applicants to the FBI, which wanted to keep track of who was drifting in and out of the Quarter. ("The good thing was that it showed me we weren't having major problems. That was refreshing," Strahan says.) And even after 28 years of almost nonstop hiring, Strahan doesn't claim extraordinary prescience about who will or won't work out. "I've seen guys that I thought would steal the money by 8 p.m. who've stayed here for years," he says. "I've seen guys I thought would stay here for years take the money by 8 p.m." His only rule of thumb: Don't trust the applicant who tries to sell himself. "Many times guys will come in here and they'll say, 'I'm looking for permanent work," says Strahan. "They're gone in two or three days. They said that just to impress me. So give me the guy who says, 'I'm only going to be here for a day or two,' because at least he's telling the truth."

[...]

"Strahan describes his approach as a "fluid type of management, person by person, instant by instant."

[...]

"For all that Lucky Dogs' vendors are unreliable, volatile, occasionally dishonest, and sometimes violent--they are not bad salespeople. Otherwise the company wouldn't be profitable, as it has been almost every year since Talbot bought it."</comment>


Spotify artists earn $167 per 1 million plays. - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/lady-gaga-earns-slightly-more-from-spotify-than-piracy-091121/ <comment><USER2> Can payment agreements like this be used in court during filesharing lawsuits to show that if RIAA members are willing to value music at $167 per million plays there's no reasonable way they can argue that each mp3 someone shares is worth the thousands of dollars they sue people for?

I recognize that these are apples to oranges, but there must be some reasonable conversion. Artist gets X amount per Y plays, and given standard artist % breakdowns that suggests a song has Z value. if Z < W, where W is how much one gets sued for sharing one mp3, then either the RIAA should pay their artists fair value, which would drive more users to pay for music, or they can't sue people for so much per song.

<comment><USER3> Comparatively, if the same song were to be played in a radio show with a million listeners, she'd have earned not even _half_ of what she got from Spotify.

Comparisons with the CD model are misguided, because the CD business model was an exception, made possible only because of technical limitations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let me clear up a few misconceptions here. Is that one million plays worldwide or one million plays in Sweden? The population of Sweden is about 10 million people, I really doubt that a single track accumulated as much as one million plays so quickly.

And if the number is worldwide, why do they expect STIM (Swedish Performing Rights society) to pay for it? Of course they won't, STIM only collects royalties for performances in Sweden! Every country in the world has its own performing rights collection society. For music played in the United Kingdom, she gets paid by PRS, in France it's SACEM etc.

Artists usually don't have the "performing rights" for a music. The person who gets the performing rights royalty payments after a music is the composer. Lady GaGa received that paycheck not as an artist/performer but as the composer of that track (along with Nadir Khayat). She is not the only composer of the track so she only gets her share of the payments. The article has huge factual mistakes.

<comment><USER5> This is an important point and fact that needs to be looked into more. If she only received $167 for her portion of Sweden's 1 million plays, the article is way off. OR does Sweden;s STIM cut the check for the aggregate plays for all nation's since that's spotify's home base?

<comment><USER4> Well I'd looked it up and apparently international royalty payments for performing rights are collected by the collection society of the composer's home country. So if you reside in the UK and someone listens to your music in Sweden, ultimately you will get your cheque from PRS UK. As far as I know Stefani Germanotta (known as Lady GaGa) resides in the United States which means she must be a member of ASCAP, so I don't really understand how could she get a cheque from STIM at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To put that in perspective, $167 for 1 million plays is the equivalent of a CPM of $0.16 for an ad-supported web site. A bit on the low side, but $0.16 is in the right ballpark for a site with low-quality traffic.

I think the question is: is there any reason to expect music to be "worth" more than other types of online content?

<comment><USER7> Flashing "You're the 1,000,000 visitor to this site!" and fake "You have 1 message waiting" 468x60 banner ads pay more than $.16 CPM. Many of these ads appear on low-quality sites where the visitor spends less than a minute on.

Meanwhile, the typical song is longer than 3 minutes. The user also must actively find the artist and seek out the song (rather than say mindlessly clicking a link from Digg because they're bored.)

Comparing a pageview to a song play is not a good analogy.

On a side note, I'm starting to get tired of all the anti-media view on YC. Group-think is very dangerous. There are a lot of insightful comments here but I make myself take everything with a grain of salt because of the social dynamics of the community.

The article mentions that the top artist was Lady Gaga. Why didn't Lady Gaga start self-publishing on Lulu.com? She would have been able to keep ALL her CD and concert revenue. Information wants to be free!

Contrary to the popular belief here, record companies DO add value. Gaga signed with Def Jam at the age of 19 after L.A. Reid heard her (who is responsible for building the careers of Mariah Carey, TLC, OutKast amongst others). She cut her teeth on writing and producing music for established artists before going out on her own.

<comment><USER6> I wasn't talking about low-quality sites, I was talking about low-quality (e.g. unfocused, or hard to monetize) traffic.

I don't want to split hairs - yes, obviously, a song is not identical to a page view - but at a very basic level, both songs and web sites are content. They both cost money to produce, promote, and distribute.

My point is that while $0.16 CPM is low, it's the same order of magnitude as other online content. I don't think $1 CPM would be unreasonable, and that's not a huge difference.

 _Contrary to the popular belief here, record companies DO add value._

I never said they don't. I'm not really sure what that has to do with what I'm saying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't believe people are still using these terms, like 'making 0 dollars off of pirate bay' -- That's like saying a free newspaper doesn't earn any money from giving the paper away.

It's a argument people often make that are so entwined in the thinking of "selling music" like it was a physical thing...

This kind of thinking needs to stop.

Artists have more ways of making money today then they ever did, because they can do it themselves (and/or hire somebody to do it) - Selling live shows, selling merchendise, selling music in a form that makes it a "collectable", even music for films etc... The possibilities are there, but you need more omph than just standing in the garage bad-mouthing the downloaders while nobody will sign you up...

<comment><USER9> "Selling live shows, selling merchendise, selling music in a form that makes it a "collectable", even music for films etc..."

Many of which are not really making music, though. What if you simply want to make music? You might as well say "musicians can get paid for doing TV commercials for facial creams" - maybe they can, but I doubt it is what they had in mind when they went into music.

In fact, if I was looking for a cleaning lady, and Bjork as well as some unknown woman would apply, I would probably prefer Bjork. So in that sense "musicians can make money by becoming room cleaners".

<comment><USER10> As much as I would like to not put this so bluntly--that's the free market for you.

"Simply making music" is fine, but that has never exactly put food on the table. The internet isn't destroying the value of music itself, its just altering the industry's viable business model. This is the same line of thinking that we are constantly applying to web apps here on HN. Sure you can make a neat little functional application, and it will take you time and effort to do so, but that doesn't just automatically mean it should pay the bills for you.

<comment><USER9> I actually believe in the free market, and of course it is nowhere set in stone that musicians are entitled to make money off their music. I just wanted to point out that to say "but see, they have more ways of making money than ever" is a bit besides the point.

I suppose some artists will find ways to survive, but just because somebody is a talented musician doesn't make them talented T-Shirt designers or even talented live show performers (making music does not imply performing anymore these days). Film music is also not a good way out, because film is plagued from the same problems as music.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is only a problem if you think musicians need to be rich and famous.

That is, before feeling bad for artists, remember that the cost of producing and distributing music has also gone way down. A desktop computer with electronic instruments is sufficient to cut a professional quality song.

Artists who produce music will slowly become like bloggers. You will find them through the Internet and recommendation engines, not through MTV, just like you find bloggers through Google rather than the opinion column of the Washington Post or NYT. And just like with opinion, the best stuff will be done by talented amateurs for free (e.g. everyone here can name 100 bloggers better than Maureen Dowd).

Eventually, just like the NYT syndicates some top blogs, so too will the major record labels pick up some Internet artists (Soulja Boy being a leading albeit cacophonous example of said trend). But this is just a stopgap en route to a new future where Google (via search) and Apple (via iTunes) and Amazon (via reviews) are the middlemen and respectively replace the RIAA's promotion, distribution, and quality control functions.

...two other thoughts. First, the role of the composer looks set to return to importance once a database of every possible sond and voice is compiled. There's definitely room for software to produce a "perfect" song entirely from the sheet music + sound/voice synthesis + historical data, without any live voices or instruments at all. For all I know, this is how Trent Reznor already does it.

Second, the analysis above places little weight on the experience of listening to live music. I guess if you are a big fan of concerts, the Internet will kill the (music) video star.

<comment><USER12> I'd say the internet has done more to _support_ live music than to detract from it. If there was no internet, I may have gone to a few shows here and there when a big name artist came through town, but because of the internet, I listen to a much wider variety of bands and choose to support those artists by going to their concerts.

There's a totally different experience to actually being in a crowd listening to a band. I may have a (near) perfect recording on my computer or iPod, but there are many nuances that you miss out on when you listen to music at home.

From the artist's perspective, there's nothing like playing live. Playing in a studio is worlds apart from playing with your fans right in front of you. I know quite a few artists that love that, myself included.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I believe they got their numbers wrong for the investments in Spotify from the record labels. I seriously doubt Spotify is valued at around 50,000 euros.

Artists are generally short changed when it comes to this sort of thing, whether it be selling music or streaming it. Artists make the bulk of their money in ticket and merchandise sales. It would be far more interesting to see how much the record companies are making per 1 million plays. It might also be shockingly low, but I somehow doubt that the record companies would sign a deal where they made little more than a few hundred bucks per 1 million plays.

<comment><USER13> re:their numbers, Spotify's valuation is closer to $1bn. But wired implies the labels got ownership in exchange for advances on future royalties: [http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/ka-shing-spotify- inve...](http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/ka-shing-spotify-investors- include-chinese-billionaire)

And I can't find a primary source, but the consensus seems to be that Sony paid 30,000 kroner in cash for their share of Spotify, which jibes with the figures in the OP: <http://www.p2pnet.net/story/26736>

<comment><USER12> So it seems that the record labels are more to blame for the low amount that artists are making, which isn't particularly surprising. If the labels did get some amount of ownership for advances on future royalties, the artist would be making significantly less due to the labels not collecting said royalties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this surprising to anyone? You cannot simultaneously have the price of a good be zero at the margin and yet pay producers non-zero renumeration at the margin.

There is no Internet Economic Fairy that makes it possible to increase consumption of music by a factor of dozens while simultaneously decreasing monthly expenditures on music (relative to CD sales) AND leaving all participants in the system better off.

<comment><USER15> The only money I've ever made off of music is doing live gigs. Give your music away for almost nothing (or dirt cheap) and then play your own shows.

Record sales as a way to profit probably should never have existed. I would not be surprised if music historians in the future look back on the 20th century record industry as an aberration that existed only in the time when live performances stopped being the singular way to hear music, but creation and distribution of recordings hadn't yet become trivial.

I have no problem with this model. For every musician that hit it big with a record deal and marketing promotion under the rule of the RIAA, a hundred or more went into debt after failing to sell enough records after signing their contract, and a thousand more never even got the contract. I'd much rather be able to work and see my effort pay off in a tangible way than play the lottery.

<comment><USER16> _The only money I've ever made off of music is doing live gigs. Give your music away for almost nothing (or dirt cheap) and then play your own shows._

This is _The Problem_ for the record industry - there's an almost infinite supply of very talented musicians that are thrilled to do exactly what you suggest. That makes it extremely difficult to buy the argument that we won't have music anymore if people aren't willing to pay for records. It just not true, all we'd lose is heavily produced pop music, and everyone else would continue to play because they really love it. I don't see live gigs drying up as an income source for quite a while, and they are (just barely) enough to let plenty of people play for a living.

I'd add "teach lessons" to that list, too, that's how most of the musicians that I know actually make rent each month; gigs are just beer money if you've got a full roster of students. Learn a few extra instruments, you don't have to be very good to teach most students - I know drummers that teach piano, pianists that teach guitar, etc. To optimize for income, find yourself a nice rich suburb with some cheaper (but still pleasant) areas to live in around it, and teach lessons to the kids in the suburb (you can charge probably 2-3x what you'd get anywhere else, even if you're not one of the best) while living cheap a couple towns over and playing gigs in the city that you're near.

<comment><USER15> It's strange to me that some people seem to believe that artists would stop making art without economic incentive. As if somehow, the prospect of being financially rewarded is the differentiator between creating art and not. As long as you are making enough money to be comfortable (or maybe not, for some artists!) there's no amount of money you can offer someone to make them a better artist.

Yet another similarity between artists and programmers: you cannot get someone to create something that otherwise would not have been able to by offering money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "plays" is misleading. Number of listeners would be a better metric. I play songs _MANY_ times.

Assuming each listener played the song 100 times in 5 months (slightly less than once per day), we have 10,000 listeners. $167 for 10K listeners is 1.6 cents per listener (quite low compared to the 10euro/mo Spotify charges). But the number of listeners could easily be lower, if people listen many times to their favourite songs (like me).

</comment><comment><USER18> yes, but how much would have been paid for the right to broadcast 100 times on a radio station with 10,000 listeners?

it's easy to see artists don't get the same returns from radio as CD sales. spotify and the like are a new medium again - but with more similarities to radio than CDs imho.

<comment><USER19> But the difference is that users have control over the music on Spotify. Even with the free version you can listen to a song when you want, as many times as you want. So as long as they're a Spotify member, a user essentially owns the content on there.

With radio it's more of a teaser. You might hear a song you like but you'll have to purchase it if you want to listen to it on repeat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Honest question, not addressed by the TF article (and unfortunately I don't speak Swedish for the original);

Is $167 for all Spotify Lady Gaga plays, or those plays made in Sweeden (and thus under the remit of STIM)?

As I understand music licensing Spotify would be required to pay royalties to the collection society relative to the location of the play.

</comment><comment><USER21> It'd be interesting to see how much money Spotify earned for those million plays.

I know that's probably a tough number to come up with but if it is $200 or $2000 then we can start to consider things in perspective.

I think everyone here will agree that it is complete FUD the amount of damages the record industry claim from illegal downloads - and that it is apparent some (though again I suspect not as many as people tend to claim) publicity and additional sales is created from illegal downloads.

In this sense perhaps Spotify is almost a loss leader; barely scraping a living on the idea that it's users are more likely to go out and buy an album or go to a concert. If that's the case they need to be more up front about it; otherwise fall outs like this will happen.

Of course it could well be that they are just ripping off artists. who knows.

</comment><comment><USER22> Spotify certainly sounds like a good deal for users and The Labels, but not much for the Artist(s).

let's keep in mind that Spotify is still Europe-only for now, But...

If someone with as much world-wide fame as Lady Gaga could get this much for a million plays, then what about the less known artist(s)?

And who actually gets to see and keep this $167?...RIAA bosses, Label Bosses, or Lady Gaga

Great post BTW!

<comment><USER10> What if you look at those 1 million song plays as advertising. She (or who ever Spotify's agreement is with) actually was paid to advertise her music to 1 million people worldwide.

The article mentions that she sold 4 million records and 20 million paid downloads. Would those numbers be nearly as high if countless people didn't get to try her out through streaming services first?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If people listen to twenty tracks a day, this rate amounts to $1 per person per year.

That seems lowish.

</comment><comment><USER24> The question is what did those listeners do? Did they go buy her album? Did they go buy a concert ticket?

</comment><comment><USER25> Did anyone else do a double take on "Sony BMG bought 5.8% of Spotify for 2,935 Euros"? What else did they receive from Sony BMG?

</comment><comment><USER26> "Douglas Léon, better known as Swedish rapper Dogge Doggelito"

Ah Sweden. Do a Google Images search for Dogge Doggelito and try not to laugh at what passes as a rapper there. That guy makes '90s Vanilla Ice look like Suge Knight.</comment>


The Analytics Ice Age of the NHL - <AUTHOR> http://troubadourconsulting.com/the-analytics-ice-age-of-the-nhl/ <comment><USER2> As a stats undergrad who's quite interested in this and has an active project going in the space, I think the main question here is what exactly are we trying to predict? Is the sole purpose of analytics to "rate this player relative to others"?

I think one of the things slowing down hockey analytics is the focus on finding a "new Corsi". In Baseball, given the game is segmented and the people who score points do so in a single action by themselves, it makes sense to have one metric that measures how much a players scores/their value. In hockey, maybe other types of analysis would be more accurate. What about predicting scoring rates (for/against)? Or the probability of winning particular games? Or simulation models of game outcomes? None of these things will give you a +/\- type rating of a particular player - but they could be more accurate and potentially just as useful.</comment>


The Free Coding Academy Model – How to Teach Our Next Generation of Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/adrianbridgwater/2015/08/13/the-free-coding-academy-model-how-to-teach-our-next-generation-of-programmers/

<comment><USER2> I attended this course earlier this year. Just landed a job at a startup in Norway as a front-end developer; a direct consequence of the course, which was the most intense learning experience I've had; never learned as much in three months ever before.

Happy to answer questions if anybody has got any.</comment>


French court fines Uber, execs for illegal taxi service - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-ubertech-court-idUSKCN0YV1DQ <comment><USER2> Execs, Managers, etc. should be sent to jail when they break the law deliberately. Fines are not enough as if the benefit of breaking the law is higher than the fine, then there is no incentive to stop.

We've seen that happening with all the big corp cartels that just provision money from those benefits to pay the eventual fine.

The fact that the French Law here may be bad or wrong is not relevant to this point.

<comment><USER3> Fines are okay, just make them larger.

Jail for managers should be reserved for situations where people have serious damages. It would be appropriate for certain bank malfeasance, but not for violating taxi regulations.

Maybe a token amount for non-serious damages, like a month. Shame should be effective here.

<comment><USER4> This is a little past simple violation of a regulation. This is acting like your above the law which is generally dealt with much more harshly.

<comment><USER5> Everyone driving 15mph above the speed limit is "acting like they are above the law".

<comment><USER4> Driving 15mph above the speed limit _and then ignoring the cop pulling you over_ is acting like you are above the law and will not end well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The court said in its ruling that UberPOP had caused a "durable disruption" > of the transport sector, provoking violent protests by taxi drivers that had > disturbed public order.

Fine Uber because taxi drivers are violent? makes sense.

<comment><USER7> No, they were fined because they decided to enter a tightly regulated market without gaining the necessary permits and permission, and following the requisite rules.

Not saying it's right that the industry is regulated, and it's certainly not right that the French Taxi drivers resorted to violence, but if you want to operate in a country, you have to abide by their rules, it's called the cost of doing business.

Now, there's nothing to stop them lobbying for change of course.

<comment><USER8> fined because they tried to play in a bought and paid for market when there was nothing for sale. Industries went from being regulated to being protected. I don't know the numbers in France but Occupational Licensing in the United States stymies competition and worse puts a disproportionate burden on the poor when trying to enter such a licensed field. You can actually spend more money and time gaining a license to cut hair than be an EMT in some states.

There can be no justice when laws are not just.

<comment><USER9> Well the court just decided that the law was just.

Unless US tech companies with billions of funding are above it, they still have to respect it.

Uber is still allowed in France, only UberPop is forbidden like in a lot of european countries and rightly so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Personal anecdote, of course, but Uber saved my ass while I was in Europe (specifically Paris and Madrid).

Immediately upon arriving via train to Paris from London we were harassed by a number of sketchy looking individuals claiming to be "taxi" drivers, of course not speaking French I really had no way to validate the claims, they all became hostile towards me the minute I took my camera out.

I resorted to opening the Uber app and lo and behold had a validated ride within minutes. The service was exceptional and they even spoke English relatively well.

Fast forward 24 hours, I thought I had booked a flight out of the airport in the city about 20 mins drive, turns out my flight was actually out of the airport much further north of Paris.

I rushed to get an Uber and my driver was extremely friendly and not only brought me to the exact bus station I needed to be at, also showed me exactly which ticket to purchase and where to wait.

Never in my life have I received close to that level of service from a taxi driver.

A couple weeks later in Madrid we found ourselves pretty far away from our flat, not well equipped for the weather and ready to head back. We saw several advertisements for the local taxi services "ride sharing" app and decided to give it a shot. After jumping between a couple starbucks to find reasonable wifi, we ordered a taxi and proceeded to wait 20+ minutes for a driver to finally show up in the app as our pickup, however, the actual taxi was nowhere to be found. No text / call / messages in the app ever succeeded. Once again we resorted to Uber and had a painless experience.

I guess my point overall is that Uber offers a familiar service no matter what country I happen to be in. It's simply not viable for a foreigner to arrive in a new country, find out what ride sharing taxi service is allowed existence there, download the app, finagle my way through the most-likely non english friendly sign-up process and enter my personal banking details only to find out the service doesn't even work for whatever reason.

Don't get me wrong, I love traveling to new places and truly exploring a city without all the luxuries and convenience of home, but when I arrive in a new place with expensive items in tow, I'd MUCH rather pay for the convenience of a safe and familiar ride to get to my destination then risk getting scammed or taken advantage of otherwise, I also don't always arrive with local currency in tow and don't like paying exorbitant fees at major transport hubs.

<comment><USER11> Does this means that you are ok with breaking the law if some ones offers you something convenient? Don't you care about workers rights? Should that rights be removed so you can have cheaper services?

I think that Uber app can bring awesome things. But is still operates in the real world and should not break the law. And it also should respect workers rights. One think should not exclude the other.

French law doesn't forbids Uber to operate. It just asks it to have the correct licenses like any one else.

<comment><USER12> > French law doesn't forbids Uber to operate. It just asks it to have the > correct licenses like any one else.

You are being downvoted but that's a very good point, France isn't the wild west. Is Uber useful ? no doubt they are, but so are any other illegal taxi service. The french justice system just said Uber POP is illegal in France. other Uber services are just fine. Uber hasn't been outlawed in France.

<comment><USER13> > Is Uber useful ? no doubt they are, but so are any other illegal taxi > service.

It is my understanding that Uber only has a problem with a single service of the many they provide: the rideshare one, where unlicensed and unregistered people get to provide the service for a fee.

This is not the only service provided by uber. Uber also offers transportation services provided by fully licensed and perfectly legal transport operators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This was a criminal prosecution, so the execs will end up with a criminal record if they don't win their appeal though they won't go to jail. No need to say that with a criminal conviction in France, unless you have friends in high places, your management career is over.

They didn't design these disruptive policies, they obeyed the higher up exec in San Fransisco. Is it really worth risking a criminal record that won't go away for Uber ? I don't know... I hope Uber will reward them for their "loyalty" .

<comment><USER14> Lol, are joking?

All the managers would have to do is explain the situation of why they have a "criminal record".

These aren't low level cogs at the company. No employer who is looking to hire one of these people would bat an eye at the "criminal record".

<comment><USER15> completely agree. I don't know why you are being downvoted

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "...two managers....guilty of deceptive commercial practices and being accomplices in operating an illegal transportation service and violating privacy laws..."

Is this something that shows up in your personal criminal record? Or hurts the managers personally any other way?

Reason I am asking is because usually there is a clear legal separation between the legal-entity (company) and the people working for it. For example the legal-entity might go bankrupt but the people running it do not.

<comment><USER17> There's a liability separation, which is different.

Failing to make a profit is not against the law. If you do things that are against the law while working for a company, that doesn't give you any protection.

You could not, for example, set up an assassination corporation and expect that the company would take the blame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why does people think that software is beyond the law?

The secret services think that reading electronic communications is ok when the physical counterpart was not.

A company thinks that because they offer their services using and app they are beyond regulations, permits and other laws.

No, laws still should apply in the virtual world. And apps and the Internet have real world consequences. It's a shame that judges often are so slow to apply the law in this cases. And that so often they miss the point.

Now Uber should just do what any bricks and mortar business needs to do and get a license, operate inside the boundaries of the law and compete with taxis in a fair way to bring people good services.

<comment><USER18> The law is not immutable. It's an evolving code of moral/social expectations and norms that changes as societies change.

At the end of the day, this was a business decision. Uber weighed the potential costs ($1m in fines, no jail time, minor brand damage to an already- sleazy brand) against the potential gain ($10's of m in revenue, foothold in new market, disruption of competitors) and decided to break the law.

If "society" did not want Uber to break the law, it would need to raise the associated costs. Almost everyone besides taxi driver unions/medallion-holders is apathetic to Uber's transgressions. Thus the taxi unions are weakened and the law changes to reflect changing social sentiment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The peer-2-peer mechanism is well understood now. Its economics have clearly been declared perfectly viable.

Therefore, you could have hundreds of Uber-style networks with a few cross- network search engines returning search results. That would have exactly the same effect as having just one Uber.

Transport services are important to the economy. We must always encourage swarmification of our critical infrastructure.

Furthermore, in a related case, we should be grateful that the powers that be attacked Napster and shut it down. Decentralization takes a lot of effort and is not just a natural outcome. The far-reaching decentralization of the bittorrent ecosystem only came about thanks to the continuous legal attacks that made it the only solution possible.

Therefore, I advocate sustained legal and other attacks on Uber.

We do not want a centralized system. We will need the attacks orchestrated by the state apparatus to properly shape a much more decentralized solution.

</comment><comment><USER20> We should admire the selfless relentlessness of French government trying to protect us from ourselves.

<comment><USER21> It's not the French government, rather French law, and arguably French values. I've been living in France for the last 3 years and have come to deeply appreciate their tenaciousness when it comes to labour relations and worker rights.

As for the ruling, it's worth noting that the demand for material damage of the civil parties in the case, notably taxi driver unions, totalling some 114M€, have been rejected, while the court did accord the 5.2M€ in moral damage[0].

[0] [http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2016/06/09/uberpop-80...](http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2016/06/09/uberpop-800-000-euros- d-amende_4944820_3234.html)

<comment><USER22> _some_ worker's rights.

<comment><USER23> Indeed, the workers who already have safe jobs have protection and 36 hour work weeks while the 10.3% of the population who are unemployed are locked out.

<comment><USER24> And the alternative would be what? Like the US, everyone working 60h work weeks and still earning not more than unemployment benefits? (looking at Walmart, Uber, etc... yup)

<comment><USER25> "Everyone" is a giant stretch, there. Are you American? I promise that midtown-bound subway is not full of people going to work at McDonalds. The vast majority of people have white-collar, good benefit jobs. Probably more than the French when you count in the unemployed and the unwelcome in the banlieues.

<comment><USER24> > The vast majority of people have white-collar, good benefit jobs

You're saying over 50% of americans have a white-collar job, with free healthcare, good benefits, etc?

The actual numbers look more like below 30% do.

43% of americans earn so little that they can't even save up any money, or pay off their debts.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My Startup CampusLive Announces $3.1M in Funding  - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2011/04/campuslive_raises_31_million_t.html Excited to announce our Series A has closed with Highland Capital Partners & Charles River Ventures. <comment><USER2> Congrats guys! The site looks great and you've made some great progress since I first checked out CampusLive a couple of months ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey, I remember your company.

You're the spammer who saw my email address on the website of a campus organization I used to run and figured that meant I would want to earn a pittance by doing your dirty work on campus for you. Oh, and thanks for never responding to (or acting on) my email when I asked to be taken off your mailing lists!</comment>


Fred Wilson: Hot Potato And Drop.io Are Failures - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/fred-wilson-hot-potato-and-dropio-are-failures-that-came-crashing-to-the-ground-2010-11 <comment> space-monkey Things may be a little crazy, but I don't see $10M (<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20013223-36.html>) as just a signing bonus.</comment>


The Netherlands has universal health insurance – and it's all private - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/17/21046874/netherlands-universal-health-insurance-private <comment><USER2> Oh yes, it is going great! Since 2000, per capita expenditure has nearly doubled [1].

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/575988/total-health- expe...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/575988/total-health-expenditure- per-capita-in-the-netherlands/)

<comment><USER3> [https://www.statista.com/statistics/576000/total-health- expe...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/576000/total-health-expenditure- as-share-of-gdp-in-the-netherlands/) shows its up by about 30%, relative to GDP.

That doesn't look worrying to me. Think of it: if you ask people wants most important to them, health always is #1. Also, there's only that much utility you can get from owning ever more clothes, cars, or houses.

Also, the health industry isn't automated that much, meaning economies of scale don't work as well there as in other industries.

So, it shouldn't be strange that, the richer a country gets, the more it (relatively) spends on health care.</comment></comment>


How to Destroy Your Twitter Brand in Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/01/24/how-to-destroy-your-twitter-brand-in-minutes/ <comment><USER2> How is this even remotely of interest to anyone?

<comment><USER3> Lots of people try to get to a good brand on twitter. There are thousands of "social media consultants" that advise people how to get it: <http://www.fanboy.com/2009/01/social-media-experts-rant.html>

The crowd is fragile.

<comment><USER2> Yeah but this guy seems to be actively trying to lose users. I don't think anyone hiring social media consultants would do that.

<comment><USER3> My point was just that creating / maintaining / destroying a brand on twitter would be interesting to lots of people. Not just the cancer SM consultants though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is humorous on so many levels.

One subtle point in all this is something I've mentioned a couple of times...

All these "marketing" people are trying to build up their online personas on sites like Twitter and Facebook and so on. Yet things like this show that you have NO CONTROL over these services. I don't believe that this "social media" thing can support the marketeer's for a sustainable period. Building your own sites, on your own servers, on your own domain (and yes, I realize that domain names are really more leased than owned, but there is at least a central semi- logical process behind most of it), seems like a far more logical approach. Twitter, Facebook, Flicr, etc. only need to make a minor change, or toss in the towel, and all this marketing effort will have disappeared into the ether.

<comment><USER5> Even when you do have control it's not hard to screw up... [http://www.davidhenderson.com/2009/01/21/key-online- influenc...](http://www.davidhenderson.com/2009/01/21/key-online-influencer/)

("keyinfluencer"... please!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone who builds a twitter following that large and isn't actually famous clearly has major issues... as evidenced by this total meltdown over something as silly as a caching bug.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised they're not actually reporting the issues twitter has been having the last week or so - random followers removed, random tweets not showing up...

<comment><USER8> Yeah, and nobody ever reported about that bag of rice that fell over in china yesterday. It's a media conspiracy!</comment></comment>


Learn a new domain every year - <AUTHOR> http://www.targetprocess.com/blog/2014/08/learn-new-domain-every-year.html

<comment><USER2> sounds totally inspiring and completely convincing. the world isn't divided into silos of knowledge by design, and I agree we can learn a whole lot by taking the time to learn new domains</comment>


IPad Snivelers: Put Up or Shut Up - Engineers - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5461485/ipad-snivelers-put-up-or-shut-up

<comment><USER2> _Hilariously, the great open-source hope is Google's Android, but its best apps are designed—and tightly controlled—by Google, which has used its clout to roll over countless web-based companies in a manner just as Orwellian or Huxleyan or whoever it is we're invoking now as Apple or Microsoft. And even with the threat of the DMCA looming, the iPhone has been cracked over and over again. It's been a tinkerer's paradise._

That is an...uhh...interesting take on things.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, so this was a flamebait article. However, it did make me think about something... Even if you never will buy an iPad, you're likely to benefit from it... just like you're probably benefiting from the iPhone.

It is a lot easier to complain about a device than to make one. But once you have that concrete object in hand, you can find all sorts of things wrong with it. It should have X, it should do Y... but the bottom line is that it exists. And that gives other companies something to compete with. But if it never existed, then no one would be pushed.

Say what you will about Apple, but they've raised the bar for everyone, whether that's Microsoft, HP, Dell, Google, Asus, or Nokia. And because of that we're getting better gear that does more and looks nicer.

<comment><USER4> That was exactly my thought as well. I don't own an iPhone, but I'm seriously considering a Nexus One, and I'm not sure the latter would even _exist_ without the former.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The other thing I keep thinking is, if you're seriously worried about kids not being able to learn to program because their only computing devices are locked down, why not fight back by developing kid-friendly web-based programming platforms? Surely an iPad would make the nicest dumb terminal ever...

<comment><USER6> <http://tryruby.org/>

For example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Flamebait?

<comment><USER8> I'd say so. Among many other reasons, Apple made a comeback because they made it easy, and free, to develop for the Mac. Unlike Microsoft who required some hefty developer fees.

Now Apple has not only gone back to the pay-to-develop model, but they've also gone the way of the consoles: you only get to distribute what we say you can.

I think people are greatly underestimating the effect this will have on development. Ironically, it may have less effect on developers of small programs than large. Why would a company spend a large amount of money developing a complex application if they were not guaranteed that they could even sell the final product?

This has already happened to Google with the Google Voice app, although I imagine they have enough money to not be affected too much. There is no defence at all for this sort of system. The app store can easily co-exist in conjunction with "unverified" apps. Hell, Apple could even say "well, first uninstall any unverified apps, then come back for support."

I've never been one to harp on about software freedom, but this is too much, and you are damn right I'm scared of it. I'm scared that the public will gleefully jump on this product and set a precedent of extremely closed platforms.

<comment><USER9> _The app store can easily co-exist in conjunction with "unverified" apps. Hell, Apple could even say "well, first uninstall any unverified apps, then come back for support."_

That's not really in Apple's interest, though is it?

a) A device the user can't ruin associated with your brand.

b) A device the user can ruin associated with your brand.

Which would you pick in their position?

<comment><USER8> The latter, because the freedom to develop would completely cement their position in the market. What they've done now is send several developers over to their competitor, Adobe being the obvious example.

Their gamble is that they will outsell their competitors despite this. Time will tell if they succeed. I suppose if they really start suffering they can always open their platform at a later date.

<comment><USER10> They risk next to nothing by keeping tight control while there is little or no competition. If it turns out that people prefer e.g. Android because of this, they can easily change their policy and turn it into a positive PR event.

If people don't buy other stuff, they probably need to spend a bit less on support for users who have installed something bad on their devices than they would with a more open system.

Win-win.

<comment><USER8> Yes, and this is why I am looking at a Nexus One and perhaps one of the Android tablets.

On a related note, why is it that the position of "I don't like the closed environment and will thus invest in Android" causes such fevered responses by so many people? Is it really necessary for the author of the original article to insult people such as myself by calling us "snivelling" and to tell us to "put up or shut up"? I find this article a little embarrassing for gizmodo.

The situation is simple. If an open software platform really does produce better software, then likely Android will win in the long run. Some of us are buying into the model we think is better. We will likely recommend the same products to friends and family.

<comment><USER10> The reason for the "stop whining" thing is possibly that many proponents of Android are saying, more or less, that "normal people" should choose a device based on what _they_ think are the important criteria instead of what the "normal people" themselves think is important. It's pretty elitist, and also missing the rather important point that a device's popularity is only partly based on its technical and ideological properties.

Either way it'll be interesting to see what we end up with in a few years. Hopefully Android and whatever Microsoft comes up with will prove to be serious contenders so that we don't stagnate a la IE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I submitted a link recently to an open issue on a side project focused on polishing Ubuntu for ordinary users; they have feedback from an ordinary user which they acknowledge is exactly the sort of thing they're looking for and they open the case and move it into progress and then ... it's sidelined. A request to "fade" icons when files are cut, and it's been open since 2003.

Not for lack of time, clearly. Not for lack of ideas what to do there are plenty of those. Not for lack of effort or interest - many many people have been involved. Not for lack of coders, there are patches referenced. Not for lack of a place to track the issue, there was one, now two.

That's a microcosm of your humanity reaching for the stars but are unable to manage the last cohesive push and everything collapses into war, civilisation flickers out and the unthinking void closes over the solar system again sci-fi story right there. That's your Adobe can't get it's act together tale, but happening in public.

So what _was_ lacking?

I can't help but tie everything back to the iPad this week, but isn't this missing thing in the development process exactly what Apple has and the much pointed to Netbooks and Android and ChromeOS's and Maemo's don't?

A unified vision, a benevolent dictator, a plan by which each suggested fix can be measured? GvR runs his personal is_pythonic?() filter over any suggested additions to Python, his way or the highway. Rich Hickey drives clojure and Miguel de Icaza heads up Mono.

Maybe what the suggested openpad needs is a figurehead with a vision who could step in and make decisions and force it to coalesce into a particular shape? And maybe that's incompatible with being "open" shaped. But I wouldn't mind being wrong about that.</comment>


Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame: Zojirushi Micom Electric Rice Cooker/Warmer - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/gadgets/the-consumer-electronics-hall-of-fame-zojirushi-micom-electric-rice-cookerwarmer <comment><USER2> Had one since they first came out and couldn't live without it. Truly, a terrific and game-changing way to cook rice!</comment>