Why No One Uses Functional Languages (1998) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~lordkaos/why-no-one.pdf <comment><USER4> With most of those problems pretty much gone, functional programming is doing quite a bit better than it did 15 years ago. Hybrids languages are gaining popularity: You can find Scala in quite a few large companies out there.

Major adoption of non-hybrid languages doesn't seem like something that will happen any time soon though, and it sure seems like the FP community actually wants it that way. We just sent one of our people to attend Lambdajam, and in his 5 minute version of what he learned, he was telling us how his impression is that there were plenty of Haskell people there that seemed to barely tolerate having any talk about Scala in the conference. Badmouthing of hybrid languages is the order of the day by extremely prominent members of the FP community, even if they end up using said languages in their presentations.

So I suspect that the future of FP is to be influential, for most of the best bits to be copied by language makers that build communities that care about marketing, and Haskell and the like will remain used only by people that just think there's no way to write any useful program without first learning all about category theory.

<comment><USER5> _Badmouthing of hybrid languages is the order of the day by extremely prominent members of the FP community, even if they end up using said languages in their presentations._

Those hybrid languages (e.g. Python, F#, and Scala) are great for new development but awful when you have to maintain low-quality legacy code. That said... I think that observation applies far beyond functional programming. (It's rare, but certainly possible, for bad Haskell code to exist.) A common impetus behind language churn is the programmer's desire to justify green- field development (which is fun, even in C++) instead of career-damning legacy maintenance (which is unpleasant, even in good languages).

 _Haskell and the like will remain used only by people that just think there 's no way to write any useful program without first learning all about category theory._

This is an exaggeration of that prejudice. I do think that the Haskell community has failed (but is it a failure or a deliberate choice not-to?) to package a not-that-hard language as something average programmers can understand. Functor, monoid, and monad sound a lot scarier than they actually are.

<comment><USER6> pedantic, but I really wouldn't call Python a hybrid language on the same level as F# and Scala. Python's functional programming capabilities are pretty poor (not to mention that things like TCO are missing).

Not to say that Python is a bad language, but having continuously tried to program in a functional style I've found that more iterative-seeming code ends up being more idiomatic and maintainable.

> do think that the Haskell community has failed (but is it a failure or a > deliberate choice not-to?) to package a not-that-hard language as something > average programmers can understand.

That is extremely true. Even in widely-used packages, you'll rarely find good official documentation (quickstarts or the like).

Sure, for a lot of packages , types are good enough (if you have a package to read a CSV file, all you need to do is find the CSVConf -> Handle -> [[String]] function), but with the bigger, more framework-y packages, there are so many types internal to the system that you _have_ to read through everything to do even simple things.

Too much time is spent trying to explain how the language (which ends up being simple) works and not enough time on practical guides on how to actually do things.

This has become a bit of a rant, but in Math (the kind most people go through in middle school), you always learn specific cases before going into general theory. Unfortunately, a lot of Haskellers end up being mathematicians of the PhD style, where they're fine with just going into general theory. Examples are useful!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the Haskell, OCaml, F# people are promoting their language of choice the wrong way. The way to do it would be to show concrete examples of problems which are difficult to solve in say Java, and then show how that is a non- problem in Haskell etc.

Of course if you know your language very well, it is much easier for YOU to be working with it. Just saying it has this or that feature is great, but does not really tell us why it would be costly to do similar things in other languages.

What does FP really mean? The term is used frequently as a synonym for Haskell. Does it mean "type-inference"? But is that really a 'functional' feature? Does it mean 'immutability'? In Java you can declare your data to be immutable. Does it mean 'closures? Or being able to pass a function as an argument or result. You can do those in JavaScript.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Functional" is really poorly defined. Instead, here are some reasons to feel ML/Haskell are valuable

ML and Haskell: ubiquitous use of higher order functions through standard library; concise syntax for lambdas; bi-directional type inference with principle typing; named algebraic data types including sums, products, exponentials, recursion, universal, and existential quantification; ubiquitous purity, generalization at higher-kinded types, ubiquitous immutability; effect typing.

ML alone: true modules; module functors; structural equality in typing (polymorphic variants); great metaprogramming (camlp4)

Haskell alone: bounded polymorphism (typeclasses), completely ubiquitous purity/completely ubiquitous effect typing; completely ubiquitous immutability; lazy evaluation; a standard library including many high-level higher-kinded type generalizations (functor, monad, applicative, traversable, foldable, category, arrow, anything else you can think up); ok metaprogramming (template haskell); programmer controlled rewrite rules, results in list fusion/vector fusion

I list more under Haskell partly because I'm just more familiar with it, but also because it takes more things further and thus derives greater differentiation for it.

<comment><USER8> You're preaching to the choir. Your typical Java programmer doesn't even know what these phrases mean.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, and it's a little sad that there isn't any good resource to explain them... But I also am not going to try to do it in the space of a comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here is my take as someone who could but chooses not to use fp. When I look at "good haskell" I see it dominated with comments written in procedural english describing what the code does e.g.

[http://hackage.haskell.org/package/pretty-22.214.171.124/docs/src/T...](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/pretty-22.214.171.124/docs/src/Text- PrettyPrint-HughesPJ.html)

Haskell requires this because, lets be frank, its really hard to understand. I can hear the howls of anger but if you ask "man in the street", will he do a better job explaining the above haskell sans comments or a similar pretty printer written in VB? I have CS background, studied FP and type theory, but I am more like the man in the street.

What I want from a programming language is an executable description of what I want to achieve. I want that description to have all the good qualities sought in fp but more importantly I want it to flow into and out of my brain (and my colleague's brains) like butter not like a sudoku puzzle trapped in a type theory proof and then Huffman encoded (because descriptive names are the preserve of all those "terrible java programmers").

In the real world, I need to write code that makes fast incremental changes to large interconnected data-structures e.g. graphs and trees with indexes and all sorts. I cannot begin to imagine how to solve half my problems with immutable data-structures. With what I know at the moment, it would be a massive obstacle to the real problems I need to solve.

<comment><USER7> Yes, readability. It's only half the story if you can be more productive when writing programs. Readability is probably more important because SW needs maintenance. And readability is not only about how fast YOU can read and understand Haskel. It's more about how fast other programmers can. Imagine all scientific papers were written in Latin.

I think you make a valid point. Many comparisons of Programming Languages productivity only try to measure how fast you can code a new application in them, but not how fast you can modify an existing application to do something else - ASSUMING you are not the author of the original version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Advocates of functional languages claim they produce an order of magnitude > improvement in productivity. Experiments don't always verify that figure -- > sometimes they show an improvement of only a factor of four.

It's weird, the first time I read this I was excited to read the source of this quote. When I finished reading I scrolled up to the top and was disappointed to see a citation missing. Does anyone know what experiment he's referring to?

<comment><USER10> I think probably [http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/?post_type=publication&p=366](http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/?post_type=publication&p=366)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting to see how 15+ years later, general attitudes among the masses haven't changed much in this regard (according to the most popularly used languages [0][1]).

Feels bad, man.

[0] [http://beust.com/weblog/2014/05/03/language-popularity-on- gi...](http://beust.com/weblog/2014/05/03/language-popularity-on-github/)

[1] [https://www.google.com/search?q=language+popularity](https://www.google.com/search?q=language+popularity)

<comment><USER12> Would you say that the functional paradigm has started to gain more traction lately though? -- I don't know because I haven't been programming long enough, so maybe it just seems that way to me simply because now that I'm aware of its existence I'm seeing it everywhere.

I read a quote once about The Velvet Underground that stuck with me. It said that, while not many people bought their albums, everyone who did started a band.

Sometimes it seems like Haskell is The Velvet Underground of programming languages. While not many people are using it, everyone who is has started their own language/functional library -- Influencing other languages is, in a way, people using FP languages, just indirectly.

I've not written a single serious Haskell program -- I don't think I would even know how to, tbh --, but I sure feel like just playing with it and learning about its theoretical motivations has made me a much better programmer in other languages.

<comment><USER13> >Would you say that the functional paradigm has started to gain more traction lately though?

That is certainly true but I think more people will not shift to functional programming languages to do functional programming style programming but will stick with their favorite imperative language and do functional programming there as more and more imperative languages add features and facilities that allow functional programming style programming.

Case in point, i have this Qt/C++[1] library that evaluates lambdas in a lazy fashion.

You can have,for example, a function that returns what is called "a future",ie something that can be evaluated at a later time to produce a value "held" in the future or the future can be cancelled if the function caller decides they no longer need the result.

Introductions of lambdas in C++11 allows for this kind of programming to happen in C++ and i suspect more and more C++ programmers will start coding to this style as more and more APIs will start getting released that will take lambdas as arguments or return them as results.

It is an interesting new way of doing C++ and these ideas are mostly borrowed from functional programming world.

[1] [https://github.com/mhogomchungu/tasks](https://github.com/mhogomchungu/tasks)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Switching to FP is a bit like switching to Dvorak: the cost of switching are still to high to justify the effort.

<comment><USER15> The effort isn't very high at all? What are you talking about?

<comment><USER16> The effort required is dependant on a bunch of things - your existing familiarity with FP concepts from using 'multi-paradigm' languages, the language you're considering switching to (clojure is probably easier to learn than haskell), your familiarity with tools commonly used in that language's ecosystem (emacs, repls) etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's not just popularity. I wouldn't trust anyone on my team (of 4) to 'get' a Functional Language. Maybe one out of four (Not counting myself in this scenario), and almost no-one that they would hire later on. That leads to a pretty low chance of it ever being adopted where I work.

<comment><USER18> What kind of work are you doing, and what kind of people are you hiring? I'd be very nervous of working with someone that wasn't actually capable of "getting" FP.

<comment><USER16> I suppose that depends on your definition of FP. If you're just talking about HOF or 'programming with functions' fair enough, but some individuals (erroneously imo) only consider languages with higher kinded types 'functional'. The term is really overloaded.

<comment><USER19> Which puts all Lisp inspired languages out of FP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think the "they don't get it" thing is actually quite a valid reason. I've heard some really ignorant things said in opposition to functional programming. I don't think it applies to the majority of potential users, but certainly a non-negligible percentage.

Examples: "Immutability is stupid, because if your program is immutable it can't do anything."

"You just end up writing everything in an IO Monad anyway."

"Functions are good for math, but not for coding."

<comment><USER21> I agree that this is the case for a lot of people. It's not a judgement of their abilities or anything like that; it's just that, as a practical matter, to really understand some things you have to commit and actually solve some real problems with them. The payoff isn't very apparent when you're starting out, but for me at least the insights I've gained from functional programming have been huge.

FP isn't the only thing in this category - like many people on HN I learned OOP a long time ago, but I remember it being similarly earth shattering, and I went through a period of over-enthusiasm and evangelism for Java and GoF design patterns just like the one I went through when I first learned Haskell. The code-is-data realization that you have when you learn a Lisp is similarly powerful.

I hope I experience more revelations like these! These moments where you learn a whole new way of thinking are the purest joy programming has given me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > _For a given task, the imperative solution may leap immediately to mind or > be found in a handy textbook, while a comparable functional solution may > require considerable effort to find_

FP means additional levels of indirection which makes it less efficient than imperative approaches. If FP really were more productive than imperative languages it would have been adopted by the industry long ago.

</comment><comment><USER5> _Plus le change, plus le meme chose._

Functional programming has a couple of problems, when it comes to uptake. The first is that you only get 40% of the benefit if you go 90% of the way. (Static typing is the same way, which is why I prefer Clojure's typelessness over the mediocre static typing of Java or C++ or Go.) In that case, the "impure" 10% still causes, if not realized complexity, the _potential for_ complexity that infuriates maintainers.

If you go 90% of the way on FP and get 40% of the benefits, that still means you're writing code faster and generally producing less of it, and those are good things. However, there's a nasty duality in programming which is that saving time on the fun stuff means more time is spent on the un-fun stuff. (If you make writing of code 4 times faster and debugging of nasty interface issues 2 times faster, you spend a larger proportion of your time on the latter.) Unless you can eliminate whole classes of un-fun-ness (e.g. categories of bugs) it's often not worth it. Eliminating 90% of the un-fun- ness just means you're spending more time on that remaining 10%.

For example, Python can be used as a mostly functional language and thereby go 90% of the way (conceptually) to FP, but it isn't. The community has judged it to be not worth it. Scala _should_ be used for FP, but there are plenty of Java++ programmers who still use _null_ instead of Option[T]. Sadly, it doesn't take much of this dysfunctional programming to emasculate FP and leave an unbiased person asking, "Why bother?" It might not even be the right way to go, for a maintenance project. Mixing two styles is going to make it more illegible than using the existing (if suboptimal) style for new changes and work.

The career issues noted are also huge. The average Clojure or Haskell developer makes slightly than the average Java developer, but if you control for skill and compare at-level, the Java or C++ developer wins. A 1.8 Java developer (scale here: [http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/gervais- macle...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/gervais- macleod-23-the-shodan-programmer/)) makes $175,000 and turns down invitations into VP-level positions at major corporations on a regular basis, because 1.6+ Java developers are just so rare. A 1.8 C++ developer can make $500,000 per year at a hedge fund. The 1.8 Haskell or Clojure developer makes about $125,000 on average, which is not bad but hardly stratospheric. This tends toward a self-perpetuating exaggeration of historical discrepancies in language popularity. Even if the average Haskell job is better, Haskell jobs (at all) are much harder to get, and Haskell jobs that pay as well as even an upper-middle Java job are extremely rare. The market is just stronger for Java people, so that keeps people wanting to use it, which keeps the majority of companies preferring it over better languages because they fear maintenance risk more than low productivity.

I'm less charitable than Wadler on the "they don't get it" angle. Certainly there are smart people who "get" functional programming and have good reasons not to use it. Still, I do think that a contributing factor to FP's lack of uptake is the anti-intellectualism of the programming world.

It's not that anti-intellectuals have some natural inclination toward Java or C++. The anti-intellectuals have the general attitude that _language doesn 't matter_. And then they pick Java for some risk-averse, enterprisey shitfuck reason like maintenance risk or lack of an available developer pool, both of which are just business stinginess ("we don't want to train people"). What makes them vile is not their tastes in languages (there is a lack of taste in the Java community but, even still, there _are_ cases where Java is the absolute right language to use) but the fact that they don't take programmers' concerns (such as tooling choices) seriously at all, and prioritize manager- type concerns over the needs of the people actually doing the fucking work.

<comment><USER23> _The anti-intellectuals have the general attitude that language doesn 't matter._

This attitude should not be discounted. You'll find fewer proponents of strong type systems than me.

I recently started working with a client who wanted to build a Haskell system in order to do some complex financial modelling. I told them to forget Haskell and build a Python/Django app that will handle 90% of their customers. The only significant bug was comparing a backward discounted quantity to a forward discounted quantity. Haskell wouldn't solve that.

The development effort saved due to _not rewriting built-in django apps_ vastly outweighed any productivity benefit we'd have gotten from using Haskell.

<comment><USER24> A friend started a company a couple of years back. He was not a programmer, but worked in a lab, so knew the bioinformaticians favored Python. He insisted that the app was built in Python. I was thinking that the language didn't really matter.

Anyway, a couple of years later he got a grant to continue with the project. It was junior level wages. And he couldn't get a Python programmer to work for that (he asked me) amongst others. PHP would have probably opened up more options in that respect, even though it is considered a poorer choice of language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> That's really old so I actually looked at it (again). Here are the criteria that Wadler mentions that ho<eld back adoption.

Things that Haskell used to be weak on but now has good support for:

FFI - yes Libraries - Yes Portability - Yes Ease of installation - <USER2> Packagability - Yes Tools - yes Training - available Performance - <USER3>

(non)Reasons why it doesn't get adopted. Still apply.

Popularity - No still not popular They don't get it - Yes they still don't get it Killer App - none that I can see (darcs?)

<comment><USER26> _" Killer App - none that I can see (darcs?)"_

Maybe pandoc.

<comment><USER27> Historically I think Haskell will be very important as the substrate on which a lot of the next generation of dependently-typed languages (Idris, Agda) are bootstrapped on top of. It's a niche use admittedly, but it's hard to understate how great Haskell is for writing modern functional compilers.

<comment><USER26> Certainly possible. There's some great stuff going on there.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Police Accidentally Record Themselves Conspiring to Fabricate Charges - <AUTHOR> https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/police-accidentally-record-themselves-conspiring-fabricate-criminal-charges-against <comment><USER2> This is incredibly common, much more so than shooting someone or even a serious beating. The logic is:

\- I just slapped the phone out of their hand / threw them against the pavement / committed some other sort of assault, usually because they somehow affronted my honor (eg, by asking what law they were breaking).

\- If I just walk away, it's clear that that was unjustified.

\- So I fabricate a resisting arrest / obstructing an investigation / disturbing the peace / assault on an officer claim for them to fight, so it devolves into he said / she said, where I win by virtue of my reputation as a cop & the lack of AV evidence.

That's what the "we have to cover our ass" discussion is about.

<comment><USER3> This might sound counterintuitive but let's say the cop admitted to some mistake? Say, slapping a cellphone out of the hand of some random person. What's the outcome? Punishment? More education?

Basically I'm wondering what is so bad for the cop afterward that they would rather try to cover up a simple mistake?

<comment><USER2> The most proximate risk is that your colleagues will no longer trust you to "cover their asses". That usually results in you being driven out of the department or worse.

You're usually not talking about a "mistake" (although that happens too, eg, cops arresting someone after accidentally hitting them in a crosswalk), you're talking about an intentional on-street retaliation for affronting their honor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Every charge ever laid by these three officers now needs to be reevaluated, with the benefit of the doubt given to the defendants. This could cost millions of taxpayer dollars, as well as have guilty people go free because of the doubt thrown on the process.

I don't understand how other officers could ever defend colleagues who do this type of activity. It's so anti-justice it should make them crawl in their skin.

<comment><USER5> It's not that hard to understand. This guy was preventing cops from doing their jobs effectively. A job they felt was important. It's easy to see him as a trouble maker that is enabling other people to more easily break the law without punishment. So they sought out a way to prevent him from doing that.

I'm not saying what they did was OK. I'm just saying it's easy to understand why it happens.

<comment> ctrl-j > So they sought out a way to prevent him from doing that.

And settled on an illegal way of doing so. When they are law enforcement officers. It's hard to understand that anyone signing up to "protect and serve" would think that they are given the right to do whatever it takes as long as they think they are doing right by the greater good.

If you cannot conduct yourself in a law-abiding manner as a LEO, you deserve to go to jail.

<comment><USER6> >If you cannot conduct yourself in a law-abiding manner as a LEO, you deserve to go to jail.

And you deserve to go to jail for longer than a regular citizen should if you do it in the performance of your job. I never agreed to follow any laws, let alone enforce them -- they did.

<comment><USER7> Exactly, LEO need to be held to a higher standard not a lower one than the general populace. Yes, this might require higher pay / more training etc, but law enforcement is one of the most important government functions to get right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For the naive people who think such things never happen because there is no recorded evidence (as if there would be official statements on such cases). Well, here is some, even inadvertently recorded.

Any European from England and Germany to France and Spain and Greece knows this kind of thing has been going on all the time -- and was especially hot during the cold war, late 60s student protests, etc, but all the way up to now. Because of more militant opposition parliament parties we've also had several documented cases and even some getting to court (usually for a slap on the wrist). No reason to think the US would be better in this regard.

<comment><USER9> Any system will be abused. You balance the risk of that abuse against the downside of letting criminals do what they want. There are lots of countries were the police don't really control the streets--that's not pleasant either.

The problem here isn't that abuse happens--it's that even when there is hard evidence of it it can't be successfully addressed and the offenders punished. What keeps abuse of the system to acceptable levels is the social norms and deterrent effect created by the law. Both are eviscerated when clear-cut abuses go unpunished.

<comment><USER8> > _Any system will be abused. You balance the risk of that abuse against the > downside of letting criminals do what they want._

That's not abuse. It's systemic -- the police system works as people in power (governments, private interests, rich lobbies) intend it to when that happens.

Other stuff, that they don't allow, doesn't not happen, or is seriously stomped down when it does -- not just as a slap on the wrist.

<comment><USER9> The "people in power" don't want unarmed black people getting shot. They get no conceivable benefit from that. It's tempting to blame government and rich people for everything, but the fact of the matter is that the police are abusive because ordinary people want it that way. The bulwark propping up the police are local property owners.

<comment><USER10> >The "people in power" don't want unarmed black people getting shot.

>police are abusive because ordinary people want it that way

What?? How am i getting a benefit from unarmed black people getting shot anymore than a senator?

No if anything it comes down to misguided incentives (broken window policing, drug policies, police and attorneys wanting to forward their political aspirations, etc) This is all controlled by the government (which is of course controlled by moneyed interests.

<comment><USER9> Why are broken window policing and drug policies a thing? Why does "tough on crime" further DAs' political ambitions? Because that's what ordinary people demand.

I grew up in the 1990s. When kids would be called to assembly on a regular basis and teachers would shriek at them "just say no!" Drugs and were destroying our children, in their opinion, and no measures were too extreme to stop that. Those same people voted for mandatory minimums, three strikes laws', elimination of parole, etc. California's unjust three strikes law, which imposed life sentences for a third non-violent felony, was a _ballot initiative._ Trump and Romney didn't give us the justice system we have. My third-grade teacher did.

<comment><USER11> No. Ordinary people don't demand stupid things like that, but governments want those things. So governments invent narratives about the children or whatever is the easiest for people to get emotional and protective about and push their agendas onto them. People, of course, being so easily influenced, buy this and approve government initiatives.

<comment><USER9> I recommend you watch the PBS special Prohibition. It does a great job of explaining how the prohibition on alcohol was a grass-roots movement by women and Protestants. It was actually against the government's interest, because alcohol taxes at the time made up 1/3 of federal revenue. It'll disabuse you of this notion that "government" is always to blame for how people vote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The police union is going to spend huge amounts of money--money that is going to come ultimately from tax dollars--defending this indefensible conduct. This insanity won't stop until those unions are dismantled.

<comment><USER12> This isn't a pro-union or anti-union issue. This is a police brutality and police corruption issue.

<comment><USER13> Normally I'm pro union and workers rights, but police unions are central to the corruption issue.

Police become and stay corrupt because they know they are protected. "Thin Blue Line" and "Blue Wall of Silence" type stuff. Police unions really perpetuate this type of behavior by discouraging actual scrutiny of charges brought against officers. Police unions take a "we'll get you out of this, here's what you say and do" attitude taken towards charges all charges. And if they can't get all the charges outright dropped, the punishment is usually a slap on the wrist.

And don't get me started about "administrative paid leave".

<comment><USER14> You're describing a problem with the prosecutor's office, not the police union.

<comment><USER15> Problem is: the prosecutor's office depends on the cops to do its job. If it starts prosecuting cops, they will stop cooperating, making its job almost impossible. And cops will outright sabotage inquiries into their own conduct.

Case in point: in the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore, the police had failed to serve search warrants for the officers' personal cellphones.

<comment><USER9> > Case in point: in the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore, the police had failed > to serve search warrants for the officers' personal cellphones.

And if they had been Wal-Mart greeters instead of union employees, they would've been fired on the spot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Another good argument for mandatory recordings of cops during arrests. I think even just audio would be a really good start and is a lot easier to capture and store in the field than video. Sure, it's a lot easier to edit and fake too but I'm sure a reasonably tamper proof device exists. Every company I've worked for records phone calls, this shouldn't be any different.

<comment><USER17> > Another good argument for mandatory recordings of cops during arrests.

Unfortunately, even when dash cams are mandated, the footage is often corrupted or lost[0]

[0]"80% of CPD dash cam videos are missing audio" [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- watch/wp/2016/01/29/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- watch/wp/2016/01/29/80-percent-of-chicago-pd-dash-cam-videos-are-missing- audio-due-to-officer-error-or-intentional-destruction/?utm_term=.c20971deb828)

<comment><USER18> If that is indeed the case, then missing evidence should count as evidence against the officer.

<comment><USER19> It should generally result in a mis-trial. Is there a punishment for "loss of evidence" by a cop? If so, that should apply as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _"Let's give him something," one trooper declared. Another suggested, "we can hit him with creating a public disturbance." "Gotta cover our ass," remarked a third._

That doesn't sound like it's the first time they've had that type of discussion. I wonder how many innocent citizens are in jail right now because of those cops.

<comment><USER21> There is nothing necessarily immoral or legal about what those cops did.

They were in an incident and were deciding what charges to lay.

It's a tricky thing laying charges.

Laying charges is not abuse of power.

Now - if the cops were inventing or fabricating evidence - saying the person did something he did not do - then this would be definitely abuse, but it's not clear that happened.

But if someone standing in the street with a gun is doing something a cop can feasibly consider 'public nuisance' \- and it's within their right to charge someone with 'public nuisance' \- then the issue here is not the cops, it's the loose definition of 'public nuisance' and the cops ability to arbitrarily apply it.

The article is mostly quotes from the ACLU, so it's only one side of the story and selected information, it would be interesting to know more.

<comment><USER22> Did you see the the part of the video where they said they would make up multiple witness complaints about the victim?

<comment><USER23> Does stuff like this stand up in court though, considering the Sixth Amendment?

<comment><USER20> Without the video evidence, yes, it would.

Who's the judge going to believe? Three cops, or one "trouble maker"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Let's see some prosecutions of the police for harassment, false imprisonment, destruction of property, assault, battery, conspiracy to commit a felony, creating a disturbance, conduct unbecoming of a public servant, and obstruction of the law. Let's see them go to prison for abusing the citizens. This is a clear cut case of police attempting to fabricate charges in order to put away someone who is guilty only of contempt of cop.

Set a course for confrontation with the police union; it's necessary. Liquidate police by firing and prosecuting as necessary to effect a clean department that won't brutalize the public. There will always be more people to sign up to join the police, so we may as well get rid of the shitty ones. Cleaning house is long overdue, and we need to start realistically expecting to have to fire significant proportions of a lot of different police departments. Believe me, law and order won't simply break down overnight if we start holding the police accountable.

The only way we as the public are going to render comeuppance to the police is if we get political momentum going for harsh legal/criminal consequences when they abuse the public.

<comment><USER25> Cops convicted in every country go to special resort prisons. Just repealing this, and pushing them to general population prisons for serious shit might be enough of a deterrent. Sure - it may be a death sentence, but one who gives them out should expect one himself.

<comment><USER18> If enough of them are in a given prison they can form a gang to protect themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is it possible to bring private prosecutions in the US? In the UK I believe you could criminal-charge these guys yourself with sufficient funds.

I am no longer shocked or surprised when I read stories about US cops like this: it seems a massive stain on the USA internationally. I'm sad (but not surprised) that no politicians in the presidential election are making a big deal of it.

<comment><USER27> I'm not shocked at reports of corrupt police officers anywhere in the world; why is it any different to you because you hear of it in the US?

<comment><USER26> Because they kill people at an astonishing rate compared to the rest of the developed world: more people in a day than the UK in a year (and only having about 6x the population).

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the- counted-...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted- police-killings-us-vs-other-countries)

<comment><USER27> That's a completely different topic and problem though. There are several reasons as to why such a difference happens. It's not that every police shooting is because of police corruption.

edit: thank you for the link, it was an interesting article. Although, I think many of the comparisons with the US are inherently flawed. It's still interesting to see the stats.

<comment><USER28> Worth noting even if a shooting is 'justified' it doesn't mean you have to do it. This also explains the gap, not just illegal shootings. The US police appear to have a zero risk tolerence or desire to de-escalate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Please share this as much as you can on facebook, twitter, et al. While many of us on HN are not surprised that this kind of thing happens, it's generally hard to convince the public at large i.e. the crowd that gets all their news from mainstream media.

This is the kind of thing that could 'wake up' another small slice of the population that i.e. has 'nothing to hide' wrt NSA data collection etc.

<comment><USER21> The fact he was carrying a gun, and trying to act out against police in the first place, is not going to engender him any sympathy in the public at large.

Illegal or legal - someone carrying a gun in public trying to prod cops is creating problems, not solving them.

If this guy was holding a sign out of a nuclear plant saying 'no more nukes' and was unarmed, then it would be a different story I think.

In terms of public perception, I don't think this guy is going to win any points among regular people.

<comment><USER30> > The fact he was carrying a gun, and trying to act out against police in the > first place, is not going to engender him any sympathy in the public at > large.

Corrected: The fact he was exercising his 2nd amendment rights, and trying to inform citizens that their 4th amendment rights were about to be violated, is not going to engender him any sympathy in the public at large.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Without the ability to actually prosecute police for crimes committed, and to give scrutiny to the stories told by officers, none of this will stop.

</comment><comment><USER31> There's something that confuses me: If a lawsuit has actually been filed, then there should be some sort of tracking number (case number, docket number, etc.) associated with it. Why didn't the article have that number, so that interested people could track the status of the case on their own?

</comment><comment><USER27> "The second count is a Fourth Amendment claim: the seizure of Michael's camera without probable cause to believe that it contained evidence of a crime, or a warrant for its seizure. The police cannot grab people's property and confiscate it on a whim."

You would think the ACLU knows that this is not true at all. Police regularly confiscate property on a daily basis with no cause. They have laws that allow them to do this. It's usually cash but they have been known to take whatever isn't nailed down. Some police departments apparently plan their budgets around it.

<comment><USER32> This is a neat example of what one's mother tried to teach one when asked, 'mom, can I have a cookie?' and she responded, 'yes, you _can_ , but you _may_ not!'

The facts clearly demonstrate that the police _can_ in fact confiscate property on a whim. They _may_ not, under the Constitution. But who cares about the Constitution? It's just a scrap of paper standing in the wave of our Brave New World.

<comment><USER27> In your analogy the Supreme Court would be the mother saying they may not. Sometimes it just takes time for the topic to come before the Court to be addressed.

<comment><USER32> > In your analogy the Supreme Court would be the mother saying they may not.

That assumes that the Supreme Court will judge according to the Constitution, which I think isn't borne out by case history.

It was the Supreme Court which said a black man couldn't be a citizen; that wheat grown in one state and fed to cattle in the same state is involved in interstate commerce; that the death penalty referred to in the Constitution is unconstitutional; that taking property for private gain is a public taking; and on, and on, and on.

<comment><USER27> I agree the Court can often be wrong in the long run, but that's the way our system works at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The thing to keep in mind, while reading this, is how many times does this happen on a day-to-day basis, before you just happen to run into cops that are too stupid to realize they are recording themselves while they do this?

</comment><comment><USER15> I read somewhere that, at any given time as you go about your daily business, you are guilty of breaking a couple of laws. This gives the police the power to haul you away if they want to. The police look at it as a "weapon", just like their baton or taser, to be used when the need arises. But unfortunately, not everyone in blue is above reproach; there are plenty of bad apples, and the situation is rife with abuse.

The sad part is: if you try to do away with these silly laws, the police unions will be up in arms about it.

</comment><comment><USER34> A lot of photographers I know carry the Photographer's Rights pamphlet FBO any security guards or police that don't seem to know the law.

[http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm](http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm)

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm surprised that the thugs gave the camera back to the victim.

Lesson 1: smarter cops don't get caught.

Lesson 2: record the cops straight to the cloud.

ADDENDUM: For those in the US, consider installing your state's edition of the ACLU Mobile Justice app on your smartphone.

</comment><comment><USER36> The cops should be stripped of their badges and in jail on felony charges.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'd love if the judge throws out the evidence since they weren't in a single- party recording state or that they weren't read their rights or something. Would be funny.

</comment><comment><USER38> At 2.15 in the video the cops realize that camera was on during their discussion. Why did they not confiscate the tape?

<comment><USER39> It's a DSLR, so when they noted that it was "still on", they probably just assumed it was a stills camera, switched on (as in ready-to-take-pictures).

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> We really have crossed over into the USSA.</comment>


Firefox upgraded my browser from 3.6 to 12 without asking and my consent - <AUTHOR>

I closed my Fx 3.6.xx and when I opened it, I saw some progressbox about Fx being updated, next was wizard with questions about extensions and in the end I got Fx 12! No one asked me about this switch. I was purposedly keeping that version.<p>Am I the only one cursing Firefox engineers right now? <comment><USER2> Yes. Yes you are.

Seriously, 3.6 came out two and a half years ago. What possible reason could you have to keep it? Do you _want_ to get malware?

Edit: downvotes? It's a legitimate question.

<comment><USER3> Maybe because you're ignoring his legitimate statement: "No one asked me about this switch. _I was purposedly keeping that version_."

<comment><USER4> Was the update option turned off?

If not, I would expect that after multiple notices which were sent to FF 3.5/3.6 users about their browser being EOL'd, it would autoupdate to a supported version.

If yes, then this might be a bug. Which would explain the oddity of why FF12 showed up here (and not FF14 stable or FF10 ESR).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Finally. What is taking Mozilla so long to upgrade 3.6 users? This push was suppose to happen months ago for people who didn't set the flag.

Btw, the current version is 14. You're still behind.

</comment><comment><USER6> As of the time of this comment a lot of people are missing the point which is about respecting the user's choice not to upgrade.

To answer the question though, I'd say maybe not the only one but you're probably part of an incredibly small minority. If you had the update feature off and this happened then it's certainly not right but if it was on and you received many notices already then you had plenty of time to turn that feature off.

I'd ask what reason anyone would have to keep such an old version though? I do understand its a choice but outside of some really narrow edge cases I can't really see a good reason to keep 3.6.

This raises so,e very interesting questions though if in fact you had the update feature explicitly turned off. We all can agree that updating your browser even somewhat regularly is great for both users and developers but respecting the users choices is also almost a duty that software developers have. To me this is a gray area. Considering how old and outdated FF3.6 is and that web standards change so rapidly and have a lot since 3.6 was it a good call for Mozilla to pull the trigger and upgrade users of ancient FF versions or is it more important to respect the user's choice?

I think they made the right call. We think of using a particular browser at version X as a choice but in reality the majority of people do not choose this. They get whatever came out at the time and then never think of it again. For most users their inaction when it comes to upgrading isn't really a conscious choice to stay at the version they have but instead just a side effect of not knowing enough to be able to choose to upgrade or not having the time to be bothered by the prompt and clicking "No" on whatever comes up (I can see that especially applying to Windows users as there seems to be a prompt popping up every other second). At a certain point there are so few reasons not to upgrade that it makes sense to do it for the user automatically. Even if a user, somehow, some way, is using an old version of FF for testing a website in development or has somehow gotten into a situation like many corporate IE users face where certain websites or apps can only be access with version X it's very reasonable to assume these people know they have an edge case and would take steps to either only run the browser on an intranet or private network or, for developers, only run it on one machine on a _local_ server and not connected to the wider web.

In the end I feel for you and I understand it sucks but really there's not much reason at all for anyone not in that situation to be outraged or care much that a version of FF so out of date is being auto updated without permission. And I say that in the nicest way possible.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you are concerned about stability of a release with regards to compatibility, why weren't you using the ESR?

<https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/>

Unlike 3.6, it gets security-only updates for a well-defined period of time.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm an upgrade laggard, I feel your pain. All of the comments saying that you have no right to complain can be summarized as "If I don't understand why someone is doing something, they must be wrong."

I guess we've entered the age when browser choices have become moral decisions. Why it shouldn't be your own choice as to what browser version you run is beyond me.

<comment><USER9> "I guess we've entered the age when browser choices have become moral decisions."

Yes, it is immoral to waste web developers time by holding onto an old browser.

<comment><USER4> Old and unsupported browsers are also exploitable, and exploiting a machine doesn't just hurt the person who owns it, since the machine is then used to spam all the rest of us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can't speak to why they upgraded without asking you. However, 3.6 has been end-of-lifed and will no longer receive security updates. You'll be much better off using the Extended Support Release.

Mozilla doesn't make it easy to find the ESR download page. It's here:

<https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all.html>

<comment><USER11> That's a really helpful link. I had not idea there even was such a thing. Thanks.

<comment><USER10> It's targeted primarily at enterprises and only gets updated (aside from security patches) every 7 releases (42 weeks).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't know about cursing any engineers, but I'm running a 3.something version for Firefox because I have a set of plug-ins that work, and have failed to work in later versions, and I get to do what I want in a way that I'm happy with.

If there's some overwhelming reason it would be in my own best interest to stop using 3.x I'm certainly interested to hear about it.

The number of sites that appear to take advantage of more current FF features is, for me, minuscule, and I can visit the site in Chrome or something if needed.

<comment><USER12> You've been misled into thinking that you _need_ features X, Y and Z. Web pages can be functional without flashy new features.

Your browser is your choice, and we as developers need to respect that.

<comment><USER11> Well, to be fair, some new things _are_ pretty cool. I'd love to have both the latest cool stuff _and_ be able to run every add-on I've ever liked since Mozilla 1.0.

I know that's just not going to happen, so I made a choice. I'll do without certain things in order to keep other things.

I'm just occasionally concerned that I'm overlooking some serious downside (e.g. FF 3.x can be made to set my Linux machine on fire or whatever).

Mostly the only thing I notice is that WebGL demos don't work. Not really a big deal for me. I can run those on Chrome or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Am I the only one cursing Firefox engineers right now?"

Why don't you try thinking about the web designers? Firefox 3.6 is at about .75% of internet users now. You all need to move on.

[http://getclicky.com/marketshare/global/web- browsers/firefox...](http://getclicky.com/marketshare/global/web- browsers/firefox/)

<comment><USER8> If it's <1% of internet users, most web designers will have already moved on. The only ones that haven't will be the ones where this user is a customer and he is unable to use a different browser. Then that developer is being paid to support his ancient technology and if he doesn't like doing so he can start a startup and make his own decisions and figure out how to pay his own salary. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The comments here about przemoc's choice in browser are surprisingly critical and vitriolic. S/he claims to be purposely keeping that version, and so presumably has some good reason - specific plugins, specific version testing for an internal web application, etc. Even if przemoc didn't have what you would consider a good reason, it should be his or her choice to keep that browser version and the onus is on us as web developers to encourage him (in positive ways) to upgrade - through better web applications that require new features, better communicating the reasons for upgrading, etc.

Believe me when I say that I understand the frustrations that come from having to support outdated browsers - I used to develop a web application for the financial industry, where as of a year or two ago a significant portion of traffic still came from IE6-locked machines in large financial institutions - but browser choice is not the issue here.

The issue as I see it is that the software that przemoc was running did not behave as he or she wanted and expected it to behave. That means that the software had a design problem (poor or misleading auto-update setting design), a communication problem (didn't inform him or maybe mislead him about the default update behavior) or a bug (updated despite a setting telling it not to).

There isn't enough information in the original post to determine if the last one (auto-update occurring despite being turned off) is what happened here - I'd like to learn more. It would be worrying (and I'd argue an insecure design) if the software were even capable of self-updating with that setting turned off.

<comment><USER12> > [...] the onus is on us as web developers to encourage [him/her] (in > positive ways) to upgrade - through better web applications that require new > features, better communicating the reasons for upgrading, etc.

I disagree. The onus is on those peddling the product (i.e. marketers) to sell its worth to users.

> Believe me when I say that I understand the frustrations that come from > having to support outdated browsers

I read about "frustration" when referring to older browsers a lot. That has led me to question just how much people learn about supporting those browsers. Shouldn't supporting browser X become trivial once a certain amount of experience is accrued? Or do we just hunt and peck until a page ostensibly works?

> There isn't enough information in the original post to determine if the last > one (auto-update occurring despite being turned off) is what happened here - > I'd like to learn more. It would be worrying (and I'd argue an insecure > design) if the software were even capable of self-updating with that setting > turned off.

As someone who tests every whole number version of Firefox (1-14), I have experience with the force-fed updates. Imagine my frustration when viewing the version information (via Help > About) led to the browser paving over my existing installation. I really don't want to have to tinker with the settings for fourteen separate programs.

Conversely, Opera 8+ will ask before updating. Though this happens every time I open the program, I can easily decline and continue with my business. This is how to respect users.

Chrome is far worse, as it forbids the existence of an older build, even after the newer build is uninstalled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> While many people may be bemoaning the choice of Mozilla to update without consent, I suggest looking at it from a different perspective...

Many browser updates are largely brought about due to a few things, but security is generally a large matter when these upgrades get pushed. Yes, you may have kept a certain version for a reason (you don't want to change, you like the way it looks, etc), but let's focus on the other side of this with a short analogy. Say you go out and buy a new fire alarm and install it at your house. The fire alarm is there to help protect you from dying in a fire. Later, the manufacturing company realizes there are some minor design flaws which put you at risk of, well, dying in a fire. Most would argue that it is not only the duty and obligation of the company to replace (or upgrade) the alarm, but that it may even be right to legally mandate that they do. If the company came to you and said that there were some major flaws and they wanted to upgrade you, I doubt anyone would whine that they like the way the current model looks and want to pass.

However, when a browser does it, everyone bitches about it. The updates are there for many reasons, not just security. Generally speaking, however, browser updates not only benefit your own security, but also help make the web a better place for everyone, whether it be by better standards adherence, improved usability tools, or who knows what else.

One of the big reasons that this becomes a problem is that people dislike change, but on a larger scale, they dislike change of something they don't understand. Browsers, computers, the web, etc are very abstracted away from people to a point that most don't know anything about the way the tools they use on a daily basis work. When those tools change, it appears like some corporate robot is changing it to hurt them because they don't understand the reasons these things NEED to be updated. There isn't enough transparency on WHY the changes happen (there are in the changelogs, but try to get your mother to read or understand that) and understanding of the base layers and it makes it very hard for people to understand.

I think one step forward here is to present users with a laymans explanation on why they need to update their browser. Telling them "We need to update your browser because we've discovered a potential problem where someone could possibly steal your credit card number while making purchases" is a lot more straightforward than this: <http://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/13.0.1/releasenotes/>

<comment><USER15> Your analogy is flawed.

To make it complete, the fictional fire alarm company would not come to you at all. While at your house originally installing the fire alarm, they would grab the key to your house from where it hangs by the door, make a copy (without your knowledge), then hang it back on the wall. Later, when the defect in the alarm was discovered, they would use that copy of the key to let themselves in to your house while you were at work. Then they would replace the fire alarm without your consent or your knowledge of them doing so (well, of course, until you returned from work and figured out what happened when you were gone -- assuming that you noticed the new alarm).

I don't have a problem with companies and other development organizations updating their software. In fact, I _encourage_ them to do so (especially in the case of security issues). However, I _do_ have a problem with said companies/organizations making such updates without first informing me that they are doing so, and getting my consent to do so _before_ performing the update.

It's not your computer. It's _my_ computer. I paid for it. I get to control it. Period. If I am subject to security vulnerabilities because of the browser version I'm using, that is my responsibility.

I detest software where automatic updates are turned on by default, without ever presenting the user the option of turning them off (without having to go hunt down said option after the program is installed). Automatic updates have ramifications. They can screw up working installations. I get tired of having to go and disable automatic updates from applications, browsers, java runtimes (and that stupid Java system tray icon in Windows).

I'm not against being _able_ to turn on automatic updates. There are plenty of users who don't want to fool with it, and that's their business. I just think users should be given the choice up front. We shouldn't have to go looking for it after installation. I am still mildly irritated by having an option for automatic updates being checked on by default at installation time, but I could live with that irritation if all applications were explicitly giving users the option then. However, the trend of late seems to be updates turned on automatically, without even informing the user that there _are_ automatic updates.

I like to know when software is being installed on my computer. I want to be asked before it is installed.

<comment><USER14> Understandable... One other thing to keep in mind also is that you're using free software when it comes to Firefox. If someone wants to give me something for free with the requirement that it automatically updates to both keep me secure and push the web forward, I'm all for it. Given that the majority of users don't know what the hell they're even using, I think it makes sense to turn on auto updates for the average user, while the power users like us dig deeper to turn it off.

edit: also, to nitpick your analogy amendment of my fictional alarm company copying a key without your knowledge, I don't think opening software and having it "fix itself" automatically is anything akin to having a person steal a key to your house and enter it without your knowledge... However, I do agree my analogy was a bit flawed and that the reality is somewhere in between both of our views.

<comment><USER15> I figured the "yeah but it's free software" thing would be part of the comeback. My response is that Firefox being free is completely irrelevant to my point. I'm the owner of the computer. You should never install anything on my computer without my consent. And yes, I think it is bad for you to do that with an average user also. I, as a user, downloaded Firefox 3.x (or whatever version) and installed it. I expect Firefox 3.x to be the one that is running after I install it. I _don't_ have a problem with the installation program putting up a dialog that says "We'd like to keep this software up to date. May we turn on automatic updates for this software? (yes/no)". As I said in my previous post, I can even begrudgingly live with the "Yes" option being checked by default. To me, it is the fact that all of this is done by default _without ever asking me about it_ that is bad bad bad. The user should be told. A simple explanation is not difficult, and most users who would go to the trouble of installing something should be able to understand a reasonably well-written explanation. And even if only 40% of them do, it is still better that the option be given. If they don't want to be bothered with it, they are most likely going to just take the defaults anyway.

As to the nitpick about the analogy -- of _course_ it isn't the same level of severity. It's an analogy. Installing a fire alarm system can't be compared to installing Firefox on my computer either. One takes hours, the other takes only minutes. I wasn't trying to say that breaking and entering was equivalent to covertly installing program updates without user consent. I was merely trying to complete the analogy (perhaps remote wireless fire alarm firmware updates without homeowner consent would have been a better choice -- but I didn't think of that possibility until just now. :-D )

The semi-amusing part about this whole discussion is the reason that I'm replying again. I'd installed Firefox on one of the machines in my house a while back, and I forgot to turn off the automatic updates. Started up Firefox only to have it apply the update it had automatically downloaded without my knowledge. Grrrrrrr. Sorry, this just rubs me the wrong way, and I don't like Firefox running a background service to install updates either (also an option that I didn't chose).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well, if you insist on reverting back to a browser that will never have any security updates ever again, here are some useful tips for preventing it updating itself: [http://support.mozilla.org/en- US/questions/931530#answer-349...](http://support.mozilla.org/en- US/questions/931530#answer-349946)

</comment><comment><USER17> Would you curse the Firefox engineers more or less if they didn't try to upgrade you to a newer version of Firefox and, through their inaction, allowed your computer to be exploited via a security vulnerability in Firefox that has long since been fixed in modern Firefox versions?

<comment><USER18> Yes, I would curse them both ways. I'm sure the engineers get enough appreciation from other people :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> You're the type of person who runs IE6.

<comment><USER12> Browser elitism benefits no one. The user is left insulted, and the developer strokes their own ego.

<comment><USER19> I was merely pointing out the fact that it is the running of a 3 year old browser that benefits no one and debilitates the web.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Dude, I'm sorry but you're on your own. Mozilla needed to do this a long time ago and believe me, it's for the greater general good.

</comment><comment><USER21> Fortunately you can use firefox portable to test older versions if needed.

[http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable/local...](http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable/localization#legacy36)

</comment><comment><USER22> For most users it seems fine, but as someone with an interest in researching historical software, I do find some of this stuff a bit troubling, unless there's a way to turn it off. It's getting harder to install and use old versions of software, without resorting to running things in carefully controlled snapshotted sandboxes.

Also a problem with games, which sometimes _significantly_ change gameplay with patches. You used to be able to archive the original binaries and then also archive each incremental patch, but auto-updates (and other things such as DLC) are making that all tricky.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't think that's a bad thing, look at it this way: \- Most sites will look and work better now. \- New browser with new functionality. \- It's 2012, it was time to get upgraded. \- I was warned: [http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/applications/3354678/moz...](http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/applications/3354678/mozilla- auto-upgrade-to-kill-firefox-36-in-security-drive/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I am irked by the fact that Firefox added a doodle to its Home tab which is using my local resource to host the GIF image. I am fine with doodles but there shouldn't be a doodle on my browser without my consent, let alone the image is running from my hard drive.

</comment><comment><USER25> Similar line: FF doesn't support older versions of Mac OS X (can't say the specific version, but iMac would be the case I'm aware of).

Hardware vendor won't provide OS upgrades, SW vendor won't provide app upgrades. So user is stuck on FF 3.6.

</comment><comment><USER26> Chrome updates everyone all the time without asking. It just happens. Mozilla's big mistake is that they tell the user that the update has occurred. It should happen without you even realizing it.

</comment><comment><USER27> I feel your pain.

Once when I took a short break someone ran into my shop and painted all the beads of my abacus florescent pink.

What were they thinking?</comment>


AI Is Getting Good Enough to Delegate the Work It Can't Do - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2015/05/ai-is-getting-good-enough-to-delegate-the-work-it-cant-do <comment><USER2> Really interesting article. HBR is awesome. You should checkout Ray Kurzweil & Michio Kaku if you want to really dive deep into AI and the eventual robot revolution that will take over all mundane jobs (and eventually complex jobs). Kind of makes you wonder what the human experience will be like if no one will need to work for a living</comment>


MIT Tech Review: The Apple Watch May Solve the Usual Smart Watch Annoyances - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530586/the-apple-watch-may-solve-the-usual-smart-watch-annoyances/

<comment><USER2> if the watch is being redefined as a medical/health device its in the right direction, but using it for other features like navigation or picking up a call, there is very little value in those.

In case the device moves more towards health app domain with many health apps developed for it, then only health conscious buyers will be the market.</comment>


Researchers discover superconductor with unexpected lattice configuration - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-08-superconductor-unexpected-lattice-configuration.html <comment><AUTHOR> >Long‐Range Ordered Amorphous Atomic Chains as Building Blocks of a Superconducting Quasi‐One‐Dimensional Crystal

[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adma.2020023...](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adma.202002352)</comment>


Adobe announces Flash Player and AIR for Android - <AUTHOR> http://theflashblog.com/?p=1758 <comment><USER2> They better not screw this up. Adobe has had a lot of bad press lately as their exclusion from the iPad has unearthed lingering annoyances.

If this makes android devices sluggish or causes crashes, it will lend credence to Apple's decision, and old complaints once again get rehashed.

<comment><USER3> I'm more interested to see if Android users are willing to deal with the crashes and slowness for the convenience of having Flash.

Mac users deal with it because they have to, but Apple decided otherwise for the iPhone.

<comment><USER4> > _Mac users deal with it because they have to_

Actually it's their choice to have it installed or not.

<comment><USER5> Really? I don't recall ever having installed flash on any of my Macs in the last couple of years. It was already there, crashyness and all. That's why click2flash exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bizarrely, Flash Player has been available for Windows Mobile for years and nobody has noticed. Windows Mobile also has a YouTube app and most of the other major apps, but they're all terribly neglected and have virtually no users. Microsoft had every advantage even before the iPhone came out and yet they managed to squander them.

I predict a Zune phone/PDA which will add even more confusion to the brew of brands Microsoft has managed to concoct. Windows Live Bing Connect Mobile CE XP Pro .net System 8 2010 for Home Users, Enterprise Edition, anyone?

<comment><USER7> Sure, but the Flash on WinMo was not made available as a web plugin.

<comment><USER6> Yes, it was (how else do you use Flash, anyway?).

It worked in IE mobile and I believe there were tricks to get it to work in other browsers (Opera). There was Flash Lite and a normal Flash plugin -- the whole thing was pretty confusing, I admit.

There are also apps like Skyfire ( <http://www.skyfire.com/> ) hanging around which claim various degrees of Flash support built-in. In any case, as far as I'm aware all Flash support was and is via web browser.

<comment><USER7> > How else do you use Flash, anyway?

To play back standalone SWF files and WORA applications. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash_Lite>

But you're right, I just noticed there is indeed a web plugin: <http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer_pocketpc/> \- I stand corrected. It's based on Flash 7, which I think explains why it didn't work for most users (including myself, owning a WM 2005 and WM6 device).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That video was hovering around 88% CPU usage whilst playing. It's hard to get excited about a technology you know'll ultimately just burn your battery at a dire rate in comparison to a native app.

<comment><USER9> I smell a rushed out product here so there's not a lot of hope for it having been fully optimised in the way flash has been for Windows (the video was using 8% CPU on my win7 system btw).

But at least they're actually fighting back with something other than cheap digs and made up facts and figures this time.

Maybe they fired the PR department and hired better programmers.

<comment><USER10> Rushed out? They've been working on it for at least a year, probably much longer. And they're not really introducing anything new, just a mobile port.

If anything they're taking way, way too long. It makes no sense to harp on Apply when they haven't even been able to release on a willing platform yet.

<comment><USER9> Sure. Their entire drive recently has been to prove to Apple and the rest of the world that they're worth keeping around. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if this release has been pushed forward by a few months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oh please... this better be _optional_. If they force this into Android's OS, I'm gonna be pissed. I'm already happily living a flash free lifestyle

<comment><USER12> Congratulations on being Adobe's worst nightmare. It's quite a trick for a technology company to become so disliked that it develops anti-customers; people who vow never to use their product and evangelize the benefits of not using it.

On the other hand this phenomena usually comes with near complete dominance of the market (vid. Microsoft), so psychotic MBA's might regard it as validation.

<comment><USER13> It's quite logical given the situation:

Adobe essentially had a monopoly on browser-based plugins as it was included natively in Internet Explorer and bundled with every copy of Windows XP.

In the years since 2001 when XP was released, they have enjoyed their monopoly status by becoming the defacto standard for streaming video on the web, purely because web developers made the pragmatic decision to go with the monopoly provider, rather than requiring users to download and install a different plugin.

That they've squandered their monopoly status is very visible, as their features have been stagnant for almost a decade now.

It's a shame that finally, in 2010, they are adding GPU acceleration to their plugin. They are finally caring about mobile power management by offloading video processing to dedicated sub-components. They really are playing catch up here.

Apple made the right decision to keep Flash off the iPhone. Until Adobe even cares about GPU acceleration and using the h.264 decoding capabilities that are built into most modern smart phones, it is not worth having on the device.

Of course everyone would love to have Flash video available on their smart phones, but until Adobe can prove that they can deliver a reasonable 30 fps and more than an hour or two of battery life, why should we put up with it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is great news for Android and for linux in general. I installed the latest flash beta for linux and it's noticeably better than the current official release.

I'm guessing Google sees this as an opportunity to take market share from Apple and will make sure Flash runs flawlessly on Android.

I think linux represents a huge opportunity for flash/Air and so it's nice to see these improvements taking shape.

</comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

</comment><comment><USER16> So, is anyone going to make ClickToFlash for Android?

<comment><USER17> At least the browser app is open source, so we can trivially fork it, disable the flash plugin, and release the replacement browser to the Market.

<comment><USER18> Ugh... hopefully it doesn't come to that, but I know if it does that it'll be the first thing I do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm an Android loyalist and I really hope that this endeavour fails. Flash is a rotten platform for a litany of reasons. I can only hope that Adobe are beaten to the punch by one of the various open alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm a little lost. Is this a "coming soon" thing, or does it work in Android 2.0 now? Do people have to update their phones for it to work?

<comment><USER21> I've tried <http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer> from my Nexus One and it still says, "Adobe Flash Player 10.1 is coming to Anroid 2.0 and future releases in the first half of 2010", so I guess it's the former...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Amusingly, the Flash delivered video was totally wonky for me.

The lip-sync was off, the "loading" circle never disappeared and remained overlaid throughout the entire video. I couldn't skip to points in the video and it never indicated any progress, just remained on 0:00 of 0:00.

Everything but the lip-sync worked when I clicked the video and watched it on the tv.adobe.com site.

</comment><comment><USER23> Allowing developers to create apps once and deploy them as native apps across all major mobile platforms would be a big win for Adobe.

But as a result, app stores will be overloaded when anyone with access to Flash CS5 can deploy a native application.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think the good news is you have choices in Android, unlike in some platforms they have no choice because their CEO hate it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Somewhat OT: Have they released betas of 10.1 for OS X yet? Anyone here tried it?

Have they finally narrowed the performance gap with windows?

<comment><USER8> <http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html>

I often run into Flash which just doesn't work correctly, though.

And it uses 10-20% less CPU compared to 10.0, so the gap's been narrowed, but not nearly enough.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I've been using this for a few months now, since it is the first version of Flash that can play Hulu in 1080p connected to an HDTV without dropping half the frames. Now, it only drops one frame every few seconds, and crashes about every hour or two.

This is with a 1GB Nvidia 9800GT graphics card - Flash plugin 10.1 is now accelerating video playback using the ATI and Nvidia chips that support this. However, they're doing a terrible job of it. Granted, this is a beta plugin, but it still uses close to 100% of the CPU on a dual core machine (2.53 ghz Core2, 4GB RAM, Win 7 64-bit) to playback 1080p video.

In XBMC on the same machine I can play back 1080p BluRay rips with 5.1 Dolby Digital without dropping a single frame.

Adobe has a lot of catching up to do. This situation reminds me of Internet Explorer 6 before Firefox started gaining market share.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Interesting video, but why have a macbook sitting there in the interview, but never being used?

A small jab at Apple?

<comment><USER27> He uses the laptop to demo a live Connect Pro video meeting on his Andriod device.</comment></comment>


How did WordPress win? - <AUTHOR> http://www.majordojo.com/2011/02/how-did-wordpress-win.php <comment><USER3> For as terrible as the internals of Wordpress are, the user-facing part of it all isn't bad. So if you never have to hack the core, it's a solid product. And since 99% of people using Wordpress like this won't touch the code, beyond maybe basic templating, then the ease of installation is really the biggest part of it's ubiquity.

There's something to be said for open source packages which work really well out-of-the-box for the vast majority of people who use it.

But oh, my lord, are the internals awful.

<comment><USER4> Can you give more detail on this? I'm curious if they're really that bad or if this is just a common thing to say because it's cool to hate anything built in PHP. I made a basic template for WP and I thought the little parts of the API that I used were fine. I've never done anything serious with WP but I do run a WP install.

<comment><USER5> Some tidbits that come to mind off the top of my head:

Until a few (minor) versons ago, some functions built entire translation tables EACH TIME they were called on the same page load. Someone finally caught it recently and put a _static_ in there.

The critical _add_action_ / _do_action_ functions had a slowdown issue up to a few versions ago if there were more than a dozen actions on a filter. It was finally optimized to be hundreds of times faster.

The first time they tried to update the cookie functions for a major release (I think it was 2.5) they misunderstood the research paper and had to change cookies again in 2.6, breaking some plugins twice in two versions.

The meta tables until very recent history were allowed to have non-unique indexes on key values. This "feature" (an alternative to serialization) was almost never used and made meta updates much more complex (and the db slower in general).

The entire tag db structure was changed in version 2.3, breaking all tag plugins, because someone thought it was theoretically better to have a "Term_taxonomy" reference - which is still unused to this date. Having it in there makes tag queries much more complex and slower. Then they took out the timestamp for when tags were added which makes it impossible to track.

The list goes on and on. Remember, a few versions ago is still 2009.

Last time I checked (2.8?) WordPress _still_ uses SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS which has some nasty performance problems on many versions of mysql.

To this day, the query count for most pages on a default install with a few posts/comments without plugins is over 20. WordPress 3.1 now uses nearly 1 megabyte of php code PER INSTANCE.

Oh and last but not least, ALL plugins are loaded on EVERY page load regardless of the request/rendering requirements. Even admin-only functions. Clever plugin authors can somewhat code around this but it's still a crazy system.

<comment><USER6> My current least favourite design decision is the import/export system. It spits out posts, links etc in an XML file.

So far so good, except that upon importing, it creates an entire tree any memory _before_ doing in processing. I complained to Matt about this being a less-than-ideal design. His response was, essentially, "it works for me".

Of course it works for him. He has dedicated servers with gigabytes of RAM. I do not. What I _do_ have blogs with dozens of authors, thousands of posts and hundreds of thousands of comments. Consolidating them on a single installation of Wordpress has cost me days and days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Absolutely the dead-simple install has been huge for Wordpress. Getting into Wordpress' bowls is disgusting, and some configurations you might think would be trivial are impossible, but they hook you in those first five minutes. It's just so easy to start blogging.

<comment><USER6> Wordpress is a fractal image of PHP, in that respect. It's-easy-to-start turns into Hotel California.

<comment><USER8> Hotel California, from Wikipedia:

> _The lyrics describe the title establishment as a luxury resort where "you > can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." On the surface, it > tells the tale of a weary traveler who becomes trapped in a nightmarish > luxury hotel that at first appears inviting and tempting. The song is an > allegory about hedonism and self-destruction in the Southern California > music industry of the late 1970s; Don Henley called it "our interpretation > of the high life in Los Angeles"[6] and later reiterated "it's basically a > song about the dark underbelly of the American dream and about excess in > America, which is something we knew a lot about."_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_California_%28song%29>

<comment><USER6> Luxury? Hedonism? OK, maybe Hotel California is a bad analogy.

It's easy-to-start rapidly turns into a tarpit made of sparrow droppings.

<comment><USER9> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roach_motel> perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The core difference between the platforms was that wordpress was designed for any schmuck to follow a howto, while MT was designed to sell the _real_ product, professional services billable hours. There were soooo many things about MT that stayed locked up in "plugin packs" or were completely undocumented that if you weren't paying a few (hundred)grand in proserv it was just plain not a usable product.

For the record, I was the enterprise customer clamoring for ldap support in Byrne's post, and I've since worked for another high profile site built on MT. Its a solid product if you bring a handful of good engineers in on top of it, its just got that "you must be this tall" barrier to entry that makes it an immediate loss for broad-consumer adoption.

</comment><comment><USER11> An even better question is why WordPress continues to win.

I've done a few startups and quite often I will create the marketing front end in WordPress/PHP. Even if the main application will be written in Ruby or Python.

The reason is that there are just so many off the shelf templates and themes you can download and/or buy. And the themes are generally in the under $25 price range. Plus finding people who can maintain a marketing site in WordPress is extremely easy. For the simple stuff like "add a post" or "update the text" you don't even need to know PHP.

Now it would be nice if there was a dead simple platform like WordPress for Python. But until that day comes it is still a pretty damn good solution for a site.

</comment><comment><USER12> The license debacle got me to switch (I clearly remember Dive Into Mark's spirited long rant), but Movable Type's weird Perlisms, and quirks like rebuilding all the posts when you changed the layout, would have sent me running eventually anyway. MT just wasn't a great package in the first place.

<comment><USER13> (Disclaimer: I worked for Six Apart Services for 2 years)

I don't think MT has "weird perlisms", it's just... written in perl. WordPress took off around the time folks were realizing that you could build big sites in PHP, and so PHP in general was taking off (as Byrne mentions in his piece, more enterprise sites were adopting PHP as well). Perl started a slide back into "sysadmin" land as far as many developers and managers were concerned.

Static publishing is not a "quirk": it's a feature that _sold_ MT to most of the large publishers using it. Yes, you have to make some design decisions with static publishing in mind, but I've never heard of an MT site being Fireballed, either.

<comment><USER14> It's also a barrier to entry. The right way to do static publishing is to have a dynamic site with a cache. Wordpress started with just a dynamic site. MT started with just a cache.

Cache-only works OK for big sites, but it's annoying for little sites. And the little sites are the big sites of tomorrow.

Wordpress's dynamic-only strategy created a huge pool of potential big customers for Wordpress, and they later tacked on caching. SixApart's cache- only strategy kept a small pool of existing big customers happy, but it was a barrier to entry, and there wasn't an easy path to the ideal "dynamic+cache" solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was there when it happened, as were many around here.

Movabletype did their pay-only nonsense after version 2.66

People starting looking for alternatives.

WordPress 1.5 out and 2.0 was in beta and it seemed the strongest choice at the time. 2004 is like a lifetime for the internet, seems like a poor choice now but things were different then.

<comment><USER15> Came here to post this. Although MT was a far more mature and better product, the licence shenanigans just drove everyone away. It was as though someone in MT just thought, "Hey guys, how can we alienate every non-paying user?" and ran with it.

Matt and co were very shrewd, had a 'good enough' product and got a few high profile bloggers to switch (and be vocal about it) and WordPress became the common blogger's tool. By the time 2.0 was released it became fairly ubiquitous for blogs, and people added stuff from there to make it a fuller CMS.

<comment><USER6> Essentially Wordpress was a triumph of marketing. There were other ostensibly just-as-functional systems around, but Wordpress had a nice looking site and moved fast to capitalise on the MT licensing fuckup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I switched from Blogger to WordPress and began learning PHP in January 2005. In August 2005 I went to work for Automattic as the second full-timer (after Donncha, inventor of WPMU). That was before WordPress.com was announced. I am still working for Automattic.

Byrne, in his MT-centric worldview, fails to mention a man who contributed more to WP's success than MT's failures could. The name "Matt" only appears within "Automattic" and the name "Mullenweg" doesn't even show up until the comments.

Many have said it and I agree: WordPress is shitty software. Having written a significant percentage of the code in WordPress since version 2.0, I can proudly accept the blame for some of the shittiest parts of WordPress. I was responsible for the integration of the rich editor, the widgets system, the media library, and many other poorly-designed components I have since expunged from memory. I wrote this crap because Matt asked me to.

In wisdom or dumb luck, Matt saw that a feature that mostly works for most users next week is better than a perfect feature next year. He coded as much as he could, then he learned to delegate and trust others. Then, as far as I could tell from inside my coding cave, he shifted most of his attention from engineering and design to promotion and business. He brought Toni and Raanan into Automattic and that's when the switching campaign really took off.

From the early days to now, Matt has exploited every resource for the benefit of WordPress. Even now, non-WordPress Automattic projects help subsidize the core development of WordPress. I don't know how much money Matt has made but I know that everyone who makes a living with WordPress owes him some credit for feeding so much power back into the project.

Matt wasn't the only contributor to the success of WordPress. It would be impossible to cover them all; go look at the About page on wordpress.org to get a taste. But if you could use a time machine to kidnap one person off that list, you would do the most harm to WordPress by choosing Matt.

Byrne says in a comment that his piece is about WordPress, not Automattic. He works hard to avoid delving into personalities. But the story of WordPress can't be told without discussing Matt Mullenweg. If your goal is to "see what lessons can be learned from WordPress so that others seeking to build a successful product can learn from it" you really should be looking at the people and the work they did more than the project that they worked on.

<comment><USER17> "In wisdom or dumb luck, Matt saw that a feature that mostly works for most users next week is better than a perfect feature next year."

In other words, Worse is Better.

<comment><USER18> No. Sloppy code that actually exists is better than the perfect code in your head.

<comment><USER17> Or, as Jamie Zawinski put it in Coders at Work, shipping is a _feature_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> <i>2 What makes Movable Type hard to install has actually nothing to do with Perl at all. It has to do with CGI. CGI was originally architected to allow any script to be run and invoked via an addressable URL, and when that capability was first introduced system administrators and programmers feared the security ramifications of allowing any arbitrary script to be executed in that fashion. Therefore, they instituted a number limitations enforced by the web server: 1) only certain directories on your web server can possess the ability to run CGI scripts, 2) only executable files can be invoked via CGI, and 3) no static files (html, css, javascript, or any text file) can be served from the same directory as a CGI script. These limitations are often inappropriately attributed to Perl only because Perl became the dominant, if not the only scripting language used to author CGI based web applications early on.</i>

But... many (most?) shared webhosts - which support PHP and WP just fine - <USER2> in CGI or FastCGI mode. GoDaddy, IIRC - all PHP is CGI-based. It's been a while since I've done LAMPhp setup, and even longer since that P meant Perl, but it's always felt (as in, going back to 2000/2001) that configuring Apache for mod_php or CGI PHP was just _more straightforward_ than Perl. Reasons?

PHP allows for (encourages?) very 'hack' based approach to development, which most other languages don't. Don't understand how or why to pass parameters around? Just use the 'global' keyword. Rinse, repeat, and you've got your customizations to WP.

I'm not saying all WP mods are hacks, but it was/is very easy for people to experiment with trying their hand and hacking around. IMO this was the biggest thing that has led to WP dominating, and PHP as a language continuing to dominate. Yes, it's not the cleanest around, but it does allow for rapid experimentation (far more than something like Java, and depending on the code you're hacking, Perl).

</comment><comment><USER20> The first quote shows exactly why they lost the battle:

"""...in fact, if you want to say anything, why don't you run it by me first? And Anil, and through marketing, and while you are at it through a couple other people as well... Cool?"""

Every single issue is about giving maximum control to the users for wordpress. Licensing, easy of installation on almost any host, and language choice. All these said, "Wordpress lets you control your code, where you install it, and how you manipulate it."

In my mind it was a battle of cultures and philosophy. For example, wordpress had the idea of the five minute install. They focused on making the 20% that 80% of users absolutely need as easy as possible.

</comment><comment><USER21> What do people use these days when they want to self host something a bit more light weight? I have setup a few wordpress installations but really if I wanted something to tinker with I think I would look elsewhere, the code has you trawl though many files at times to make simple changes.

<comment><USER22> There really isn't anything outside of HTML, or perhaps Squarespace?

I'd love to find something in the middle.

<comment><USER23> Jekyll is a nice way to generate a static HTML blog. A step above that is Frog CMS. Closer to WordPress are Habari and Chyrp, which are still fairly lightweight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The easy install and developer friendly focus is what attracted me to it. The license and the language attracted developers and designers towards making lots of themes and plugins. Furthermore a large professional developer base legitimized Wordpress in the eyes of bloggers.

</comment><comment><USER25> Wordpress is probably one of the greatest things that has ever happened to the internet.

<comment><USER6> As a the administrator of a small Wordpress network, I respectfully disagree.

<comment><USER26> At the risk of sounding foolish, what exactly is a Wordpress network, and what is it for?

(not a troll, genuinely interested)

<comment><USER6> It's what they now call a "Multi-site" installation, previously Wordpress Mu. Essentially I have a single installation and DB serving a number of different blogs.

The expression "Wordpress network" generally means a branded site for these. Wordpress.com is the biggest, edublogs is big too. I run a little one called Ozblogistan: <http://ozblogistan.com.au>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I pretty much know something like 0.1% programming and have very little artistic skill but decided to have fun with building websites anyways with html using frontpage and dreamweaver. They came out alright as i used a template then hacked the crap out of it. It took a lot of work still and gave up for a while. Then i decided to make a prank site and used moveable type first and tried a few other blogging software, ending up with wordpress because it was more flexible than moveable type at the time and much easier to use. I think this was version 1.5. I still have that blog up somewhere on a free server, oh man was it easy to use compared to today. Later i got a job at a local web design firm. They had their own CMS based on .Net. It was actually quite good, quite easy, and powerful as hell. They charged $4k to use it. I wouldn't know what to do with it even if i had access to the code. I played with some other CMSes while there, drupal being one that gained steam while a bunch of others. Oh man are they hard to use. It takes quite a while to figure them out. I gave up on websites yet again. A few friends needed a site so i fired up trusty wordpress, now at 3.0. Wow did they change a lot. Stuff that should have been there from the beginning are finally there. Its now 30x more complicated, trying to teach someone WP3 almost defeated the original reason why i chose wordpress, it had a simple backend. But its still a good bit easier to use than most other stuff and I know it well enough to hack most things up. And the themes/plugins jesus, try even searching for a theme for moveable type on google, i came up with 2 ugly ones. And Britney Spears website comes up as Movable types featured showcase? That can't be good...

WP makes thing easier and harder for me at the same time. Well I guess its like money, the more you have the more problems it brings. As for the backend, But try WP 3.1, it adds a top bar that was so useful from a plugin i used since 1.5. Also wordcamp rocks.

</comment><comment><USER22> I started using it because it was easy to install and tinker with. I stopped using it because I fundamentally disagree with Matt on a variety of topics.

I don't like the management, but it is a good product.

<comment><USER28> > I stopped using it because I fundamentally disagree with Matt

Just for fun, on what things? I wasn't aware that Matt was so outspoken about any specific thing

<comment><USER22> It was the WP vs Thesis debate - I didn't like his approach and thought he acted a fool, and a bully.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _for all of WordPress' open sourcey, socialist, hippy goodness_

Now I don't think socialism is a dirty word, but saying Open Source is socialist is wrong. If anything it's extreme Libertarianist. It's saying if I give you something, you can do whatever the fuck you want with it.

Open Source is not about the government, or any other organization, providing institutionalized software for the good of all.

<comment><USER29> "Now I don't think socialism is a dirty word, but saying Open Source is socialist is wrong. If anything it's extreme Libertarianist. It's saying if I give you something, you can do whatever the fuck you want with it. Open Source is not about the government, or any other organization, providing institutionalized software for the good of all."

Open source may be this way, but the GNU (which Wordpress is licensed under) isn't.

The GNU license makes it so everyone is equal. Nobody can have any competitive advantage over another, because as soon as you do, everybody else can now have your code.

You also can't do anything you want with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Honestly, I think the answer is pretty straightforward in this case: WordPress was just a great piece of software, much ahead of its competitors.

<comment><USER6> But it wasn't really _at the time_. That's what's interesting.

<comment><USER31> In terms of ease-of-install and basic user interface stuff, I remember it as a substantial improvement over most of what people had been exposed to.

Mind you, I hated it passionately from the first time I was asked to do anything more involved than installing it and switching a theme, and I've never had any inclination to use it on my own time, but I think it's easy to forget that the bar was pretty low when WordPress first came on the scene.</comment></comment></comment>