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reasons why you wouldn't sign up. i've realized that getting feedback for a landing page on hn can be rather gnarly. maybe we ought to change the way we leave feedback. instead of asking for feedback, let's write about why you wouldn't sign up for that particular service. keep it short and one reason per comment please.<p>reasons why you wouldn't sign up for: www.grooovy.me<p>(i know not everyone has an iphone, but let's not use that as a reason.)

i don't feel the "pain" of wanting more friends, so maybe i'm not your target market. this probably makes me a bad person to take feedback from, but since giving opinions is fun...the problem for me isn't not knowing how to meet new people (e.g. going to interesting meetups), it's getting past the social anxiety of leaving the house and trying to make friends from strangers. at a glance, your app doesn't help solve that -- it looks like another kind of meetup aggregator (albeit a more casual one). while it may be something else and/or technically be a perfectly great service to help me, it doesn't seem like it helps me get past the irrational mental resistance of going somewhere uncomfortable. so when i look at your page and see headers like "grooovy for iphone" and "we're launching soon" and see what looks like a list view of a calendar, it doesn't get me excited. i eventually noticed that clicking the little circles lets me look at different "pages", but that feels like work and i lost interest quickly.

i want to make new friends. let's have a read of the blurb:2grooovy lets you meet 2new friends comfortably 2at your own pace.that's exactly what i need; nice and gentle and not scary. i am your target users. i'm not looking to date or hook up; i'm not sketchy or skeezy. so, who are these people? where do they come from? what's the "pool of people"?2join or create customized 2events. chat with the people you'll meet, check-in and add 2them as friends. finish off your event experience by 2writing your first thoughts of each other.wait, what? i have no idea who these other people are. are they all just randoms that sign up to your service? how do i know they're not crazy axe-murderers? are they taken from facebook or some such? do we pay to join? do we pay to send messages? let's say i set up and event: do i just ping people and ask if they want to go? or does my event get listed and other people say they'd like to turn up? what happens if bob (a made up name) has been to an event and i hate him? can i not let him see events i create? can i filter events bob goes to?

reasons why you wouldn't sign up. i've realized that getting feedback for a landing page on hn can be rather gnarly. maybe we ought to change the way we leave feedback. instead of asking for feedback, let's write about why you wouldn't sign up for that particular service. keep it short and one reason per comment please.<p>reasons why you wouldn't sign up for: www.grooovy.me<p>(i know not everyone has an iphone, but let's not use that as a reason.)

i want to make new friends. let's have a read of the blurb:2grooovy lets you meet 2new friends comfortably 2at your own pace.that's exactly what i need; nice and gentle and not scary. i am your target users. i'm not looking to date or hook up; i'm not sketchy or skeezy. so, who are these people? where do they come from? what's the "pool of people"?2join or create customized 2events. chat with the people you'll meet, check-in and add 2them as friends. finish off your event experience by 2writing your first thoughts of each other.wait, what? i have no idea who these other people are. are they all just randoms that sign up to your service? how do i know they're not crazy axe-murderers? are they taken from facebook or some such? do we pay to join? do we pay to send messages? let's say i set up and event: do i just ping people and ask if they want to go? or does my event get listed and other people say they'd like to turn up? what happens if bob (a made up name) has been to an event and i hate him? can i not let him see events i create? can i filter events bob goes to?

i thought the 2 on the first page was connected to the email submission thing. i didn't notice it at first. i didn't click it. i only knew to click it after reading another comment here about the little circles and then i saw both 0 and 2, and realised they were clicky.suggestion: make the extra pages much easier to find, make the 0 and 2 more discoverable, make the little circles more obvious.

reasons why you wouldn't sign up. i've realized that getting feedback for a landing page on hn can be rather gnarly. maybe we ought to change the way we leave feedback. instead of asking for feedback, let's write about why you wouldn't sign up for that particular service. keep it short and one reason per comment please.<p>reasons why you wouldn't sign up for: www.grooovy.me<p>(i know not everyone has an iphone, but let's not use that as a reason.)

i thought the 2 on the first page was connected to the email submission thing. i didn't notice it at first. i didn't click it. i only knew to click it after reading another comment here about the little circles and then i saw both 0 and 2, and realised they were clicky.suggestion: make the extra pages much easier to find, make the 0 and 2 more discoverable, make the little circles more obvious.

there's a lot of "coming soon" sites out there. so i don't sign up for that reason. i figure if it's any good then i'll hear about it again when they're up and running.also, the tag line."grooovy lets you meet new friends comfortably at your own pace."i'm not sure what it is you have.hope this helps.

reasons why you wouldn't sign up. i've realized that getting feedback for a landing page on hn can be rather gnarly. maybe we ought to change the way we leave feedback. instead of asking for feedback, let's write about why you wouldn't sign up for that particular service. keep it short and one reason per comment please.<p>reasons why you wouldn't sign up for: www.grooovy.me<p>(i know not everyone has an iphone, but let's not use that as a reason.)

there's a lot of "coming soon" sites out there. so i don't sign up for that reason. i figure if it's any good then i'll hear about it again when they're up and running.also, the tag line."grooovy lets you meet new friends comfortably at your own pace."i'm not sure what it is you have.hope this helps.

i don't like going out in most cases, and i like it even less with people i don't know already.

blizzard lays off 600, including about 60 developers

the key is the last line of the press release. the accounting charges associated with blizzard's reduction in workforce are not anticipated to be material to activision blizzard, inc. and were included in the 2012 financial outlook that was provided on february 9, 2012. i worked at 2 bigco's while they went through layoff periods. what people don't know unless they've worked at a bigco is that a significant number of its employees are interchangable or in some cases just dead weight. for every department of 10-20 people, there are 2 or 3 that have the bulk of the knowledge and do the majority of the work.there is a lot of hassle with firing a single employee at a bigco, even if that person contributes very little, is a detriment to the team, or is abusing corporate policy. there is however an upside to getting rid of a bunch of people at once, especially when it is around the time of the anual report, and it mitigates a lot of the downsides you have when firing just one person.except in the cases where an entire department was eliminated, i would say about 85% of the people who were let go during a large layoff were not really a surprise.

this is most likely 550 community and customer support people and 50 internationalisation developers. blizzard is doing really well and has multiple games coming down the pipe.wow's fluctuating subscriber numbers reflect the natural state of a 7 year old game that is in a down period between expansions, so i'm not worried about that. instead what i think is going on is that they've spent so much time growing their staff to accommodate wow, the new battle.net and new projects like diablo 3 and the unannounced mmo project that they've come to a point where they've decided to take a good hard look at who's working for them, how they can optimise their workforce, and how they can cut down on the bloat.it's likely a matter of reducing overhead and improving internal communications as opposed to any "bad news" that they need to get rid of people in order to keep the ship afloat.as the ceo says, this is something that happens when you grow a lot: you need to make some changes every now and then. instead of viewing this as a cutback, i'd view this as a fundamental step towards stabilising themselves as a developer that handles multiple projects simultaneously, whereas before they really operated in serial.taking 600 off the top of 4700 employees still leaves them with over 4000 people working for them, which is about as many as nintendo employs, to give you an idea of what kind of sizes we're talking about in the games industry.

blizzard lays off 600, including about 60 developers

this is most likely 550 community and customer support people and 50 internationalisation developers. blizzard is doing really well and has multiple games coming down the pipe.wow's fluctuating subscriber numbers reflect the natural state of a 7 year old game that is in a down period between expansions, so i'm not worried about that. instead what i think is going on is that they've spent so much time growing their staff to accommodate wow, the new battle.net and new projects like diablo 3 and the unannounced mmo project that they've come to a point where they've decided to take a good hard look at who's working for them, how they can optimise their workforce, and how they can cut down on the bloat.it's likely a matter of reducing overhead and improving internal communications as opposed to any "bad news" that they need to get rid of people in order to keep the ship afloat.as the ceo says, this is something that happens when you grow a lot: you need to make some changes every now and then. instead of viewing this as a cutback, i'd view this as a fundamental step towards stabilising themselves as a developer that handles multiple projects simultaneously, whereas before they really operated in serial.taking 600 off the top of 4700 employees still leaves them with over 4000 people working for them, which is about as many as nintendo employs, to give you an idea of what kind of sizes we're talking about in the games industry.

i find these sorts of events fascinating. blizzard does have quite the money machine with wow. even a paltry 10.2m subscribers, assuming the adjusted monthly income per subscriber is $10 that is $102m/month in revenue from that franchise.the interesting bit is that to make that count they really need a good operational plan with respect to their infrastructure.i got a peek at their infrastructure early on because the company where i worked (netapp) was trying to sell them filers for their oracle instances which were running the game. and the game is essentially a ginormous database being updated constantly based on player actions. what we saw was a very complex (and expensive) infrastructure which was clearly built expediently. i would think that over time they would have been working to refine this to something more manageable (and cost effective).ultimately, there is a 'killer' persistent world infrastructure architecture for this sort of traffic. would be a good research topic for a thesis i suspect.

blizzard lays off 600, including about 60 developers

i find these sorts of events fascinating. blizzard does have quite the money machine with wow. even a paltry 10.2m subscribers, assuming the adjusted monthly income per subscriber is $10 that is $102m/month in revenue from that franchise.the interesting bit is that to make that count they really need a good operational plan with respect to their infrastructure.i got a peek at their infrastructure early on because the company where i worked (netapp) was trying to sell them filers for their oracle instances which were running the game. and the game is essentially a ginormous database being updated constantly based on player actions. what we saw was a very complex (and expensive) infrastructure which was clearly built expediently. i would think that over time they would have been working to refine this to something more manageable (and cost effective).ultimately, there is a 'killer' persistent world infrastructure architecture for this sort of traffic. would be a good research topic for a thesis i suspect.

i know it's naive, but it wasn't until i read this article that i started to think of the wow programmers as human beings, as opposed to some universal geometric constant about the wow universe.i would like to see a documentary filmed inside of the wow studio, if it's at all possible. like, it could be really serious business, which would be hilarious, or it could be a more relaxed-artists type of story, which could be a fun romp. and maybe we get to see a sysadmin saying, "those are the legacy systems, they're from the early days, basically the entire world of warcraft is held together with duct tape and a prayer." it would be great, man.

blizzard lays off 600, including about 60 developers

i know it's naive, but it wasn't until i read this article that i started to think of the wow programmers as human beings, as opposed to some universal geometric constant about the wow universe.i would like to see a documentary filmed inside of the wow studio, if it's at all possible. like, it could be really serious business, which would be hilarious, or it could be a more relaxed-artists type of story, which could be a fun romp. and maybe we get to see a sysadmin saying, "those are the legacy systems, they're from the early days, basically the entire world of warcraft is held together with duct tape and a prayer." it would be great, man.

i look forward to the companies that will be spawned by ex-blizzard folks

at odds: hackers at harvard

&gt;i don’t buy that as an excuse for why there aren’t any intensive courses on ruby on rails, node.js, objective-c, html/css and javascript.for the same reason why there aren't any intensive courses on windows, asp, or gnome. because technologies come and go --- nowhere more so than in software --- and those left standing are the ones who grasped the fundamentals of their field, not the ones who blitzed their way through a node.js hackathon. the former are the innovators, the latter are the guns for hire.all the things you mention can be hacked in under a week by a motivated student. if your objective is to hack (and that is entirely fine for many purposes), you don't need a traditional college course to do so. in fact, i would argue that is entirely antithetical to the essence of hacking!if you're a harvard student, you have an amazing opportunity to learn the truly difficult subjects with some of the best people in the world, the kind of stuff you won't learn in two hours in an online tutorial. take advantage of that; for everything else there's the internet.

expecting harvard to teach you how to be a hacker is about as far from the hacker mindset as you can get.

at odds: hackers at harvard

expecting harvard to teach you how to be a hacker is about as far from the hacker mindset as you can get.

as an undergrad i found myself thinking similarly. looking back, i definitely think i rushed some things and agree with most people in this thread. the stuff you described won't and shouldn't be taught in schools. you're there to engage in thoughtful discourse that will help you come up with better solutions to the worlds problems. node, ror, etc. are just tools to make those ideas come to life. you can be a code monkey, but that doesn't make you a good software engineer. find the right balance and i think you'll find the quality of your hacks will improve as well.

at odds: hackers at harvard

as an undergrad i found myself thinking similarly. looking back, i definitely think i rushed some things and agree with most people in this thread. the stuff you described won't and shouldn't be taught in schools. you're there to engage in thoughtful discourse that will help you come up with better solutions to the worlds problems. node, ror, etc. are just tools to make those ideas come to life. you can be a code monkey, but that doesn't make you a good software engineer. find the right balance and i think you'll find the quality of your hacks will improve as well.

if what you want is &quot;intensive courses on ruby on rails, node.js, objective-c, html/css and javascript&quot;, save yourself four years and save your folks $200k. drop out and get a public library card.

at odds: hackers at harvard

if what you want is &quot;intensive courses on ruby on rails, node.js, objective-c, html/css and javascript&quot;, save yourself four years and save your folks $200k. drop out and get a public library card.

schools like harvard should have a major (or at least a concentration) in web development. without that, they're missing out on setting up thousands of students for success.

ask hn: best cloud host? i'm in the process of launching a startup and i've decided on cloud hosting. i tried out aws and i really like it so far, but i was wondering if anyone had any better choices. cost isn't too much of a problem but i'm most worried about reliability.<p>thanks in advance!

i have had a great experience with <link> so far. they offer both shared and bare-metal dedicated and they always seem to be cheap compared to others. they were rated quite high by the cloudharmony benchmarks. not to mention their support twitter account, when needed, are really responsive.

i tend to use heroku's free plan for testing out ideas. i wrote a post detailing how here: <link>

ask hn: best cloud host? i'm in the process of launching a startup and i've decided on cloud hosting. i tried out aws and i really like it so far, but i was wondering if anyone had any better choices. cost isn't too much of a problem but i'm most worried about reliability.<p>thanks in advance!

i tend to use heroku's free plan for testing out ideas. i wrote a post detailing how here: <link>

app engine has a real solid infrastructure. i find it that it's extremely good at hiding implementation details - i don't care whether my database is mongo or mysql, i just want it to work and scale. the apis never break and it's really cheap.

ask hn: best cloud host? i'm in the process of launching a startup and i've decided on cloud hosting. i tried out aws and i really like it so far, but i was wondering if anyone had any better choices. cost isn't too much of a problem but i'm most worried about reliability.<p>thanks in advance!

app engine has a real solid infrastructure. i find it that it's extremely good at hiding implementation details - i don't care whether my database is mongo or mysql, i just want it to work and scale. the apis never break and it's really cheap.

you need to define your interpretation of "cloud host". it varies a lot. are you looking for a virtual machine host with a decent api? or are you looking for someone to manage the stack of your software? in which case, what is your stack?

ask hn: best cloud host? i'm in the process of launching a startup and i've decided on cloud hosting. i tried out aws and i really like it so far, but i was wondering if anyone had any better choices. cost isn't too much of a problem but i'm most worried about reliability.<p>thanks in advance!

you need to define your interpretation of "cloud host". it varies a lot. are you looking for a virtual machine host with a decent api? or are you looking for someone to manage the stack of your software? in which case, what is your stack?

we've been using dotcloud (<link> and are quite happy with the results in testing. haven't gone to production yet though so we'll see how they pan out in the long run.

this year, i will wear a poppy for the last time

i will no longer allow my obligation as a veteran to remember those who died in the great wars to be co-opted by current or former politicians to justify our folly in iraq, our morally dubious war on terror and our elimination of one's right to privacy. the idea that poppies, remembrance day, and general military pageant used to be some kind of non-propaganda event that's recently been co-opted is fantasy. military nations have been instilling their young men with the glory of war since forever. circa 23bc we have horace saying &quot;it's sweet and right to die for your country&quot;[1], then parodied by wilfred owen[2] from his experiences in the &quot;great&quot; war.this feels a great deal like &quot;we used to fight just wars, and recent wars aren't just&quot;, which is so misguided[3], i don't even know where to begin. the whole thing feels like &quot;my war was better than your war&quot;.[1] <link> [2] <link> [3] <link>

wow, 90 years old and sharp as a tack! it is remarkable what past lessons we can learn from our elders. hopefully the younger generations can avoid making the same mistakes.

this year, i will wear a poppy for the last time

wow, 90 years old and sharp as a tack! it is remarkable what past lessons we can learn from our elders. hopefully the younger generations can avoid making the same mistakes.

truer words have never been spoken. i wish those who send the &quot;tommies&quot; of today, realize what war is like. they do not call it the ultimate sacrifice for nothing. let us make sure that sacrifice was not for trivial and hollow matters.but whilst we remember, let us not forget our returning veterans need help, both financial, medical and with integrating back into the norms of civilian life after two brutal conflicts.i believe wilfred owen summed it up best, with his poem dulce et decorum <link>

this year, i will wear a poppy for the last time

truer words have never been spoken. i wish those who send the &quot;tommies&quot; of today, realize what war is like. they do not call it the ultimate sacrifice for nothing. let us make sure that sacrifice was not for trivial and hollow matters.but whilst we remember, let us not forget our returning veterans need help, both financial, medical and with integrating back into the norms of civilian life after two brutal conflicts.i believe wilfred owen summed it up best, with his poem dulce et decorum <link>

the topic that's sort of ignored is how incredibly wrong it was to impose conscription on the british public. a lot of people still see no problem with making people 'serve their country,' even with the horrific example of ww1.

this year, i will wear a poppy for the last time

the topic that's sort of ignored is how incredibly wrong it was to impose conscription on the british public. a lot of people still see no problem with making people 'serve their country,' even with the horrific example of ww1.

i personally find this deeply offensive. this polemic is featured in the guardian practically every year and its just more of the same sanctimonious bullshit we're becoming accustomed to from them. there is a lot of good feeling toward the guardian here because of their involvement with the snowden affair, but i'd warn you all to treat them with the cynicism that you treat any other news agency with. this individual, who by all means is entitled to his view, is no better than the politicians he is complaining about by further politicising d deliberately misrepresenting what the appeal represents. that he served in the wwii is merely an example of an appeal to authority fallacy. the poppy appeal is a charitable fund that is operated by the royal british legion (see <link> and exists to help veterans and the dependants of service men and women that are injured or killed in action. wear a poppy is showing support for those affected, not existing troops nor the wars that they fight in. it isn't showing any kind of agreement with any kind of foreign policy. conflating the two is disingenuous to say the least and does nothing other than harming families that care for or have lost members to military action.edit: not wearing a poppy is an individuals right in the uk. it's a right that i absolutely stand by. i have no issue with anyone choosing not to partake in the act of remembrance. i take issue with it being misrepresented by both sides of the political spectrum. the irony of course is that the people who they are choosing not to remember gave their life for that right.

arbitrary code execution via ldd utility

this is only a vulnerability if you don't know what ldd does. the problem is that it's not necessarily easy to find out what ldd does.the man pages for solaris 8-10 will tell you not to run it on untrusted files. but, if you google "man ldd" you may get this page (the first result for me, btw):<link> is very sparse. if you are not an experienced sa you may not notice that the information is old, or not applicable to your platform. there are a lot of quasi-administrators (techy folk in your dept. w/ admin privileges) who may be vulnerable to social engineering by a consultant or evil employee (i've seen both happen).we are all vulnerable to what we don't know.

i don't consider this "arbitrary code execution." to me, that implies that someone not logged into the system was able to exploit a vulnerability in an externally facing application.in this case, the author assumes a login. that's like explaining how to break into someone's house and starting with "okay, you're on the other side of someone's door. now you can do what you want!" it just turns out that the semantics of ldd are to run the program. this is no more arbitrary code execution than tricking someone on windows to run your program by saying "download this file and double-click it."

arbitrary code execution via ldd utility

i don't consider this "arbitrary code execution." to me, that implies that someone not logged into the system was able to exploit a vulnerability in an externally facing application.in this case, the author assumes a login. that's like explaining how to break into someone's house and starting with "okay, you're on the other side of someone's door. now you can do what you want!" it just turns out that the semantics of ldd are to run the program. this is no more arbitrary code execution than tricking someone on windows to run your program by saying "download this file and double-click it."

does anyone know why does `ldd` use the loader? only to resolve the names? it seems that you can get the basic names from objdump too (dynamic section / `needed` symbols)it seems that it's easy to "secure" this bug... if you have more caps than the owner of the loader, warn that you need a special flag and exit. selinux and similar might make that decision harder though...

arbitrary code execution via ldd utility

does anyone know why does `ldd` use the loader? only to resolve the names? it seems that you can get the basic names from objdump too (dynamic section / `needed` symbols)it seems that it's easy to "secure" this bug... if you have more caps than the owner of the loader, warn that you need a special flag and exit. selinux and similar might make that decision harder though...

sysadmin’s phone: ring, ring.sysadmin: “mr. sysadmin here. how can i help you?”you: “hi. an app that i have been using has started misbehaving. when i run it, i get an error saying something about the permissions on /usr/share/zoneinfo-something. can you help me?”sysadmin: “sure. what app is it?”you: “it’s in my home directory, /home/carl/app/bin/myapp."sysadmin: “just a sec.” noise from keyboard in the backgroundsysadmin: “i didn't see any error.”you: “nevermind, i figured it out. thanks!.”narrator: did you notice what went wrong in this scene? the administrator was supposed to check the permissions on all the files in /usr/share, thus earning the slim chance to perform the reproductive act. the next day, the administrator's planet was destroyed by aliens. can you guess the name of the planet? it was earth! don't date robots."

arbitrary code execution via ldd utility

sysadmin’s phone: ring, ring.sysadmin: “mr. sysadmin here. how can i help you?”you: “hi. an app that i have been using has started misbehaving. when i run it, i get an error saying something about the permissions on /usr/share/zoneinfo-something. can you help me?”sysadmin: “sure. what app is it?”you: “it’s in my home directory, /home/carl/app/bin/myapp."sysadmin: “just a sec.” noise from keyboard in the backgroundsysadmin: “i didn't see any error.”you: “nevermind, i figured it out. thanks!.”narrator: did you notice what went wrong in this scene? the administrator was supposed to check the permissions on all the files in /usr/share, thus earning the slim chance to perform the reproductive act. the next day, the administrator's planet was destroyed by aliens. can you guess the name of the planet? it was earth! don't date robots."

it seems that there may be a use for an ldd-like utility that doesn't actually load the binary, for use by security researchers. now that i know it makes perfect sense, but intuitively i would have expected ldd to just read the data from the binary directly instead of relying on the system loader.

bmi: one person listening to his own music via the cloud is public performance

a few observations:1. there are well-settled copyright principles that hold a viewing event to be a "public performance" even though a single person only is doing the viewing at any given time. a leading case involved a video-store owner who owned one copy of each film he had in stock and who set up private viewing rooms in his establishment in which he allowed a patron to view a film privately that the patron had rented from the store. this enabled the store owner to buy a copyrighted video once and to set up a business in which he repeatedly displayed that video to multiple members of the public, one at a time. in that case, the court held that the showing of the one copy of the film owned by the video store owner repeatedly to different members of the public constituted a "public performance" (the case, columbia pictures v. redd horne, may be found here: <link> this case is offline law but the principle it articulates is clear. if copyright holders are in business to sell or license their copyrighted works, and if someone buys one copy of such work and sets up a business open to the public to make money from repeated showings of such work (albeit one at a time), the copyright owners are having the value of their works taken from them by the intermediary business owner, who gets to profit from such works without having obtained any right or license from the copyright owners to license such works to others. a leading copyright treatise (nimmer) sums this up, then, by saying "if the same copy . . . of a given work is repeatedly played (i.e., 'performed') by different members of the public, albeit at different times, this constitutes a 'public' performance." (discussed here: <link> in this offline context, then, it is indisputable that you can have a "public" performance for copyright-law purposes from what is technically a private viewing.2. logically, the one-copy rule should not apply to the case where i own my copy and merely choose to display it for my private viewing (or private listening in the case of music) through various methods of playback, including by use of a cloud service. and this is what both google and amazon are banking on in the way they have set up their cloud music services. their theory is that the service they offer does nothing more than allow you to upload a song you already own and access it from different browsers and devices. to avoid the one-copy rule, neither google nor amazon "de-duplicate" user files, which means that users will literally access the exact files that they themselves uploaded into the service (meaning, therefore, that millions of copies of the same file may exist in the same cloud).3. the big test case that is pending in the courts is emi v. mp3tunes, and this case will test whether the old offline rules should apply literally to the digital world. that is, mp3tunes is a music locker that does de-duplicate its files, i.e., stores one copy only of each song (rather than one copy for each file any user has uploaded) and uses that copy to enable users of the service to replay songs they have uploaded into the service (though not literally from the exact file that the user uploaded). it is this case - where the intermediary business owner is using "one copy" only to enable multiple members of the public to listen to the same song, albeit only for their own private listening - that the emi lawyer is commenting upon when he says that one person listening to his own music via the cloud constitutes a "public performance." though tone-deaf on how this must sound to the average person, the lawyer is basically reciting what the offline caselaw held in connection with the one-copy rule. this may indeed be irrational as applied to the digital world (since, in fact, the service is requiring each individual who listens to upload his individually-owned version of that song, which distinguishes this case from the video store owner who bought only one copy in total), but this is why he is calling it what he does.4. eff has a good discussion of some of the key issues here: <link> (see under the heading "do music locker services violate current copyright laws?").the fact that important web-based services are having to use such inefficient means as storing millions of versions of the same file just to deal with current copyright laws shows that is is high-time such laws were revamped for the digital age. the last major revision was in the 1970s. the laws in this area made sense in their day (at least for those who don't oppose ip rights of this type) but are today strained to the breaking point.

a novel way to solve this problem is to stop signing new talent to the big labels.some of the music i listen to is signed to smaller labels who have much more liberal views when it comes to distribution and piracy. they host their own online stores that sell drm-free albums usually at 50% of the cost of what you pay to big labels on itunes, in stores, etc.the vast majority of musicians and producers (i.e. not the lady gaga's or the beatles or michael jackson) make their money by touring and performing. selling their music on cd and in digital formats is considered a marketing method and token income at best.my hope is that big music become more and more irrelevant (and less influential) as artists realise that they can do better without them.

bmi: one person listening to his own music via the cloud is public performance

a novel way to solve this problem is to stop signing new talent to the big labels.some of the music i listen to is signed to smaller labels who have much more liberal views when it comes to distribution and piracy. they host their own online stores that sell drm-free albums usually at 50% of the cost of what you pay to big labels on itunes, in stores, etc.the vast majority of musicians and producers (i.e. not the lady gaga's or the beatles or michael jackson) make their money by touring and performing. selling their music on cd and in digital formats is considered a marketing method and token income at best.my hope is that big music become more and more irrelevant (and less influential) as artists realise that they can do better without them.

i figured this would happen. i was going to write a service exactly like cloud drive and google music, but i knew that as soon as i had more than 10 users i would be inundated with angry riaa lawyers. i guess i was right.(i would still like to simply see bmi's catalog blocked. if the services are popular but bmi won't allow amazon and google to host their music, then that's bmi's loss rather than amazon's or google's.)also, the record companies wonder why nobody buys music: this is why.

bmi: one person listening to his own music via the cloud is public performance

i figured this would happen. i was going to write a service exactly like cloud drive and google music, but i knew that as soon as i had more than 10 users i would be inundated with angry riaa lawyers. i guess i was right.(i would still like to simply see bmi's catalog blocked. if the services are popular but bmi won't allow amazon and google to host their music, then that's bmi's loss rather than amazon's or google's.)also, the record companies wonder why nobody buys music: this is why.

if you find yourself having trouble reconciling this with the real world(1), remember that lawyer world is a little different. you might be looking at a version of the "chewbacca defense" writ large. a solid legal case can be completely illogical in the real world but entirely internally consistent (and effective) in the legal one.think of it from their perspective. bmi is essentially an organization of lawyers. this is what they do. if it is possible to twiddle the levers on the legal-political complex and stymie your competitors, why ever wouldn't you? this isn't some dastardly new plot to kill teh intertubes, its the same thing they've been doing since 1940, it just looks really bizarre when done in the 21st century. kind of like showing up in your 1942 swimming costume for this year's spring break at daytona beach.1) but its my music, on my storage, played on my device! how can that be...

bmi: one person listening to his own music via the cloud is public performance

if you find yourself having trouble reconciling this with the real world(1), remember that lawyer world is a little different. you might be looking at a version of the "chewbacca defense" writ large. a solid legal case can be completely illogical in the real world but entirely internally consistent (and effective) in the legal one.think of it from their perspective. bmi is essentially an organization of lawyers. this is what they do. if it is possible to twiddle the levers on the legal-political complex and stymie your competitors, why ever wouldn't you? this isn't some dastardly new plot to kill teh intertubes, its the same thing they've been doing since 1940, it just looks really bizarre when done in the 21st century. kind of like showing up in your 1942 swimming costume for this year's spring break at daytona beach.1) but its my music, on my storage, played on my device! how can that be...

so what he's saying is that even if i paid for the music i store in my amazon cloud drive, just because amazon probably doesn't store a separate copy of each song of my collection amazon should be paying him performance royalty? this dude a moron. good thing he's going after amazon and google, that way his stupidity will cost him a lot in wasted lawsuits.

slidable composite photos of berlin wall 20 years later

again, nyt proves a consumate understanding of web content. these interactive graphics would not have been possible in print. the interaction provides great value, much more than a gimmick.

here's a jquery plugin for the effect: <link>

slidable composite photos of berlin wall 20 years later

here's a jquery plugin for the effect: <link>

even after 13 years of living in berlin, for the most part at locations right next to the former border, i am still amazed by the magnitude of change this city has seen.german photographer matthias kupfernagel took around 2500 impressive pictures of the former death zone between december 1989 and march 1990, right before the wall was demolished. you can see some of them here: <link> i can recommend the cd.

slidable composite photos of berlin wall 20 years later

even after 13 years of living in berlin, for the most part at locations right next to the former border, i am still amazed by the magnitude of change this city has seen.german photographer matthias kupfernagel took around 2500 impressive pictures of the former death zone between december 1989 and march 1990, right before the wall was demolished. you can see some of them here: <link> i can recommend the cd.

in the third one down, on the "new" photo, you can distinctly see the cobblestone path that snakes through the city centre representing where the wall once stood.

slidable composite photos of berlin wall 20 years later

in the third one down, on the "new" photo, you can distinctly see the cobblestone path that snakes through the city centre representing where the wall once stood.

interestingly, the last photo is about a block from my apartment, where i live with my co-founder and we got directed edge off the ground. :-)

obscure html tags that you should know and even use

they need to add 'label' to that list. it's not really obscure, but not enough people use it; not even the big sites (ahem, ebay.) it adds a good amount to the usability to the page, in my opinion.('label' associates another block of text/html with an input field. so if something says: name: |_________|, and name is wrapped in the label tag, clicking on name is enough to give the textbox focus)

flagged because it opened popups, i think it tried to install some software, froze firefox a few times, then gave me a popup asking me if i really wanted to leave

obscure html tags that you should know and even use

flagged because it opened popups, i think it tried to install some software, froze firefox a few times, then gave me a popup asking me if i really wanted to leave

firefox froze when this page loaded.default behavior for fieldset is different under ie, ff and opera. ie rounds the corners where ff and op do not. not critical but if you're after the same look and feel it should be tested. didn't try css with it.

obscure html tags that you should know and even use

firefox froze when this page loaded.default behavior for fieldset is different under ie, ff and opera. ie rounds the corners where ff and op do not. not critical but if you're after the same look and feel it should be tested. didn't try css with it.

interesting, especially the fieldset tag looks very useful, i didn't know about that one.

obscure html tags that you should know and even use

interesting, especially the fieldset tag looks very useful, i didn't know about that one.

beware, wbr is not part of the html 4 standard (i'm not sure it's part of any standard). the other tags are standard.

about those vector icons

oxygen icons (by kde project) use svg for all sizes of icons. here is an example:<link> icon on the left is suited for 16x16 size. the icon in right is the same icon, just suited for larger scales)i think this scheme is supported by freedesktop.org's icon theme specifications and other icon theme's used on linux desktops (like tango) use the same scheme.

long but good article.glad he got into (and linked to the excellent article about) font hinting, because that is of course the solution. a simple vector format is not enough, you need to define what parts should scale how, which are rigid, which are elastic.i don't think higher resolution displays actually help, because the real limitation becomes the human eye. though the new display could use the 'old' normal sized icons as small ones, your eye couldn't distinguish some of the details that worked before.anyways, it is an interesting problem and one that i don't envy designers for.

about those vector icons

long but good article.glad he got into (and linked to the excellent article about) font hinting, because that is of course the solution. a simple vector format is not enough, you need to define what parts should scale how, which are rigid, which are elastic.i don't think higher resolution displays actually help, because the real limitation becomes the human eye. though the new display could use the 'old' normal sized icons as small ones, your eye couldn't distinguish some of the details that worked before.anyways, it is an interesting problem and one that i don't envy designers for.

the very meaning of the term “icon” implies a non-literal representation, and since there is no automatic way to transform high-res representation to low-res caricature, you end up with vector artists doing horrendous pixel art.pixel art is a very different medium from what they’re used to, and there are specific techniques that they haven’t learned, largely because they don’t even know such techniques exist. they don’t know how (or when) to antialias or dither by hand. they don’t know what banding is and why to avoid it, nor what selective outlining (“selout”) is and why they need it. they especially don’t know how to correctly choose a good, limited palette. all of these things taken together make for designers at best reinventing tools and techniques, and at worst making icons that suck.but what can you do? pixel art isn’t a popular medium, so the wealth of knowledge out there goes to waste. it’s such a pity.

about those vector icons

the very meaning of the term “icon” implies a non-literal representation, and since there is no automatic way to transform high-res representation to low-res caricature, you end up with vector artists doing horrendous pixel art.pixel art is a very different medium from what they’re used to, and there are specific techniques that they haven’t learned, largely because they don’t even know such techniques exist. they don’t know how (or when) to antialias or dither by hand. they don’t know what banding is and why to avoid it, nor what selective outlining (“selout”) is and why they need it. they especially don’t know how to correctly choose a good, limited palette. all of these things taken together make for designers at best reinventing tools and techniques, and at worst making icons that suck.but what can you do? pixel art isn’t a popular medium, so the wealth of knowledge out there goes to waste. it’s such a pity.

i'm glad to see near the end the mention of high-density displays. when designing icons, a 64@2x icon should be different than a 128@1x icon. although the former is technically at 128, it is going to be displayed on a high-density display at a smaller size, and care should be taken to simplify embellishments and details that will just make it look too detailed when viewed.for icon designers out there, i'm curious how many are already aware of this distinction and are designing icons accordingly?

about those vector icons

i'm glad to see near the end the mention of high-density displays. when designing icons, a 64@2x icon should be different than a 128@1x icon. although the former is technically at 128, it is going to be displayed on a high-density display at a smaller size, and care should be taken to simplify embellishments and details that will just make it look too detailed when viewed.for icon designers out there, i'm curious how many are already aware of this distinction and are designing icons accordingly?

isn't this a little bit of inefficient over-optimization. sure auto scaled vectors look more blurred than hand made bitmaps. but the important question is: do normal people even notice the difference in today's screens? at the end of the post, the author concludes that not yet. but he doesn't seem to back it up. and i don't mean to back it up by comparing vector and manual icons for videophile designers. but actually a/b test it with real users.i know i personally cannot tell the difference between the example comparisons in the post. not sure my users would. i'll probably a/b test it with them at some point to be sure. until then, my impression is that vectors are a net positive.

ask yc: negotiating a job offer recently, a friend and i both applied for the same entry level position at a fairly large company. we were both offered the same job with the same benefits package, but the salary i'm being offered is about 65% of what my friend was offered. i was pretty astonished by this, and i'm now looking to negotiate a better offer.<p>some background: we're both graduating from the same school, with the same set of degrees. we have almost identical previous job experience. on paper, we're very similar looking candidates.<p>what gives? how should i approach my recruiter about the discrepancy in our paychecks? have you ever been able to negotiate a better offer?

the first rule of negotiation is to not give a shit.if you care about the job, you risk losing it, if you don't give a shit, you will more often than not walk away with a better deal.if you're ok with the odds, just tell them that you think the offer is very low based on your research online and after talking to career services at school, along with the fact that you thought the interviews went great and that you have student loans (all great reasons to ask for more money, come up with more). if you got the contact info of your interviewer (not hr, the real person who makes decisions) - email them expressing strong interest in the position.but, above all, be prepared to walk away at any time, if they think they have you, then they have no incentive to give you more cash.if this was a startup might advise would be totally different, at that point you're doing a job out of love than just for money :)

before you approach the recruiter about this i would consider the potential repercussions on your friend for sharing his/her salary information with you.it could be that your friend is a better negotiator or it could be that there was something on your resumes or in your histories that, while you may consider it minute, was of some importance to this company.

ask yc: negotiating a job offer recently, a friend and i both applied for the same entry level position at a fairly large company. we were both offered the same job with the same benefits package, but the salary i'm being offered is about 65% of what my friend was offered. i was pretty astonished by this, and i'm now looking to negotiate a better offer.<p>some background: we're both graduating from the same school, with the same set of degrees. we have almost identical previous job experience. on paper, we're very similar looking candidates.<p>what gives? how should i approach my recruiter about the discrepancy in our paychecks? have you ever been able to negotiate a better offer?

before you approach the recruiter about this i would consider the potential repercussions on your friend for sharing his/her salary information with you.it could be that your friend is a better negotiator or it could be that there was something on your resumes or in your histories that, while you may consider it minute, was of some importance to this company.

are you a woman? and yea, i know that shouldn't matter but you never know. i'd say the scales just tipped in your favor for negotiations, you know for a fact they are willing to go significantly higher.update: geez guys, down vote the messenger. he asked about salary discrepancy and i happened to ask about one of the top reasons. it's real and it's really not fair, but it doesn't mean i shouldn't ask about it.

ask yc: negotiating a job offer recently, a friend and i both applied for the same entry level position at a fairly large company. we were both offered the same job with the same benefits package, but the salary i'm being offered is about 65% of what my friend was offered. i was pretty astonished by this, and i'm now looking to negotiate a better offer.<p>some background: we're both graduating from the same school, with the same set of degrees. we have almost identical previous job experience. on paper, we're very similar looking candidates.<p>what gives? how should i approach my recruiter about the discrepancy in our paychecks? have you ever been able to negotiate a better offer?

are you a woman? and yea, i know that shouldn't matter but you never know. i'd say the scales just tipped in your favor for negotiations, you know for a fact they are willing to go significantly higher.update: geez guys, down vote the messenger. he asked about salary discrepancy and i happened to ask about one of the top reasons. it's real and it's really not fair, but it doesn't mean i shouldn't ask about it.

did the recruiter contact you with the offer or did the hiring manager? do you both work through the same recruiter?any number of variables could lead to the discrepancy. you're likely being offered positions on different teams with different budgets. as crappy as it sounds, salary offers are often based more on budget than relative worth.within a given company, there can be a wide range of recruitment approaches. one recruiter may expect you to haggle more than another. my advice for first-time job seekers is to do one, at most two offer-counter-offer rounds. remember that in these kinds of negotiations, the relationship is more important than the particular outcome. being hated on day 1 sucks.

ask yc: negotiating a job offer recently, a friend and i both applied for the same entry level position at a fairly large company. we were both offered the same job with the same benefits package, but the salary i'm being offered is about 65% of what my friend was offered. i was pretty astonished by this, and i'm now looking to negotiate a better offer.<p>some background: we're both graduating from the same school, with the same set of degrees. we have almost identical previous job experience. on paper, we're very similar looking candidates.<p>what gives? how should i approach my recruiter about the discrepancy in our paychecks? have you ever been able to negotiate a better offer?

did the recruiter contact you with the offer or did the hiring manager? do you both work through the same recruiter?any number of variables could lead to the discrepancy. you're likely being offered positions on different teams with different budgets. as crappy as it sounds, salary offers are often based more on budget than relative worth.within a given company, there can be a wide range of recruitment approaches. one recruiter may expect you to haggle more than another. my advice for first-time job seekers is to do one, at most two offer-counter-offer rounds. remember that in these kinds of negotiations, the relationship is more important than the particular outcome. being hated on day 1 sucks.

who knows might be a clerical error, contact the hr and tell them that you know the going rate for this position is 60-70k for example, and ask them to explain why you are getting paid so much less

why i'm not using lisp

i know it's 2 years old, but it's fun to look back and see where we were, not too long ago.his #1 need is "outstanding unicode support", and he's switching to python for this. just today there was a blog post that made the rounds, "the truth about unicode in python" (<link> that gripes about unicode in python!one of the gripes about python was that its internal representation is ucs-2 by default. in comparison, sbcl uses 21 bits internally, and his python example works fine in sbcl (on the mac, no less): * (characterp #\musical_symbol_g_clef) t * (char-name #\musical_symbol_g_clef) "musical_symbol_g_clef" i wonder if he had to make the choice again on a fresh project today which he would choose. things change fast.

the article is over two years old at this point. sbcl works fine on macs now, and openmcl (now called clozure cl) supports unicode.(nb: i am employed by clozure)

why i'm not using lisp

the article is over two years old at this point. sbcl works fine on macs now, and openmcl (now called clozure cl) supports unicode.(nb: i am employed by clozure)

he could have just said "i only use stuff well-supported on osx". this isn't about lisp, really. he'll face this dilemma "x vs osx" over and over and over again, where x can be anything, from latest vim goodies to some arbitrary libraries.i was in the same situation and i simply ditched osx: it just can't rival linux as an ultimate programmers' world exploration vehicle. ironically, it was python and some python libraries that drove me to linux.i have a mac too, of course, as an ultimate safari+photoshop machine.

why i'm not using lisp

he could have just said "i only use stuff well-supported on osx". this isn't about lisp, really. he'll face this dilemma "x vs osx" over and over and over again, where x can be anything, from latest vim goodies to some arbitrary libraries.i was in the same situation and i simply ditched osx: it just can't rival linux as an ultimate programmers' world exploration vehicle. ironically, it was python and some python libraries that drove me to linux.i have a mac too, of course, as an ultimate safari+photoshop machine.

clojure might be a good choice.implemented out of the box, it should get java's unicode support for free.

why i'm not using lisp

clojure might be a good choice.implemented out of the box, it should get java's unicode support for free.

uh, what? sbcl + slime works fine on os x. in fact, the canonical slime video uses that exact combination.i haven't use clisp on a mac... but i'm sure it works fine.i also think it's interesting that he describes python as having "outstanding" unicode support. there's an article on the front page right now about how poor python's unicode support is. (there's some support, but it's not outstanding. merely acceptable.)

puzzle websites to sharpen your programming skills

the topcoder headline reminds me of mythical man-month. "what could you accomplish with a team of 222,375?" nothing?

and they dont mention uva.onlinejudge.org, the acm problem contests and such?

puzzle websites to sharpen your programming skills

and they dont mention uva.onlinejudge.org, the acm problem contests and such?

the assumption here is that programming is about clever problem solving.whether this is so depends on the situation.the challenge of inventing a new kind of app may be far greater than anything associated with its implementation.btw, i think that some people want to use difficult languages at work to make their job more challenging.

puzzle websites to sharpen your programming skills

the assumption here is that programming is about clever problem solving.whether this is so depends on the situation.the challenge of inventing a new kind of app may be far greater than anything associated with its implementation.btw, i think that some people want to use difficult languages at work to make their job more challenging.

i like to go through past puzzles from the informatics olympiad (<link> for a more theoretical less programmy type of challenge.

puzzle websites to sharpen your programming skills

i like to go through past puzzles from the informatics olympiad (<link> for a more theoretical less programmy type of challenge.

another interesting site is sphere online: <link>

skype: "we've settled with joltid"—now owns its core technology

wow, those 2 swedish chaps know how to bluff their way into a 14% stake...

key fact: 14% share for skype founders "in exchange for providing joltid software and a significant capital investment". would love to hear just how "significant" this capital is :)

skype: "we've settled with joltid"—now owns its core technology

key fact: 14% share for skype founders "in exchange for providing joltid software and a significant capital investment". would love to hear just how "significant" this capital is :)

someone ought to make a deal with mr. walker and polish up speak-freely, add video and create an open source competitor to skype.<link>

skype: "we've settled with joltid"—now owns its core technology

someone ought to make a deal with mr. walker and polish up speak-freely, add video and create an open source competitor to skype.<link>

bad for the gizmo guys. and open source version i guess too.

skype: "we've settled with joltid"—now owns its core technology

bad for the gizmo guys. and open source version i guess too.

cool, now they don't have an excuse to keep the protocol closed in the new "open-source" version.

wikipedia: the 2009 h1n1 flu outbreak

watch and make sure no edits come from anyone connected to roche pharmaceuticals.they hold the marketing rights to tamiflu and stand to profit tremendously from this.

i hope that article becomes protected or semi-protected soon. someone could create a lot of panic from that.

wikipedia: the 2009 h1n1 flu outbreak

i hope that article becomes protected or semi-protected soon. someone could create a lot of panic from that.

everyone's got a bit bored of the recession. quick, let's find a new mass panic.

wikipedia: the 2009 h1n1 flu outbreak

everyone's got a bit bored of the recession. quick, let's find a new mass panic.

more, with good comments:<link>

wikipedia: the 2009 h1n1 flu outbreak

more, with good comments:<link>

if this actually becomes a big deal, it will be a massive economic problem - remember, it's not just the people who get sick who are the problem, but also the people who change their behavior/consumption based on risk mitigation. on the other hand, it would probably provide a boost to e-commerce spending, which would help people in our community.

breakthroughs come from relaxation

i think it's more accurate to say that breakthroughs come from periods of intense work 8 study interspersed with relaxation. if you're only relaxed, you're basically a slacker, one of those dudes who never gets off the couch. but if you're only working, you're just a grind. it's when you put them together - learning everything you can about a topic, or working like crazy to put something together, and then relaxing and letting your brain process it all - that you get creativity.fwiw, the "west coast work environment" isn't all ping pong and video games either. it's ping pong and video games interspersed with very hard, intense sprints where products get built.

what struck me about the reporters was their insistence on measurability. the reporter framed the idea as a east/west coast philosophical difference, but i believe it goes deeper than that. w. edwards deming (who brought modern management to japanese factories after wwii) listed running a company on only visible figures as one of his "seven deadly diseases," and he repeatedly mentioned that the most important factors in running a business are unknown, unknowable, and unmeasurable.

breakthroughs come from relaxation

what struck me about the reporters was their insistence on measurability. the reporter framed the idea as a east/west coast philosophical difference, but i believe it goes deeper than that. w. edwards deming (who brought modern management to japanese factories after wwii) listed running a company on only visible figures as one of his "seven deadly diseases," and he repeatedly mentioned that the most important factors in running a business are unknown, unknowable, and unmeasurable.

jacques hadamard wrote very well on this in his 1945 "an essay on the psychology of invention in the mathematical field." he described creative burst happening during recovery phases following intense work. here is one link: <link>

breakthroughs come from relaxation

jacques hadamard wrote very well on this in his 1945 "an essay on the psychology of invention in the mathematical field." he described creative burst happening during recovery phases following intense work. here is one link: <link>

i'd venture to make a broader claim. it's not so much that relaxation affords for higher incidence of creative breakthroughs as it is that relaxation is a type of activity that supplies the human brain with a steady, stable flow of blood, and hence, oxygen. essentially, it's good circulation that gets those creative juices flowing.i think if we look at this physiologically, we begin to see a connection between seemingly incongruous activities that we could all attest to being potential hotbeds for insight.relaxation and meditation are certainly activities that predispose us to steady breathing, but they are not the only ones. consider strenuous activities like exercise and sex. oftentimes, the breakthroughs here follow directly after the activity while falling back to a rest state.finally, consider periods of sustained intense activity like marathon running. i have a close friend who runs them regularly who has remarked that she gets some of her best ideas during her runs. i'd speculate this happens when the runner's body has adjusted to a certain pace and breathing and blood flow has stabilized.just another angle to look at this, i guess.

breakthroughs come from relaxation

i'd venture to make a broader claim. it's not so much that relaxation affords for higher incidence of creative breakthroughs as it is that relaxation is a type of activity that supplies the human brain with a steady, stable flow of blood, and hence, oxygen. essentially, it's good circulation that gets those creative juices flowing.i think if we look at this physiologically, we begin to see a connection between seemingly incongruous activities that we could all attest to being potential hotbeds for insight.relaxation and meditation are certainly activities that predispose us to steady breathing, but they are not the only ones. consider strenuous activities like exercise and sex. oftentimes, the breakthroughs here follow directly after the activity while falling back to a rest state.finally, consider periods of sustained intense activity like marathon running. i have a close friend who runs them regularly who has remarked that she gets some of her best ideas during her runs. i'd speculate this happens when the runner's body has adjusted to a certain pace and breathing and blood flow has stabilized.just another angle to look at this, i guess.

offtopic and down-votable but, i haven't seen anyone as fat as the guy on the left since moving to the west coast. how nice.

life after x: plans for getting rid of the x server in the future

does no one else ever use x applications over an ssh tunnel? it's an easy way to, for example, control the music playing on my linux box hooked up to my stereo system.in all the blog posts about replacing x, i don't see anyone even mentioning this feature of x. or if they do, they say that its an irrelevant feature.

how many of these applications care about network transparency, which was one of the original headline features of x? how many of them care about icccm compliance? how many of them care about x at all? the answer to all of those questions, of course, is "very few"what an odd, contrived, series of questions. with x anybody can use pretty much any app over the network by default. this one in particular is very odd:how many of these applications care about network transparencyhow many _applications_ care? who knows! i care about network transparency. i want to run my app where my data is. that's pretty much the killer feature of x.

life after x: plans for getting rid of the x server in the future

how many of these applications care about network transparency, which was one of the original headline features of x? how many of them care about icccm compliance? how many of them care about x at all? the answer to all of those questions, of course, is "very few"what an odd, contrived, series of questions. with x anybody can use pretty much any app over the network by default. this one in particular is very odd:how many of these applications care about network transparencyhow many _applications_ care? who knows! i care about network transparency. i want to run my app where my data is. that's pretty much the killer feature of x.

apart from jokes about the "x is dead" (where x is a variable) reports, i think the principles on which x stands are very much alive in the webm.n space - web apps treating the browser as their display. when looked at that way, "x has won".

life after x: plans for getting rid of the x server in the future

apart from jokes about the "x is dead" (where x is a variable) reports, i think the principles on which x stands are very much alive in the webm.n space - web apps treating the browser as their display. when looked at that way, "x has won".

core graphics, quartz, and core animation are essentially the same across mac os x and ios. os x supports opengl; ios supports opengl es. os x has appkit; ios has uikit. os x also has core image.the balkanization of desktop linux and android makes no sense to me. the surface graphics library and surface manager on android needs to converge with desktop linux. <link>

life after x: plans for getting rid of the x server in the future

core graphics, quartz, and core animation are essentially the same across mac os x and ios. os x supports opengl; ios supports opengl es. os x has appkit; ios has uikit. os x also has core image.the balkanization of desktop linux and android makes no sense to me. the surface graphics library and surface manager on android needs to converge with desktop linux. <link>

probably way to late for anyone to read this comment, but i used to think x11 was dead for remoting since vnc was faster over high-latency high-bandwidth connections (which describes most of the internet today). then i discovered nomachine nx; it is way better than vnc or native x for remoting. a bunch of linux distros even have the gpl version available in the package management system. it is as much faster than vnc than vnc is over native x11. also, it doesn't try to jpeg compress my syntax-highlighted text.

much modern innovation isn't

well, the most innovative company of all time was at8t back in the monopoly days.they gave us the transistor, unix, and the c programming language. they hired people like claude shannon and dennis richie.then they broke up at8t and now "innovation" at at8t is peddling an inferior dsl service and trying to figure out how to get you to pay more for your cell phone bill.ycombinator-style startups might make something like airbnb, but they won't make something as transformative as the transistor.as for lean and agile, these are both profoundly conservative forces, in fact, that's really their strength. at their best, they improve the odds of project success by squeezing out risk. however, they also encourage people to keep their heads down and not ask the kind of fundamental questions that can lead to 10x gains rather than 10% gains.

yes and no.lean and agile act as a "hill-climbing" algorithm. you start at point x and take an action in some direction. if you improve, continue. if you don't, change directions. keep doing this until you can't improve any further and you've hit a local maxima.the important concept here is that you hit a local maxima. there could be other vastly superior outcomes, but whether or not you reach these outcomes depends on your starting point.i think lean and agile are fantastic for making improvements to a product. however, in order to change the game, you need to take risks by jumping to a new starting point and beginning again.i think google, as the article points out, espouses both philosophies. they take massive lateral jumps (driverless cars, project glass, etc.), but once they make that jump, their development is lean and agile.

much modern innovation isn't

yes and no.lean and agile act as a "hill-climbing" algorithm. you start at point x and take an action in some direction. if you improve, continue. if you don't, change directions. keep doing this until you can't improve any further and you've hit a local maxima.the important concept here is that you hit a local maxima. there could be other vastly superior outcomes, but whether or not you reach these outcomes depends on your starting point.i think lean and agile are fantastic for making improvements to a product. however, in order to change the game, you need to take risks by jumping to a new starting point and beginning again.i think google, as the article points out, espouses both philosophies. they take massive lateral jumps (driverless cars, project glass, etc.), but once they make that jump, their development is lean and agile.

neither "lean" nor "agile" appear in this blog post. someone should fix the link text on hn, which is currently "is an obsession with lean and agile killing true innovation?"

much modern innovation isn't

neither "lean" nor "agile" appear in this blog post. someone should fix the link text on hn, which is currently "is an obsession with lean and agile killing true innovation?"

what did this article have to do with lean and agile?

much modern innovation isn't

what did this article have to do with lean and agile?

tl;dr the article says nothing about what the op titled it as. read it then comment.

google searches for "vpn" are spiking this week in the us

could be related to the yahoo! policy change, since part of the story is that marissa mayer ran analytics on how their vpn was being used and concluded that many remote workers weren't working much:"mayer explained the rationale at yahoo’s “friday fyi,” its equivalent of google’s tgif. ”we’ve checked and some people who work from home haven’t even logged into the vpn…” she apparently said."

this is probably related to the copyright alert system, or "six strikes" rule that many isps have adopted.vpn is the best way around this and it costs next to nothing.

google searches for "vpn" are spiking this week in the us

this is probably related to the copyright alert system, or "six strikes" rule that many isps have adopted.vpn is the best way around this and it costs next to nothing.

op here. should have posted sooner before it looks like my post got flagged?i think the shock[1] is being caused by the copyright alert system put into place on monday by comcast. here's why:comcast is the largest isp in the us, so a change of their piracy policy (the exogenous shock in my story/model) is likely provide a large enough segment of internet users (definitely bigger than the set of yahoo employees or simcity fans) with the appropriate incentives to search for information about vpns. the logic here is simple.[1]there is clear weekly periodicity in the 90 day chart. if you were to detrend the data and remove the autocorrelation, the spike would look even sharper.based on the data and the normalizations on the data that google does, 90 day data is much better than 12 month data because the latter is not daily data anymore -- it is data aggregated weekly. since it is obviously clear that the data has weekly periodicity, aggregating the data at the weekly-level ignores the fact that how many searches there are for "vpn" on a given day depends on what day of the week it is.calling this wild speculation, incorrect, random noise, or comparing it to weekly or monthly data is just not very good statistics in my mind.edit: also, for clarification google trends data is search volume data normalized on an index from 0 to 100 where 100 is the relative maximum over the series. tuesday's index value was 100, with monday's being the second highest over the 90 day period. so technically, yes, search volumes for vpn are currently spiking this week. i'm really curious to see what happens when wednesday's data is released.

google searches for "vpn" are spiking this week in the us

op here. should have posted sooner before it looks like my post got flagged?i think the shock[1] is being caused by the copyright alert system put into place on monday by comcast. here's why:comcast is the largest isp in the us, so a change of their piracy policy (the exogenous shock in my story/model) is likely provide a large enough segment of internet users (definitely bigger than the set of yahoo employees or simcity fans) with the appropriate incentives to search for information about vpns. the logic here is simple.[1]there is clear weekly periodicity in the 90 day chart. if you were to detrend the data and remove the autocorrelation, the spike would look even sharper.based on the data and the normalizations on the data that google does, 90 day data is much better than 12 month data because the latter is not daily data anymore -- it is data aggregated weekly. since it is obviously clear that the data has weekly periodicity, aggregating the data at the weekly-level ignores the fact that how many searches there are for "vpn" on a given day depends on what day of the week it is.calling this wild speculation, incorrect, random noise, or comparing it to weekly or monthly data is just not very good statistics in my mind.edit: also, for clarification google trends data is search volume data normalized on an index from 0 to 100 where 100 is the relative maximum over the series. tuesday's index value was 100, with monday's being the second highest over the 90 day period. so technically, yes, search volumes for vpn are currently spiking this week. i'm really curious to see what happens when wednesday's data is released.

yet drastically down compared over a larger timeline. <link>8geo=us8c...

google searches for "vpn" are spiking this week in the us

yet drastically down compared over a larger timeline. <link>8geo=us8c...

much more drastic are searches for seedboxes <link>8geo=us&#...edit: for those that don't know, seedboxes are servers you rent that just run bittorrent. makes it easy to skirt around these 6 strikes programs

a skeptic faces possible charges for debunking mumbai’s miracle statue

i'm not sure why this man's investigation is being treated the way he says it is. catholicism is not only open to having purported miracles investigated; it's, in fact, a requirement. every year, many such investigations are conducted, and the vast majority find that nothing miraculous has occurred. the church is fine with that; it's just as happy to weed out "imposters" as anyone else.for instance, here's a story about a u.s. archdiocese declaring a "bleeding" consecrated host to be nonmiraculous: <link> here's the quote that sums up the church's position: "while the catholic church fully recognizes the possibility of miracles and remains open to their possibility, it does so with extreme scrutiny, investigation and care. this incident was the result of natural biological causes and should not be considered in any other way."so i'm surprised that some in the the catholic community in mumbai are resistant to this finding.

according to his website, the police came to arrest him a few days ago, and if he hadn't been out at the time, he would be in jail now. so, this has gone beyond "possible charges". the church is dead serious about charging this man with the crime of letting them know that they were drinking sewage.

a skeptic faces possible charges for debunking mumbai’s miracle statue

according to his website, the police came to arrest him a few days ago, and if he hadn't been out at the time, he would be in jail now. so, this has gone beyond "possible charges". the church is dead serious about charging this man with the crime of letting them know that they were drinking sewage.

and christians all over the world sit on their asses and not saying anything against arresting people for that bullshit.i guess a sizable portion of these are actually happy about the incident.i just never see them standing up and saying: i am against this as a christian, this is not what the christ died for.thus i consider all christians to have their small part in being morally responsible for that crap around the world (see also pussy riot scandal in russia where i am from)

a skeptic faces possible charges for debunking mumbai’s miracle statue

and christians all over the world sit on their asses and not saying anything against arresting people for that bullshit.i guess a sizable portion of these are actually happy about the incident.i just never see them standing up and saying: i am against this as a christian, this is not what the christ died for.thus i consider all christians to have their small part in being morally responsible for that crap around the world (see also pussy riot scandal in russia where i am from)

this guy is smooth. he's threatening "to shed some light on the role that the catholic church played and is still playing today here in india"this is a brilliant defense strategy against getting arrested.

a skeptic faces possible charges for debunking mumbai’s miracle statue

this guy is smooth. he's threatening "to shed some light on the role that the catholic church played and is still playing today here in india"this is a brilliant defense strategy against getting arrested.

<link> playing out. the play was adapted into a movie by satyajit ray (not one of his best, but it was after his debilitating stroke). in the movie the situation is the same except its hindu holy water. i hope it works out better in reality than in the movie.

interactive shell to a running python process

if you want to do the same without modifying the script (or if you have the script already running without the needed import for the remote debugging possibility), i.e. inject into a running process:<link>

i use ipython's "ipdb" or plain old python "pdb" for the same functionality, and a bit more -- people don't seem to realize that ipdb gives them a full-on repl within the calling context.i usually wrap it into our error logging functions, so an environment variable enables debugging where i would normally have a catch-all -- very handy when looking for heisenbugs in andbug.antilog -- <link> -- <link>

interactive shell to a running python process

i use ipython's "ipdb" or plain old python "pdb" for the same functionality, and a bit more -- people don't seem to realize that ipdb gives them a full-on repl within the calling context.i usually wrap it into our error logging functions, so an environment variable enables debugging where i would normally have a catch-all -- very handy when looking for heisenbugs in andbug.antilog -- <link> -- <link>

my most excellent friend thomas hurst implemented a remote python shell a few years ago, for use in debugging running instances of terminator. you can see the code in question here:<link> how it gets set up, starting at line 88, here:<link>

interactive shell to a running python process

my most excellent friend thomas hurst implemented a remote python shell a few years ago, for use in debugging running instances of terminator. you can see the code in question here:<link> how it gets set up, starting at line 88, here:<link>

you can also run an rpyc* server in your process, and connect to it from any python shell on any computer to control it.* <link>

interactive shell to a running python process

you can also run an rpyc* server in your process, and connect to it from any python shell on any computer to control it.* <link>

would it be possible to use gdb or something similar to inject this into a running process?

the mac app store isn’t for today’s mac developers

my development falls into the giant right circle and i never considered developing for the mac osx until after i created my first ios game this month and learned of the mac app store opening in 3 months. now it's as easy as reexporting higher resolution art from illustrator and a few uikit changes and i can redeploy my ios game for mac osx and find myself in front of another large app hungry audience that will happily open their wallets.i'll be one of the first in line to get on the mac app store when i've never before developed or sold software since this month. it is making is so darn easy to have a chance.

i think there is something missing from the analysis of ios applications as entertainment. not only can i show you my new vuvuzela app while we're sitting in a bar, i can show it to the waitress, your girlfriend, and the guy sitting next to me. ios apps are entertaining because they are social.a macapp is less sharable than an emailed website link. besides my dog who am i going annoy with my vuvuzela? (so to speak).i suspect that macapps will sell based on utility rather than entertainment and that the removal of flash and java are expected to generate much of the initial need.

the mac app store isn’t for today’s mac developers

i think there is something missing from the analysis of ios applications as entertainment. not only can i show you my new vuvuzela app while we're sitting in a bar, i can show it to the waitress, your girlfriend, and the guy sitting next to me. ios apps are entertaining because they are social.a macapp is less sharable than an emailed website link. besides my dog who am i going annoy with my vuvuzela? (so to speak).i suspect that macapps will sell based on utility rather than entertainment and that the removal of flash and java are expected to generate much of the initial need.

i'd say this assessment is largely spot-on. by introducing the app store, apple could channel the large community of developers churning out commodity software for ios towards the mac. now they just need to make porting from ios to macos x really simple, and the ecosystem will flourish.one addendum, though: existing applications won't benefit from the app store, yes. existing mac developers, though, probably will. if you know cocoa forwards and backwards, then making little (store-exclusive!) apps isn't challenging, but potentially lucrative.

the mac app store isn’t for today’s mac developers

i'd say this assessment is largely spot-on. by introducing the app store, apple could channel the large community of developers churning out commodity software for ios towards the mac. now they just need to make porting from ios to macos x really simple, and the ecosystem will flourish.one addendum, though: existing applications won't benefit from the app store, yes. existing mac developers, though, probably will. if you know cocoa forwards and backwards, then making little (store-exclusive!) apps isn't challenging, but potentially lucrative.

this is exactly what i was thinking while watching the lion demo especially with the full screen applications. appstore or no appstore the average mac user isn't going to impulse buy an expensive, complex, multi-function application without an obvious purpose communicated through 2 or 3 screenshots. the key to the mac appstore is going to be de-constructing these multi-function applications into smaller task focused tools with re-invented uis (ios stylized) at lower prices.

the mac app store isn’t for today’s mac developers

this is exactly what i was thinking while watching the lion demo especially with the full screen applications. appstore or no appstore the average mac user isn't going to impulse buy an expensive, complex, multi-function application without an obvious purpose communicated through 2 or 3 screenshots. the key to the mac appstore is going to be de-constructing these multi-function applications into smaller task focused tools with re-invented uis (ios stylized) at lower prices.

while i think marco probably has it right long-term, i think he's actually pretty wrong in the short-term. the difficulty of porting an ios app (or even writing a mac app from scratch, given that a developer only has ios experience) and the nature of the device (mobile is clearly a growing market--is the same true for the desktop?) means that i think we'll see a lot more trepidation in entering the mac app store.traditional mac developers (panic, omni, etc.) will obviously move their apps onto the store, but i don't think we'll see a whole lot of new entries--most ios apps don't neatly transition onto the desktop, besides some games. i know my couple ios applications don't have an obvious mac version, just as my mac applications didn't have an obvious ios version. if the mac app store is to reach anywhere near the popularity of the ios app store, it's going to take a long time for companies to decide that the desktop is even worth it.

ask hn: hackers on poetry i've been toying with the idea of memorizing some poetry. you guys have any favorites? bonus points for material with a techno-tinge.

do you like use warnings and strict?i do not like use warnings and strict.do you like them here or there?i do not like them here or there?i do not like them anywhere.i do not like use warnings and strict.i will not obey your good coding practice edict.could you, would you in your code?would you, could you in your perlmonks node?i could not, would not in my code.i would not, could not in my node.not in my program.not in my script.not a one-liner.not with shebang.say! at night?would you, could you at night?not at night.not in the mornings.i do not use strict and warnings!if you do not use warnings and strict.then upon your code bugs you'll inflict.i will not use warnings and strict.my freedom of coding style they will restrict.i am too lazy to declare with my.i do not need it; i'll get by.you do not like them.so you say.try them! try them!and you may.try them and you may, i say.if you will let me be,i will try them.you will see. the stubborn hacker finally relents to trying them. say, i like warnings and strict!i do! i like them a little bit.i will use them in my code.and i will use them in my node.and in my programs.and in my scripts.warnings and strict are right for me.they are so good, so good, you see.(not my writing, just something that fits your request)

<link>

ask hn: hackers on poetry i've been toying with the idea of memorizing some poetry. you guys have any favorites? bonus points for material with a techno-tinge.

<link>

true ease of writing comes from art, not chance; as he moves best who learns the steps of dance; 'tis not enough no harshness cause offence; the sound must seem an echo of the sense. alexander pope, early hacker 8 investor (in the south sea bubble)

ask hn: hackers on poetry i've been toying with the idea of memorizing some poetry. you guys have any favorites? bonus points for material with a techno-tinge.

true ease of writing comes from art, not chance; as he moves best who learns the steps of dance; 'tis not enough no harshness cause offence; the sound must seem an echo of the sense. alexander pope, early hacker 8 investor (in the south sea bubble)

why would you memorize poetry? just curious.one of my favorites: <link>

ask hn: hackers on poetry i've been toying with the idea of memorizing some poetry. you guys have any favorites? bonus points for material with a techno-tinge.

why would you memorize poetry? just curious.one of my favorites: <link>

aristotle, by billy collins <link>

rebuttal to "a hacker's loneliness" / part ii you guys realize that getting laid and writing good code and loving what you do are not mutually exclusive.<p>just like how you taught yourself code, go learn to dress well. learn how to be interesting. learn to be the norm; there's no shame in that.<p>talk about what you love. have passion. it's really not that hard.

getting laid and being lonely aren't mutually exclusive either.don't learn how to be interesting, learn how to be interested. don't learn to be the norm, learn to appreciate others.don't talk about what you love, ask about what they love and share what you think might interest them. discover their passions.if you want good company, you have to be good company.

having passion about your interests is a great thing, but it's important to be able to relate to other people, and monomania is often pretty insulating. steve buscemi's character seymour in the movie ghost world comes to mind: enid asks him what his interests are, and after a bunch of buzzwords about musical categories that i don't remember, she says, "ok, let's just say, 'music'. what else?"i'm very interested in programming, but i also really like to cook, bicycling, and several other things, and find those are usually easier for people to relate to. maybe you like to write, or skateboard, or you love paintball, or have a growing interest in photography, or something. an interest in programming and being able to have a social life are in no way contradictory. (seemingly unrelated interests also tend to cross-pollinate.)also, let's please not fill up the front page with rebuttals to rebuttals to rebuttals.

rebuttal to "a hacker's loneliness" / part ii you guys realize that getting laid and writing good code and loving what you do are not mutually exclusive.<p>just like how you taught yourself code, go learn to dress well. learn how to be interesting. learn to be the norm; there's no shame in that.<p>talk about what you love. have passion. it's really not that hard.

having passion about your interests is a great thing, but it's important to be able to relate to other people, and monomania is often pretty insulating. steve buscemi's character seymour in the movie ghost world comes to mind: enid asks him what his interests are, and after a bunch of buzzwords about musical categories that i don't remember, she says, "ok, let's just say, 'music'. what else?"i'm very interested in programming, but i also really like to cook, bicycling, and several other things, and find those are usually easier for people to relate to. maybe you like to write, or skateboard, or you love paintball, or have a growing interest in photography, or something. an interest in programming and being able to have a social life are in no way contradictory. (seemingly unrelated interests also tend to cross-pollinate.)also, let's please not fill up the front page with rebuttals to rebuttals to rebuttals.

post this as a comment in the other rebuttal, it belongs there. and it's a good point.

rebuttal to "a hacker's loneliness" / part ii you guys realize that getting laid and writing good code and loving what you do are not mutually exclusive.<p>just like how you taught yourself code, go learn to dress well. learn how to be interesting. learn to be the norm; there's no shame in that.<p>talk about what you love. have passion. it's really not that hard.

post this as a comment in the other rebuttal, it belongs there. and it's a good point.

it is however hard to be the norm and to be passionate.the norm is the mean, its the center of a bell curve. it would be like running around and shouting, "i love to be human," but wait,... normal people don't do that. normal people are boring.just understand that men have certain gifts, and women have certain gifts, and each person wants to you appreciate and notice those gifts.girlfriends want to know that you are paying attention to you, they want to know they can be crazy around you and you wont freakout, they want to know there is something stable in their life. oddly enough women seem to rather not want help with things, but rather a good set of ears, and someone that they know they can rely on, when they don't feel like they need to be so strong.the modern women is a feminist and yet is somehow still drawn to what men have to offer, even though they can't describe it. they are strong and independent, and they seek to share an emotional tide with someone.and most of all, they want a guy they can brag about to their friends. so, every once and a while you need to give them something to talk about.

rebuttal to "a hacker's loneliness" / part ii you guys realize that getting laid and writing good code and loving what you do are not mutually exclusive.<p>just like how you taught yourself code, go learn to dress well. learn how to be interesting. learn to be the norm; there's no shame in that.<p>talk about what you love. have passion. it's really not that hard.

it is however hard to be the norm and to be passionate.the norm is the mean, its the center of a bell curve. it would be like running around and shouting, "i love to be human," but wait,... normal people don't do that. normal people are boring.just understand that men have certain gifts, and women have certain gifts, and each person wants to you appreciate and notice those gifts.girlfriends want to know that you are paying attention to you, they want to know they can be crazy around you and you wont freakout, they want to know there is something stable in their life. oddly enough women seem to rather not want help with things, but rather a good set of ears, and someone that they know they can rely on, when they don't feel like they need to be so strong.the modern women is a feminist and yet is somehow still drawn to what men have to offer, even though they can't describe it. they are strong and independent, and they seek to share an emotional tide with someone.and most of all, they want a guy they can brag about to their friends. so, every once and a while you need to give them something to talk about.

you guys realize that human beings are social animals and any time an obsession with anything prevents you from participating an a common human activity there's going to be problems?

show hn: an intuitive, offline capable html5 mind mapping application

as someone who makes extensive use of mind mapping and outlining tools, this is very ho-hum. the keyboard shortcuts are nearly non-existent, which immediately kills it. there is also no control over layout. for small maps the fan-out format is fine but for large maps, you really need a format that looks more like a vertical outline.for an example of outlining done right, check out <link> (i am not affiliated in any way, other than as a customer.)

i am currently using freemind [1]. i love the idea of exporting the mind maps to html. here are some of my mind maps [2] --[1] <link>[2] <link>

show hn: an intuitive, offline capable html5 mind mapping application

i am currently using freemind [1]. i love the idea of exporting the mind maps to html. here are some of my mind maps [2] --[1] <link>[2] <link>

i'm a big fan and user of mind maps and i like what you have created.but there is one thing missing - unless i missed it:keyboard shortcuts to create sibling and childnodes from any given currently selected node.the reasoning is that mind-mapping happens fast and i've refused any tool that would need me use my mouse instead of just 'throwing' nodes out there.please note that this was the one capability that made me not use most of the desktop apps out there and also had me pay for a license of novamind without asking twice.also, but this is to me secondary, the ability to make edges between random nodes can be of great benefit as well. again, see novamind for their implementation.other than that, congratulations to your application!

show hn: an intuitive, offline capable html5 mind mapping application

i'm a big fan and user of mind maps and i like what you have created.but there is one thing missing - unless i missed it:keyboard shortcuts to create sibling and childnodes from any given currently selected node.the reasoning is that mind-mapping happens fast and i've refused any tool that would need me use my mouse instead of just 'throwing' nodes out there.please note that this was the one capability that made me not use most of the desktop apps out there and also had me pay for a license of novamind without asking twice.also, but this is to me secondary, the ability to make edges between random nodes can be of great benefit as well. again, see novamind for their implementation.other than that, congratulations to your application!

never call anything "intuitive". chances are overwhelming that it isn't for the majority of people.for the programmer himself, even a "change into meta-workflow-hyper-mode" may seem intuitive, but for someone who never has used a computer, even the moving and clicking of a mouse is _not_ intuitive."intuitive" is a completely subjective concept. a reviewer or user may say "this feels intutive to me", but the programmer or designer cannot sensibly use that word in any stronger way than "i hope that it feels intutive for a large part of my intended audience."

show hn: an intuitive, offline capable html5 mind mapping application

never call anything "intuitive". chances are overwhelming that it isn't for the majority of people.for the programmer himself, even a "change into meta-workflow-hyper-mode" may seem intuitive, but for someone who never has used a computer, even the moving and clicking of a mouse is _not_ intuitive."intuitive" is a completely subjective concept. a reviewer or user may say "this feels intutive to me", but the programmer or designer cannot sensibly use that word in any stronger way than "i hope that it feels intutive for a large part of my intended audience."

great ui ... will play with this more.one thing - if i have entered some text and then click somewhere else it should save the text that have i changed instead of reverting back.