skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Such an esteemed organization should refrain from using false statements to support its stance: Movie makers receive most of their revenues from motion-picture theatres, not DVD sales.

is contradicted by:
http://www.allbusiness.com/north-america/united-states-calif... titled: Digital Verite: studios see more money in DVDs than theaters.

And then the article says:

Spend a few dollars, get a dozen good songs in your possession, or
Spend the next four hours on the Web trying to find those songs performed by some obscure local artists.

The answer is obvious.

The answer isn't so obvious. First, you don't get 12 good songs, you get one good song and 11 lousy ones. And yes, most would rather go home and type in the lyrics they heard to figure out what the song and artist is, or simply do without than pay $20 to get one good track.

This is also not exactly correct: For-profit entrepreneurs are able to take a piece of shareware, add useful features, and sell copies with tech support.

And again, a hopeful naivety: Even though you would have the right to call your product Cheerios, grocery stores may refuse to carry your product. Does Mises really think stores care about the consumer? They care about selling stuff. If consumers buy it because it says Cherrios on it, then they'll sell it. Why do grocery stores make their generic brands look so much like the name brands? Because when it has the same color logos and the pills are the same colors and the words look the same, the store makes more profit selling the generics.

Overall, poor showing by Mises on this one.

This article makes sense only if you side with the consumer.

In any society, one must ask, who do we want more of? What do we want more of? Personally, I want more content to consume and I want higher quality content at that.

So, to get more of that, we have to reward the producers of content. If we reward the consumers of content, we'll get more consumers. Do we want more consumers?

More consumers has led to a consumer society in which we are consuming more than we are producing. The American culture is in decline, because we aren't producing anything the world wants. We need to reward producers more and punish consumers so that Americans will produce more and consume less and rebuild our nation to its previous glory.

And this goes for everyone. We have to reward those who produce OSS and proprietary/commercial software. We need to reward the producers of movies and music -- not just the distributors -- the bands. The artists. The actors. The designers. Not just the big studios.

We need to reward the writers. The programmers, the creators. Not just the factories.

And we definitely don't need to be enabling the consumer to consume even more and destroy the planet even more.
Google's Dremel: Interactive Analysis of Web-Scale Datasets
I think that the existing implementation of the idea and where it has lead has numerous problems, but the fact of the matter is that it is beneficial for a society to have mechanisms like patents in place.

It has been a problem for centuries. At what point do we stop experimenting with various schema for patents and realize that is not working?

Theories that work on paper but turn out to be wrong in reality are just bad theories and should be rejected.
Nice clean looking site. You've done an ok job of explaining what you do, but for the b2b (or b2c) space, I think you need to provide more detail in how the service works.

Testimonials would be good, but it would be really beneficial to know that you have businesses in your contacts list.

As the example you gave coryl. If I needed sound equipment or a caterer and I am using your service, how do I know you have these contacts, and that you are the best source?

Are real people working with quotefinch to get my quotes together? or is it all done by a computer? What can I expect?

At the moment I think it's a bit light on those details.

As for using the little twitter bird in your logo, what is the purpose of that? Does your service do something with twitter? If not, i'd remove that just to get rid of any confusion.
:-) Very true. I'm personally quite addicted to Flying Shark, which was released in 1987, I think (and which I play with Radiohead's "Talk Show Host", Live at Pinkpop 2001 Landgraaf in a continuous loop). 3-D and interactivity is all well and good, but is it fun?
Ahhrrr... I looked at the page and though "Wow, I will finally do it... one day" and decided to add it to my Delicious account, only to realize it was already there.

And then it came to me: it was probably posted on HN few months ago, I decided to read it "later" and created that Delicious link :)
It's created by a Mises.org user on a wiki. Of course, somebody who have an account there should fix the claim and the weak arguments.
I tried these several weeks ago and found that they're out of date -- is there an easy way to update these examples to get them to work with iOS 4? Or another set of examples already made for iOS 4?
For rails, check out http://www.railstutorial.org.
These would be awesome on github. Please? :)
It's for work - won't be widely distributed, I'm afraid.
i'll give it a try, though let me give you an advice which reflect my problem with delicious.

I've used delicious, ever since it was a perl script running on a single server by Joshua. Days went by, delicious went through it revolution/evolution cycles and stationed where it is right now. However, as a facebook and twitter user, I want to have all my links and re-tweets save automatically in my bookmark service. That is, If I tweet about a fascinating page, I'd like to able to easily retrieve it 6 months later.

that is to say, auto-tweet is nice feature but I am looking for the vice versa (twitter, facebook, buzz, wherever I go and save/mark links).

Wish you good luck with your new service.
When kings and princes grow old
A historical anecdote from memory:

There was once upon a time, expensive sheetmusics. However, the advent of technologies has allowed sheet musics to thrive. The incumbent companies respond with ever more forces, to the point of making the police raid pirates' distribution center.

However, the police eventually give up and move on to other things. Thus, end the sheet music wars and expensive sheet musics were never seen again.
Basically, but not exactly, or even all that similar. With the law, it's the little details that matter the most.

The reason most lawyers on HN have refrained from arguing the parent issue is that it can go both ways. Copyright law is intentionally ambiguous, and court rulings are all over the place. There's really no knowing how the court will rule until it actually does.
A lot of people look at Reddit now and think "What current?", but it wasn't like that in 2005. The notion that cyberspace was some place you went to waste time was just getting started - Reddit didn't invent it, but they caught the early phases of the wave, and it wasn't at all obvious to everyone. There were no such things as FaceBook apps in 2005. FaceBook itself was limited to college students (or it had just expanded to high school students). There was no Twitter, and no Zynga, and YouTube was just getting started. Most people hadn't heard of Digg, and sites like StackOverflow or Hacker News were far off in the future. Casual games were around, but they didn't make headlines the way they do today.

Yes, there were people who wasted time online, but they were usually people in niche subcultures like fandom or gaming. Many of the early Web 2.0 successes still had a significant productivity bent to them, eg. del.icio.us was seen as a way to organize your bookmarks online, Flickr grew a large community of professional or semi-professional photographers, and blogs were often viewed as a way to increase your professional reputation.

People love wasting time online now, but that was not a mainstream view when Reddit started, and they are perhaps responsible for some of it. That's what PG means by pushing against the current.
...is there an easy way to update these examples to get them to work with iOS 4?

Apple probably doesn't ship the SDK it targets anymore. Double click on the project name under "Groups & Files" and change the "Base SDK" setting from whatever it is (probably 2.x-era) to the latest one that you have installed.

// edit: Yup, downloaded one project (WhatsMyIP) to look at and this was exactly the problem/fix. There were other warnings, but those are non-fatal. Or, at least, it still builds. I didn't actually run the app (my iOS device and sim are both busy with other tests right now).
I noticed that penicillins and ibuprofen can also be causes. Is Provigil more likely to do this than say, those two common drugs?
You overestimate humans. Milo is the ultimate tamagotchi.
Thanks Jeremy. I don't particularly want to use child_process.exec if there's a better/more direct way to compile, which it seems like there must be. I think it would be really helpful to have a dead simple Cakefile example for compiling a single CS file into a single JS file. It's not clear to me what the standard way to do that is, even with your new example.
There's a large difference between steroids and Provigil, at least from the limited information given in the article. Assuming that there are no side effects from Provigil; Steroids have a definitive list of side effects that ravage the human body. In that sense, there are no comparisons. Considering the impact of the two drugs from societies view, there is also no comparison as physical strength, especially in sports, does not contribute very much to society as a whole while according to the author, Provigil has large potential to enhance every scientist to create more and better ideas that could further the human race.

I would think also, that if Provigil is something that does create smarter people, perhaps we might find that there is a deficiency in our genome that through further research could be changed to the point where no drug was needed. Of course, I for one have no problem with gene therapy and enhancement.

There always come a ethical dilemma because we have been ingrained with the belief that we are not worth of meddling with our own bodies and destiny, usually from religious sources. If not religious factors, then usually from people that wish to maintain the status quo as they are usually benefiting.
The whole article seems to be very confused. Especially the section about software has several flaws that leave the impression that the author doesn't have a very deep knowledge on that topic. (The other sections sound more plausible, but I can't judge them because I'm neither an inventor nor a musician nor ...)

Given that predicting the future is almost impossible even for highly specialized experts in their area, it is hard to believe that broad predictions based on sciolism are of any value.

> They might engineer the software to work only with permission from the software firm, requiring the consumer to pay for it.

This is true, but is missing another trend that is more important: Software as a service. Any company providing a paid web service doesn't need to cripple their software with copy protection anymore. Instead, they control the computers on which is software is running.

Missing that option in the article is especially odd because it is the only business model that could work absolutely unchanged if there was no copyright (which was the premise of the article).

> A third option [...] is the open-source freeware/shareware model

What's "the" business model of open source, freeware and shareware? The term "open source" alone comprises lots of different models (dual-licensing, selling "just" service, etc) which are again different from the freeware model and the shareware model.

> or software written by volunteers/hobbyists and made freely available without difficult licensing restrictions.

Here, "no difficult licensing restrictions" is presented in contrast with e.g. "open source" of the enumeration above.

However, it is in fact part of it, for two reasons: First, there is a big movement within the open source scene that exists to minimize the license terms (BSD-style licenses, public domain, etc). Second, software without restrictions fulfills the definition of free software as it obviously permits all 4 essential freedoms.

> For-profit entrepreneurs are able to take a piece of shareware, add useful features, and sell copies with tech support.

Adding useful features to a shareware is quite hard if you don't have the sources, and it's almost never worth the trouble of disassembling and reverse engineering the software.

Withholding the sources is an important component of the shareware model, at least currently, and that is unlikely to change should the copyright be disestablished.
Especially with the community aspect, forking, improving, pushing back.

Maybe I'll feel ambitious tomorrow o_O
Use Web Page-to-PDF for blocked websites
will not work with website one has to login to access, but I can imagine quite a few scenarios when this comes in handy.
There are two factors that I think come into play in any discussion about dumping IP protections. I don't think treating everything as a trade secret is really that viable of an option; there are too many ways to reverse engineer things.

First, what will happen to industries that require significant investments before any return can be realized? Software does not fit in this category any more (perhaps it did at one time), but biotech, green, and space certainly do. If you need to dump $200M to get something right, then somebody else can come reproduce it for $10M in reverse engineering, your screwed. Who would invest in that space?

Second, would people really pay for "shareware" content? Would they pay enough to keep good authors writing books, good film makers making movies, and good musicians making music? Sure, there are a lot of crappy people in those categories getting paid today, but there are also a lot of really good artists getting paid today. If payment was optional (and with no IP protection, payment is optional), how many people would pay?

The first actually bothers me more than the second. I bet JJ Abrams could get enough donations before making a film to make it worth his while, so, while the arts would change, it would probably be OK in the end (after some painful times for all, including consumers). I'm not so sure that SpaceX could get enough donations (that is, after all what they might be) to build a space program.
WordPress doesn't get to unilaterally decide what is derivative. Project owners do not get to decide that. They do get to decide what license to use, and what the terms of the license are. A court will decide whether themes are derivative.

If themes are derivative works that the copyright owner can control, then the same expansive reasoning would mean that movie studios can decide whether you can make copies of that BR movie you just bought, game companies could bar you from trading saves, and publishers/authors could bar you from talking about that novel you just read.

Copyright law doesn't change just because open source gets involved, and we shouldn't change copyright law just b/c an open source project is on a power trip.
It is a great idea. Build it.
More consumers has led to a consumer society in which we are consuming more than we are producing. The American culture is in decline, because we aren't producing anything the world wants. We need to reward producers more and punish consumers so that Americans will produce more and consume less and rebuild our nation to its previous glory.
And this goes for everyone. We have to reward those who produce OSS and proprietary/commercial software. We need to reward the producers of movies and music -- not just the distributors -- the bands. The artists. The actors. The designers. Not just the big studios.
We need to reward the writers. The programmers, the creators. Not just the factories.
And we definitely don't need to be enabling the consumer to consume even more and destroy the planet even more.

3 million MP3s to sniff through is more than enough for my lifetime. If programming services are needed, they will be paid for.

On the other hand, I think the article is trying to show people that it's possible for people to make a living without intellectual property, abiet with poor arguments.
opensourcerails.com has quite a few open source ones
Thank you so very much for your feedback. Below are some response to the concerns your raised:

"Testimonials would be good, but it would be really beneficial to know that you have businesses in your contacts list."
>>>>ANS: Honestly the site is in the very early stages. So I really don't have anybody using it as yet to be able to provide testimonials. Hopefully soon I could get something up and running and get some users to provide testimonials.

"As the example you gave coryl. If I needed sound equipment or a caterer and I am using your service, how do I know you have these contacts, and that you are the best source?"
>>>>ANS: Users will select a category they want to make a request in eg: Sound Equipment Services.
When they select a category, they will see all the companies who are providing that particular service.
So even before they post their request, the could browse thru the list and know all the companies who will receive their request.

"Are real people working with quotefinch to get my quotes together? or is it all done by a computer? What can I expect?"
>>>>ANS: All done by computer. I think my answer above should cover this. If not, let me know and I'll clarify more.

"As for using the little twitter bird in your logo, what is the purpose of that? Does your service do something with twitter? If not, i'd remove that just to get rid of any confusion."
>>>>ANS: The bird was suppose to represent a Finch. I guess I can remove it if it's more misleading than relevant.
Something this whole sordid saga has made me appreciate is that the 3GS is really a damned awesome phone. It feels good in my hand, it can run IOS 4 without slowing to a crawl, its proximity sensor works well, and it doesn't tend to drop calls or not drop calls based on how it's held. It was designed before Apple got complacent, and it shows.

My SO has an original 3G model and it feels a lot slower, even without upgrading to IOS 4. I was going to upgrade both our phones when the iPhone 4 was first announced, but I failed to get our pre-orders in on time, and now I'm sort of glad -- especially since I'm not the one stuck with the slower 3G. :)
I am, I suppose, arguably both. I'm part of something that's more like a clan than anything else - there are ten members currently and each person's relationship with each of the others is somewhere between friend and full partner, though most of us are partnered to at least two of the rest (and myself and the strongest personality female partner are both partnered to most of the rest as well as each other - I'm currently writing this sat on her flat's deck in PDX).

This doesn't prevent any of us having partners outside the group, either, although if I expect to emotionally commit to somebody I try to at least introduce them to the rest since these are the people that I trust with my life and my future.

I, personally, seem to have been gifted with a very minimal capacity for jealousy; the other members vary, and it's not really a problem - anything that makes anybody unhappy is taken as something to be understood and resolved by conversation and change. The cross-support possibilities help a lot, especially given that a number of us have fairly high velocity lives and can disappear for days at a time dealing with work (though a number of us are in IT of some form so sometimes we lean on each other for help during crunch times too).

All relationship patterns require lots of effort to work well. All relationship patterns involve drama sometimes. The difference in my experience (I've done monogamy, open - i.e. single emotional, multiple sexual partner, multiple-independent-partner poly, and now clan) is what sorts of drama, what sorts of effort, and what sorts of people. Currently the clan approach is my favourite, but then again at any given time the approach I was using was my favourite.

I don't generally go out of my way to broadcast my choice of relationship pattern, but I also don't go out of my way to not mention it - to refer to one of my loves as my partner without making the existence of the rest clear seems to me to be disrespectful to the other people that I'm in love with. This hasn't, so far, caused a problem with any client to my knowledge when it's come up in social conversation - but even if it did I'd simply stop discussing my life with the person who found it troublesome, it wouldn't make me any more willing to lie about who I love and why if asked a direct question.

I'm not really sure what else I should cover - it's hard to know which things people will find remarkable about your life when you're in the middle of living it. I'll try and monitor replies here though (or I could start a Tell HN in the reddit IAMA style if people preferred)
Software might be cheap to produce monetary wise, but they require tons of developer time to develop.

Beside, 10 million dollars reverse engineering might not produce what you're looking for. It might require more time to perfect the copy technologies.
The 90% is the cheap part; the final 10% costs the most money.

I had an idea of building of an API data service-programming-language-cloud-management-tool-of-awesomeness that maps amazon cloud services to language primitives. Imagine using S3, SimpleDB, and SimpleQueueService as language primitives (the SimpleQueueService really works well when sending a closure to the queue).

I had most of version 2 working too (and a really good start on version 3), but I had to kill it. :(

http://www.mathgladiator.com/projects/kira
I don't think that's really true. By 2005, online time-wasting was huge, mainstream big-business. MySpace was sold for $580 million in 2005. I mean, when even Rupert Murdoch thinks social media is the next big thing, it's not exactly a secret.
What's wrong with the MTA trial he's citing? It's the largest study on the longterm effects of ADHD treatments ever conducted, and my understanding is that it's the gold standard.
Yes, totally agree. If you indicated how much later it appeared on websites such as Techmeme, Google News, maybe HN, I would totally come back to this. Also might be nice for comments sometime down the line?
Well, PG's ideas were considered bad by early opponents. Mine is just considered, well, good.

So I don't have adversaries, just encouragement to build it.
thanks for posting this pg - for some reason, the startup ideas that keep coming back to my memory (think "open loop" from GTD) actually fits the 6 principles - time to work on crude version 1's I guess :)