skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sorry to be a nay sayer, but it won't work. If this requirement were set in place, a patent troll will get around it by hiring a coder for a week to get something out really quick that does something nobody needs and then they'll sell one copy to their grandma. This won't evoke any real change unless you manage to make it very complicated. There would have to be mandates in the law like x% of your company's revenue must be from actual sales of the product or something like it.

The better solution is to just end software patents. They have no value in the current software economy.
Where do you draw the line between a "software patent" and a hardware one? Doesn't make sense to make a distinction based on the method of implementation (especially given that lots of HW is micro-programmable).

Yes - many silly patents are being filed for unreasonable reasons (fight patent wars, get a bonus, etc.) But making a distinction based on only on way of implementation is just as silly.
I don't look at it as jumping through hoops, it's just as much for your benefit as it is for the company. Yes, you can quit at any time (of course, in California, you can be fired at any time also) but it's much cleaner if you both go into a trial period trying each other out. Should you decide the company isn't up to your standards, there's no pressure you stay, and you have a clearer expectation at that point of what you'd expect from compensation.
Where are the clever ones, who are too lazy or too busy doing their own project to get A every time?
Disney Trademarks Seal Team 6 Two Days After SEAL Team 6 Kills Bin Laden
Promoting a product by using a linkbait title is poor form. The only parallel between this and Color appears to be that it is a social media app.
Victory CrossRoads 
Victory CrosRoad is strategically located at a prime location. It is just at the doorstep of the upcoming metro station, facing the Noida Expressway and the FNG Expressway. Amidst Green and clean Environment with only 16% of constructed area.
That wouldn't stop someone from patenting something that someone else determined was unpatented and then went after them for infringement.
A Cheat Sheet for App Store Pricing
It's like accepting a lower starting salary hoping that, since you love doing what you do, you will prove it to everyone that you're good at it and that you will get a raise eventually. I got burned with this twice -- believe it or not, low starting salary coupled with uncertainty about whether there will be an eventual raise played a big role in me actually stopping loving my work (which at the time was a good thing since I acquired more productive interests, but that's besides the point).
Since this is specific to software patents, my vote was to abolish them all.
Patents on Software make not sense (other protections like Copyright, are essential, though).
I have yet to see one "invention" that would not have seen the light of day without software patents.

Patents are a method to protect significant costs cost of an invention (to incentivize research).
Having an idea for an algorithm is does not represent a great cost and it is not in the interest of society to grant a monopoly).
The gifts category on swissmiss may help: http://www.swiss-miss.com/gift_guide_generic?c=gift_guide_ge...
If you abolish all patents you leave two options for inventors [some patents truly are ingenious]:

- Keep it as a trade secret. You get one source for a product, and less innovation.

- Publish it and suffer the consequences of the big companies copying it and making profit on your work.
U.S. College Education Isn’t Worth Price: Report
If you find yourself asking others to make your decisions for you, the correct answer is inaction, since you'd only do it halfheartedly anyway.
A device that turns anything into a touchscreen
Social Security Trust Fund - "We lost $1.1 Trillion last year"
The software patent dispute always falls into the broad brush trap. Obvious patents like Facebook's news feed and Amazon's 1-click shopping are arguably obvious and a drain on resources. Complicated software, like gene sequencing, chemical simulations, etc., are perfectly reasonable, genuinely non-obvious, and deserving of monopoly status. All software patents are not equal, all are not abusive, all are not obvious.
Modern vim is quite a lot more convenient than the original vi; I agree that there's no revolution, but there definitely is progression.
Was half expecting the website to be The Onion...
As a developer, you'd have a hard time getting me to commit to a 3-week job (as suggested in the blog post) because I already have a job. And if I didn't, I'd be looking for a job, and looking to commit to a real job as soon as possible. At best, if I couldn't get a job at all, I'd take the 3 week job for the money, but I'd have no loyalty to you if someone else came along that was ready to commit. I'd finish the 3 weeks, and tell the other company I was in the 3 week contract, but I'd end up working for the other company.

Programmers who aren't freelancing are about job stability, and a 3-week contract screams 'unstable'. Yes, there's a normal hiring process after it, but during that time, you haven't provided any measure of stability at all, and so anyone that comes along and promises it is going to be more appealing.

I went through an interview process that had me write a simple CRUD app for free. It wasn't related to their business, and neither of us got anything out of it except qualification for an in-person interview. That is the most I'm willing to stick my neck out for a job, and I wondered if it didn't take a little too much of my time for what it was.
US Dipping into Pensions as it Hits Debt Limit
Rate Wikipedia Pages: New Article Feedback Tool
Данон
Нашата мисия е да предлагаме здравословни продукти, които помагат за балансирано и пълноценно хранене на цялото семейство.
Данон за пиене е вкусна освежаваща напитка, подходяща за всеки от семейството.
I might be doing this wrong, but Google Books appears to have well over 100k books with "Chess" in the title and Google has only been at it for a few years:

http://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=intitle...

But this is hardly the key point. The traditional library will always have advantages over the inevitable library of the future. It won't get replaced when all of those advantages have been overcome, it will be when enough of those advantages have been overcome for enough people.

Godin isn't anti-book, he just believes ebooks will win. Given how he has made his money, it's probably not something he would prefer.
This John Carmack quote is relevant and shares your sentiments:

"The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand, and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed for a patent on it is horrifying."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack
Who's your host? You need to tell them to have a better message to display. This one makes it sound like you're some kind of criminal.
I have a hard time with this topic. Of course the only thing that ever gets covered in main-stream tech media is the abuse by patent trolls suing Company X because they are using their "electronic key-input device" patent to type on their computers.

We all roll our eyes and go "Damn these patents! DAMN THEM!"

But then I think of the purpose of the patent system in general: to protect and encourage innovation. I think of the research scientists coming up with approaches to genuinely unique and interesting problems and yes, I want them protected from getting rail-roaded by larger software firms.

I've discussed this with a patent attorney before and his feeling is that software patents are generally a good thing, but there has to be ONE change that would do away with most of the bullshit patents: proof of implementation.

Right now, apparently, I can patent the 40-click checkout process and sue Amazon when they implement it... but I never need to implement it, release it or use it in production. I just need to think of the idea and I can patent it.

I imagine a lot of these IP-only firms wouldn't have such a strong grip on stupid garbage patents if it required them to show working implementations.

I believe this is the same way with patents in manufacturing. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you need to produce the mechanical process you are patenting and at least show it is viable before patenting it?

Whether that is true or not, requiring that of patenters would go a long way of making the work more worthwhile and not just a bunch of lawyers sitting in a room with a few engineers, waving their hands around all day until they invent and patent the use of desk chairs.
Fast-Tracking to Kindergarten?
I want to know how this affects Apple's position re: in app purchase on things like Kindle app, Sony ereader app, Grooveshark, Rhapsody, etc...

I just can't believe that they didn't see this coming.
Given how poorly the USPTO has performed thus far, it seems impossible that this could be correctly implemented. Better to err on the side of openness, and abolish them altogether.
[How To] Download Firefox 5 Beta Before Official Release
IBM has a patent on that ;-)
Trade secret actually isn't a bad option, if you patent truly had legs then your secret is probably going to be safe for a fair amount of time. If your patent is getting people on a technicality and really isn't very innovative then your secret won't be much of a secret.
JQuery Typing Game
You know, I heard PG argue this in his software patent article, and I don't buy it. In the end, necessity is the mother of invention. Software engineers invent things because they need them. They would not, by default, either try to keep it as a secret or patent it.

Let's take the funny example of Amzon vs B&N on the one-click system. Do you think Amazon would not use the one click system if it were unpatenable? In the case of modern software patents, keeping it a secret is equivalent to not using it all. Since you invented it in the first place, I find this outcome to be excessively unlikely.

You are also suffering under the misconception that a lone programmer or programming pair would be incapable of standing up to big markets with a software invention. If his invention is really worth it's muster, he can come out with a profitable product that blows big companies out of the water. I've seen it happen before.
The biggest problem here is the transaction costs. If the costs to get and enforce patents were much much lower (time, money, opportunity cost), then patents would be really good. Only the large corporations have enough cash to enforce patents successfully.
Statups.com First Deal: Save $351 on SEO: RankAbove
I was hoping that the Spy would be the grad student auditing the course.
Floral Art - Art with Flowers Theme
Homes and offices look fantastic with floral and flower themed artwork. Our range of pictures are all hand painted...no prints or photos, just hand painted masterpieces on canvas.
How the Buddha Solved His Marketing Problem
US Navy funds a massively online multiplayer game
Previous discussion on HN:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2540594
Unless that constitutes a clear-cut case of prior art in whatever system you have, I don't think the system qualifies as "fast, cheap, reliable".
Lawyers do sometimes mess up on dates. I hate to trot this story out yet again, but MIT did get sued because of my dorm's laundry webserver. A webserver which had been Slashdoted before the company applied for its patent.

Of course, they did back down once the facts were explained to them so you're right at least that far.
Sending A2P SMS deploying in Java and connecting to an SMS API
Should You Sleep On a Big Decision?
Man, this would make even less sense than the Skype acquisition.
I would love to see all software patents abolished.

I feel conflicted about having my name on several software patents - on account of working for (or co-founding) companies that needed defensive IP. Had I not been on the receiving end of a ridiculous software patent lawsuit while I was working at a startup, I would never have filed any patents when I started my own company. If the startup I worked for had not been acquired before they lost said lawsuit, it would have killed the company, destroying some amazing innovation and killing a couple of hundred jobs.

As things stand, even folks who oppose software patents don't really have an option but to file patents of their own unless they want to risk being sued into oblivion with no bargaining chips of their own.
Seems unlikely - and already got a fast response..

https://twitter.com/#!/DrPinball/status/70119002344660992
Press release from Office of Naval Research, looks like it will run for 3 weeks:
http://www.onr.navy.mil/en/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2011/...
Finding Your Mobile Niche
What the AA of "AARRR" looks like
This would be a good decision for MS. I think they're seeing with Samsung that relying on partners for phones might be trickier than hoped. By controlling the full stack, ala Apple, they can probably deliver a much better experience.

And unlike PCs, since subsidies dominate much phone pricing, at least in the influential US, a race to the bottom in pricing means very little. The cost of the phone is dominated by the plan cost -- therefore a lot of OEMS competing on phone cost helps very little. And as Apple has shown, a single popular phone can demand better pricing in the supply chain.
Unrest on the borders of Israel
Stephan Kinsella makes a pretty compelling argument that's hard to refute: http://blog.mises.org/11717/against-intellectual-property-au...

Just because someone beat me to the patent office legally means I'm not permitted think up the same idea and use my computer to do the same. It's not even about copying, I'm legally limited in what I'm permitted to think up and do.
Data is plainly wrong. Ext[234] don't support file system over 16TB. This stems from the limit of 32bit addressing * 4kb per block/cluster.

* note : I am aware of ability on certain hardware to run 8kb blocks, but this is non standard, not recommended, unsupported, and recovery tools will have problems.

* note : I am aware of efforts to get ext4 larger addressing (be it 48 or 64bit addressing), but currently this is unfinished, tools have problems, and no way to migrate from 32bit addressing to them.
USA reached their debt limit
According to some german newspaper the usa have reached their dept limit.

Do you hear anything about that in the states?
Is the next step another raise of the limit or the collapse of the state?

Spiegel: http://bit.ly/krkN8f

FAZ: http://bit.ly/l0TvNm
It strikes me as ironic that you, as a relatively established member of HN, feel the need to resort to personal insults and general snarkiness in arguing that this article does not belong on HN.

I agree with you on the quality of the article and the simplistic reasoning by the author in reply to your comment, but at least he is showing some civility, as per HN's guidelines, which cannot be said of your comments in this thread.
Hm, there's at least 1 more. I'm going to call it The Gamer. Here's how it goes:

Attends every class and listens intently. Corrects teacher when the book (or prior knowledge) differs from verbal/visual instruction. Helps other students if asked, but not if it interrupts own work. Generally only does homework if graded. Usually gets low A's or high B's and is content to stay there. If an achievement was on the line (e.g. 4.0 graduating GPA), extra work could be expected to the point of frenzy, but only if the achievement was close to completion.

That doesn't really fit any of those profiles, but I'm not the only person I've met like this.

School was always something to get through with a minimum of effort, but I could be coaxed into excelling by random events, like realizing I'm really close to a 4.0 GPA. (Yeah, that happened... Went for the paperwork, was easier than expected.)
オールインワンゲル口コミランキングで比較！！
Evil is a subjective word. It is the author's point of view. It's like saying a product looks bad.
It's obvious that there are enormous swathes of innovation in the IT world that either happened or would have happened without patents. Amazon would probably not have thought twice about developing one-click checkout if it hadn't been patentable and it seems perfectly plausible that RIM got the idea for the BlackBerry independently of that troll that sued them.

But there are also some pretty deep stuff that seems less obvious, my favourite example is MP3. I'm no expert in the field, but it does not seem at all obvious to me to compress music like that, and it seems to be the result of a real invention process.

It's clearly in everybody's interest that they publish their codec as widely as possible, rather than make a broke-by-design binary-only distribution. Why should they not be allowed the same protection as, say, Volkswagen inventing a new fuel pump?
Odd that he didn't flat out deny it. Is he saying the price is way off or that the deal isn't going to happen?
I suggest a different approach..if the company name of Lodsys LLC is not trademarked..than hey Best Game making fun of Lodys..wins!

So how many Indie mobile game devs are on HN besides me?
Apologies for the overreaction earlier. I did react a bit insultingly. It was an irritable reaction to a "stock statement" that I associate with idiots, which wasn't really called for in this context.

The stock statement in question is the dismissal of an enormous and critical industry as "value-less".

You link to a Rolling Stones article (by Matt Taibbi, who is a controversial journalist, who panders to the pseudo-libertarian crowds on reddit) which attacks Goldman Sachs for manipulating the US Fed (a fair point), and you use that as a justification for condemning investment banking as a whole.

Investment banking is a huge collection of professions which generally assists with one primary purposes: helping companies raise money. To dismiss that as valueless is clearly wrong. Surely, if anyone understands the value of being able to raise money, it must be startup founders. Investment banking exists to enable large corporations to raise money.

Some other purposes of investment banking include: hedging against risks (via derivates, for example, which you also dismiss), providing more advanced financial instruments (fyi, options, which you use to pay your employees, are derivatives too - and they wouldn't exist if investment bankers hadn't thought them up), market research (which has provided dubious value in the past, but that is an indictment of the global mega-banks, not of the research function, which is essential), market making (essential to provide a fluid, liquid market where people can actually exit), and many others.

When I first loaded up your site, it displayed with no CSS template, and looked like a craigslist post (I did not initially check the URL), and I checked the poster, and it was created 2 hours ago for the clear purpose of submitting this story, and it had a disproportionate number of upvotes for the weak point it was making, and it also made the above generalisation which, in my mind, categorised you directly as a reddit-style "omg banking is evil" type.

That led me (wrongly) to lump you in with the "idiots". Again, I apologise for that, it was an incorrect and rash overreaction - but some of the points above still stand. Hopefully now you understand my thinking better, though.
If this is true it'd be the final nail for Balmer. He's out.
devils advocate: What if you independently came up with tablet like device and called it an 'iPad'
I'm intrigued. As it stands, two people have claimed that this doesn't belong here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2552857

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2552812

One even flouts the guidelines to tell us they've flagged the item. And to be honest, I'm rather glad they have, because now I can see a different perspective than mine, and I have the chance to learn something.

I don't understand why these people think this doesn't belong here. It's about software design, and the suggestion that modern opinions, dogma, even, might not be as definitely true as we claim. If Emacs can survive, even thrive, without being designed in a "modern" way, doesn't that give cause for pause?

... because the software is so light on
bureaucracy, it is easy to customize and
to contribute to.

Would someone care to refute this? More than once I've attempted to contribute to a project, knowing that I can improve some aspect, and been thwarted by the sheer magnitude of the task in coming up to speed with all the nuances of the existing design.

Rather than simply saying that it doesn't belong, can you actually refute the claims? I'd like to see a reasoned discussion - that's why I thought it was interesting.
They should have bought HTC a long time ago. Though this is just a rumor Microsoft needs to get into hardware in the Mobile space. Previously they feared alienating their partners, now that is not a problem anymore they should buy HTC or Nokia, even RIM would not be a bad idea.
Seems a much more reasonable price though.
> I can't stand the idea that I might be at my computer, working with code, and develop something independently which later causes me to get sued. Abolish all patents.

I can't stand the idea that I might be in my shop/lab, working with metal/wood/plastic/chemicals, and develop something independently which later causes me to get sued. Abolish all patents.
I like the Canadian system of software patents. CIPO requires that software may only be patented in so far as the hardware it runs on is unique and patentable. I'm ok with those under the condition that the entities who hold the patent actually do something with it. Explicit timeframes should be in place to prevent these types of "business models" over long periods.
I use Skype to simplify international calling. I have a phone number in Poland (bought through Skype). People in Poland dial that number, and Skype routes it to a number of my choosing. I have numbers in countries that my family lives in. For them it is a local call, and it always gets directly to me.

Neither of the three shown alternatives provide this feature.
This doesn't ring true to me. Why buy the (very expensive) cow when you're getting the milk for free?
I use "google talk" by using my own Jabber server. Google talk intergrates with XMPP very nicely. Even video chat works. Google Talks interoperability makes it the best choice for the average consumer.
Because I built it myself :)
Why I'm an asshole
$30 billion is less than Nokia's current value.
Is Google Really Afraid of Rumors?...
I was once given thirty seconds to come up with synonyms for information, which I did. Then I was asked come up with antonyms for fast and furious starting with the letter p, I came up with pudgy and pleased. Then I was asked to tell my life story in twenty seconds. I refused. The interview ended.
How so? Also, how isn't the Skype acquisition not making sense?
It's quite a feat to invent a normal academic test where higher grades imply a thicker student.
What is happening in this world when historically great mobile brands are being bought out by mediocre ones.

AT&T buying T-mobile. Microsoft buying Nokia. Ugh.

Quality obviously is not a guarantee of success.
This doesn't make sense. Apple/Google have apparently paid the license fee for the patents - so are they JUST paying the 0.575% of THEIR OWN APP sales?

Is part of the 30% being withheld from developers paying for some of these patent licensing fees? If so, yes, I too believe Apple needs to jump in here and find out what the hell is going on.

If not, and Apple knew that every one of its developers using in-app purchases would probably be infringing a patent they already knew about and are paying for, shouldn't this be brought up somewhere when a dev chooses to include in-app purchases in their app?

Is it? Is it in the TOS somewhere?
Then why would anyone bother licensing Windows Phone 7? It doesn't make sense, they'd be directly competing with their own customers.