skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
as a contrast, trademarks are handled in what most people would consider a 'commonsense' way, where it is required that the trademark owner actively use the mark for some period of time and also police that others aren't using or abusing the mark in any way.[1]

Obviously, Trademarks and Patents are two different beasts, but the mechanism for enforcing and protecting trademarks i think is usually along the lines that most people consider fair, which is that the trademark is used to protect an interest for as long as that interest is active (and semi-vigilantly policing its mark) and is using that trademark to protect its own notoriety.

Obviously, trademarks and patents are two different beasts. But (and this is why i'm repeating myself) my point is that you don't have to get rid of these sorts of laws. Trademarks are equally nebulous, but their model seems to me a huge success in the world of intellectual property management whereas (software) patents seem to be a stickier situation altogether.

just my two cents, because again, i don't think we should necessarily get rid of software patents, but i think that thinking of them using this old framework has been problematic in a way that trademarks haven't been (despite similarly ridiculous, yet defensible, use cases, i.e. trademarking 'tiffany blue').

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark#Maintaining_rights
The two best things about being home schooled for me were

A: The ability to work my own schedule. If I wanted to double up on school one day, I could. Then the next day I could skip school and work on a hobby or project. This brings me to

B: The ability to focus my studies on things that interested me. For me, this included Battlebots (I made one) and aviation. Aviation was an early career choice that didn't quite manifest for me (blessing in disguise, I suppose). I was able to do things like take the day off of school to copilot with my uncle who worked as a corporate pilot.
Nation of IT temps
I'd like to file a patent please. It's for a system of computer fastness where somehow we manage to get a processor to switch at a frequency of 1000ghz and use that speed to perform rapid computations to execute various programs really fast.

wait 15 years

Booyah!!
Whatever gain (if any) they had from claiming that FaceTime would become an open industry standard must certainly dwarfed by the embarrassment of being unable to actually make that happen.

Or, to put it another way, had Steve Jobs known that their attempt of making FaceTime an open industry standard would fail (for whatever reason) he would never have said that Apple wants FaceTime to become open. It just wouldn’t make any sense.
Task Rabbit - iphone app for the lazy
Can you watch live justin.tv streams on mobile phones?
Android-wise, I've been using Pubtran London. The new Transit Navigation feature in Google Maps for Android, goes a long way to making Pubtran redundant. Will be interesting to see how the Pubtran author raises his game in response.
That would be nice, but I think that when there are big companies and billions of dollars at stake, things aren't so easy.
Are Software Patents Evil? (2006)
Software patents are a policy issue, not a constitutional question. This needs to get fixed in Congress.
DSL is not good competition for any reasonable cable internet service. In Pittsburgh Comcast's $60 a month service is 5 times the speed of the $25 a month 1-3 mbps DSL service offered by Verizon DSL. The DSL connection is barely enough for reasonable quality video streaming, but it's not enough if you want to have two people use pipe at the same time. FIOS does provide decent competition but it's availability is limited.
I take a more practical stance: the courts have the ability to fix the situation quicker.
KDE 4.7 Released - Plasma Workspaces, Improved Multimedia
It's a misconception that all YC startups are focused entirely on consumer web apps (and considering the YC company I'm a part of is mostly B2B shouldn't reinforce this notion). There are a bunch of amazing startups working on the hard technology problems you yourself prefer to work on. Storage, databases, application hosting, and more can all be found at YC.

New York hasn't shied away from hard technology problems either. 10gen invented MongoDB.
To clarify, these subsidies come in the form of medicare/medicaid reimbursements. The reimbursements are also PER DOCTOR. For the doctors to receive the full amount, they'd have to be seeing medicare/medicaid patients and to start using the EHR system in the next year. After 2018 these incentives turn into penalties, in the form of less medicare/medicaid money received per patient.
Are you aware that the Ivy League[1] schools are all private? So are the most prestigious high schools (the latter was attended by Zuckerberg, for example):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Academy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Exeter_Academy

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_league
I think that it will be very difficult to have serious patent reform for the software industry without having significant effects on other industries. So while it seems like the software industry is generally behind getting rid of patents, the changes will be very difficult to isolate to software and companies outside the field will likely oppose any significant changes. FWIW, I hope they make significant changes for software patents soon.
Gadget Shop Hammacher Schlemmer offers a $350,000 Dinosaur
I don't think this rule is sufficient. Beside the other points people already raised, you still have the issue of people patenting obvious stuff with prior art (like the recent Apple vs HTC case, for example).
Who is she competing with?
I used Yii for a little bit while trying to decide if I wanted to use it or Symfony 2, and I just didn't like it. The page caching felt horribly clunky to me, and there was no built-in way to manage HTTP headers.

Ultimately though, I didn't decide against Yii because of what it couldn't do, but decided on Symfony 2 because of what it did do. It was just a more pleasant experience, and I never felt like I had to fight the framework to do what I wanted to do. Sure, it had a steeper learning curve than Yii (I started using it in the preview release stage, when documentation was in flux), but I feel that it made me write better code.
Two More Steps Towards Blank Hardware
Ask HN: Need ML/Algorithm/Collaborative Filtering
I've been trying to find someone who can help my startup as a consultant and help us design a collaborative filter/recommender system. If the fit was good, we (my co-founder and I) would be happy to make him/her a partner. Would you or anyone you know be interested in something like this?<p>You can reach me at: lizhou.chang [at] gmail [dot]com
Try it with a 1024X1024 matrix multiplication and suddenly GPUs are much more useful.
You're comparing one circle of hell to a deeper circle of hell, though.

The comparison isn't Java to C++. It's Java to C#, Scala, even Python or Ruby. And against C# and Scala in particular, Java does very poorly.
I like the conclusion about using http. This goes against the approach advocated in monolithic frameworks such as django. It would be interesting to see a web framework that separates components and connects them with http.
Every passenger car handbrake I've seen (in the US) is purely mechanical to the back brakes.

You don't want to slam on the emergency brake--it can lock up the back wheels esp on a front-wheel drive car, and the braking force from the rear brakes is really low compared to the front. Skidding wheels have less control and actually slow you down more slowly than non-skidding wheels.

If I were in the situation (because I'm such a hacker target--or something--wait, I drive a 2000 model year car!), I would not put the car in neutral until the engine began fighting the brakes. I'd aggressively downshift to use engine compression braking to help slow the car. Any time the engine is turning over faster than you're giving it gas for, it's sucking up energy. (I also haven't driven an automatic for some time--the effect is much more pronounced with a manual transmission.)

Then I'd put it in neutral or disengage the clutch once the car was at an idle crawl.

For practice, find an empty straight bit of road, and accelerate to 15-20 mph. Then put the car in neutral and very gradually apply the emergency brake, getting a feel for how it slows the car. You might be surprised at how slowly you slow down--and how quickly the rear wheels lock up!
There really is not much you can do to a language to make you code faster. I guess people just like the novelty of a new language.
Why does it have to be the supreme court? Why can't the industry tell Congress "This sucks, fix it", the way the military did with Don't ask, don't tell?

VCs just aren't as good at that whole "leadership" thing as much as generals I guess? (yes, I'm trying to goad someone to action.)
Can you speculate some companies who would take issue to the abolishment of software patents?
It's interesting that they decided to go with InfraGuard for certification rather than CCHIT. My graduate research involves healthcare certification standards (and computer security) but when I asked InfraGuard details about their certification process, they asked me to sign an NDA first (which I wouldn't/couldn't do).

CCHIT is more open, but unfortunately, it's controlled by large vendors in the the healthcare space.
Billionaire Pays Rights to Broadcast Legally Assisted Suicide
Comments?
Stac Electronics is an example of Microsoft doing exactly what you described; it was patent - not copyright - law that allowed Stac to collect damages.
Gaming and Entertainment Dominating Mobile Usage [Infographic]
Ubertor: Outsourcing The Niche - with Stephen Jagger
one cent for every lie, and i'd be millionaire by now..

(this had to be said and will be worth the massive downvotes)
As an indie E.U. based developer, I must confess that everything that I'm reading here about patent trolls is scaring me off. It will probably keep me from even thinking about building a product for the U.S. market for a while.
Seems like Google is notoriously non-responsive to user complaints. Perhaps it would make sense to turn some of the billions to that, as well.

Edit: this is a serious suggestion. I'm a Google fan, for sure, but I think the notoriety exists.
No, it doesn't allow two vendors to be in the exact same spot. The amount of trade that gets you is always exactly half-way between being just to the left and being just to the right, and can therefore only be the best option when all three of those are exactly equal, so I don't think it makes much difference.

I wondered whether parity would be a big deal, but -- purely qualitatively and by eye -- it doesn't seem like it is.
> Your argument is essentially "marketing is bad". Which is a shadow argument for "capitalism is bad".

That's an outrageous claim. Take marketing of pharmaceuticals directly to patients. Unconscionable in my opinion (and many other first world countries agree). There are many limited cases where marketing is quite harmful. Indeed, we have reason to believe education is one of those cases. You simply need to examine the current state of law schools in the United States to see where marketing gets you. People fresh out of undergrad taking out six figure loans and being told the median salary at their law school is also six figures. Which it is. But what they aren't being told about is the bimodal distribution of law salaries and only the top of the class has any chance of paying back their loans. And let's not even get into those ads you see on TV from third rate schools trying to convince you to go back to get your "MBA".
Syntactic Sugar: Collection literals
List<String> people = {"Frank", "Mary", "Satan"};

I find it breathtaking this isn't core yet. I was writing test fixture support code for 1.4 to easily and DRYly generate lists of up to 10 items, which required 10 copy-paste functions each with a different number of arguments. 1.5 came along and made it possible to easily do it with one function thanks to varargs, but it's 6 years later and still no collection literals!
>>No, it doesn't. If you can't write concise Java, you're doing something wrong. And if you can't read code well, go practice some more.

Don't know why you are getting down voted. Even Joel Spolsky says that what really makes the difference is the programmer, not the language. If you suck in Java you will probably suck in other languages.
To make the analogy more fair, let's say your house (filled with people's personal information) had an unlocked secret entrance way, even though many lock experts say that unlocked entrance ways are generally unsafe. People may or may not be going into your house everyday while you're gone, and using that personal information while everyone remains blissfully unaware. One day, someone comes in and takes all the personal information and publishes it to show how insecure it is.

Yes, the person breaking in may be a jerk, but maybe people will put locks on their doors now.
Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas
Data ownership, social science, and Twitter’s folly
New Khan Academy Exercise Framework Is Live
I would imagine it would be anyone, or industry, who has a significant patent portfolio who worries that invalidating software patents would weaken their patent position.

Both in dollar terms and legal terms.
I don't understand. What logic is faulty? Steve made a statement and hasn't followed through, over a year later. That sounds like a lie to me. It's not like he said "We might look into interoperability" or something, it's pretty damn cut and dry from the quote.

I remember being giddy about it. Now I'm giddy about WebRTC instead.
Also, on a more serious note:

Why isn't there a website for all those massive marketing lies about every company throws at the customers, it's sickening.
So, its a form of Ycombinator for academia.
Reminder: 1.USA.gov hack day tomorrow
You are not allowed to patent math; software is math; hence software is not patentable.
Honestly I've got no problem with what you did. I'm just saying that they probably covered themselves in the legalese.

For instance, my cable company recently shut off my Internet due to excessive DMCA complaints. They told me they had a "four strike" policy. They cut me after three. I could threaten a lawsuit, even if it would be silly, but that would potentially open me up for other legal attacks, so I'm forced to walk away.

So all I'm saying is that they got you in a tight spot, and they've probably paid enough lawyers to make sure they're covered. Their hardware detected software, so they charged you for it. I find it hard to imagine they haven't written it up to cover themselves.
Rusky,

I agree that understanding an Open Source project without proper documentation is really hard. For the same reason we are trying to create this site (http://www.codemaps.org/s/Lucene_Core) to document open source projects. This is still in beta and we would be glad to hear your thoughts on it.
Yet here I am, a successful software engineer, due in large part to a good public education.

But were you given a good education, or were you smart enough to educate yourself given a modicum of education and a structured environment?

The problem is that half of people are not smart enough. If you teach them to read using word recognition, they will not deduce phonics on their own, so their reading ability is permanently capped at a level suitable for a dull 8 year-old.

The problem with zero-competition government schools is that when they get captured by a fad (word recognition, new math, no student left behind, etc.), it happens everywhere. There is no escape. And then 20 years later you get a new generation of teachers that are the product of bad teaching. The result is a 50 year cycle of mini dark ages.

... I was raised by my grandmother who is not educated at all. She would have been completely unequipped to make a good decision about such things.

But would she want to make a good decision? Or to avoid a horrifically bad decision? The latter does not require education or sophistication, just the ability to ask about the relative rank of the nearby schools.
The Supreme Court's rule against software patents was a matter of statutory interpretation, not constitutional law. And software patents were created by a lower court (the Federal Circuit) in the first place, so it would be perfectly appropriate for a higher court to reverse their error.

I'd love to see Congress fix the problem, but there'd be nothing improper about the courts doing it.
I've been wondering why they didn't create an actual compiler in javascript? I understand it's more trouble.
- everyone with money

There's your problem right there.
Your homepage doesn't inspire a lot of confidence as far as providing writing services. "CC us your support emails, we create the pe_fect knowledgebase" can probably entirely replace "Have your help page updated, simply by CC'ing us your emails" as it says the same thing but is a lot more explanatory.
@felipemnoa: Downvotes are presumably for snarky 'You must suck and reading/writing code then' comments. Isn't a positive contribution to the discussion.

Also, 'making the difference' and 'being totally irrelevant' are two very different things. Programming languages matter. I'd be surprised if Mr. Spolsky disagrees.
Good point. Skype haven't been too quick about innovating anywhere lately, but companies like Tango and Fring, would be all over it if it was open. And maybe Google too, given GTalk, Android, and Google+.
How To Win Enemies & Influence People By Turning Controversy Into Links
Of all the supreme court decisions, I wouldn't expect this to be drawn mostly on partisan lines. Yet the author makes a good case that the liberal judges would invalidate the patents and conservative judges (with Scalia an open question) would not. Why are conservative judges more likely to support software patents?
> And if you can't read code well, go practice some more.

Actually, let's not. To paraphrase a minor celebrity of programming, life is too long to be good at reading every variation of boilerplate. Java is essentially hostile to small functions and parametrization, as having any semblance of inner or anonymous functions will require you to define a class at least, or an interface somewhere else, scattering your code unnecessarily, and you'll probably just end up repeating the code because it's just not worth the effort to do it. Don't believe me? Why do you always have to .open() and .close() your any port-like thing manually? That's a solved problem, you know?
It's not even public yet... the video is private to those who have the URL?
I firmly believe the POS space is ripe for some really intense disruption. Tablets (namely, iPads given that's what 90% of the market actually owns) cost $500 apiece, are easily accessible, and let business owners demo point of sale systems software right on their device, instead of just placing a call to Micros/Aloha and making a call based on specs and feature checklists, when those feature checklists include a lot of convoluted features they won't end up using.

The problem is, even with the revolution of availability in the space, given the poor purchasing experience with previous point of sale systems, most business owners are A) not very excited to have to purchase a point of sale and B) cannot possibly comprehend a point of sale that can run on commodity hardware. All sorts of silly questions regarding reliability crop up.

But, I digress. Regarding payments, I think that point of sale developers regard it as just a necessary evil that we have to roll our eyes and hold our nose that we need to integrate these payment solutions. We end up writing integration for each payment processor themselves, and each of their unique XML/SOAP/what have you APIs instead of spending time on what we care about. I would love for a user-centric company like Square to come in and just offer a usable API, but that's not really their gig and it's a complex situation.

Payments are in need of disruption, sure, but the first person to 'win' will be the one who decides they're not going to go completely vertical anymore, and has a nice, full, API with a good accounting/reporting web service to back it up. At that point, I can trust they're going to get my customers the best rates and widest acceptance possible, and I can easily write integration for them and push my customers their way. I could care less about this and that detail about slightly lower rates, or gift card programs, or cutting me .005 percent of each transaction. I just want to give my customers the tools to run their business correctly and accurately at the lowest possible development cost to myself.
' “Open” isn’t just a buzz word. People like the word “open”. Marketers love it. '

A very valid point, everyone these days in jumping on the open bandwagon.

This problem isn't limited to just Apple unfortunately - several companies have been guilty of twisting open to suit their needs (HTC not releasing some modified Android code which was under GPL a while ago, and Google not releasing the Honeycomb source come to mind).

Not that any of these are wrong from a legal standpoint (OK, maybe the HTC one was) but it's still twisting the nature of open standards & platforms to suit business / marketing agendas. Open is quickly becoming the next Web 2.0.

Apple & Google have both done great things for the open standards community ( Webkit, Android etc.) but there is always a conflict between 'true' openness & business interests. Never forget, corporations exist to serve their shareholders - embracing openness is simply a means to that end.
That's good information, I wasn't aware of how it was mechanically linked like that. My assumption was based off of an automatic transmission... I just figured it was better to disconnect the engine from the drive train and add in braking, but yeah, adding it slowly would be important.

So happy I have anti-locks! And hopefully a car that isn't hacked by SMS(I just got a 2011 Honda Accord... looks like I have research to do haha)
I'm not so sure this isn't a constitutional question.

In Article I, section 8, the U.S. Constitution:

Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.

Note that Congress is only given this power in order to promote the progress of science and useful arts. If one can effectively argue that software patents have the opposite effect, and in fact hinder the progress of science and useful arts - and I think such an argument can be made - then it seems reasonable that the courts should strike down software patents as unconstitutional.
That as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously. - Benjamin Franklin
StatsD at Shopify
A question: Is there antenna tech that would complement this and hopefully move it towards mass application/adoption faster? Or has antenna tech reached its limit?
I go to the massive UT and my best experience in academics has come from, without fail, local community colleges. I took my Calculus, History, Government, and English courses in class sizes no bigger than 15 kids, got to know my professor/peers through class interaction rather than office hour groveling, and could ask specific questions all day. And I paid $165/class instead of $1,400/class.

When I compare the same course alternative at UT, it's instead taught by TAs, needlessly much harder (how is a class average of 30% on an exam not an institutional failure?), and I spent my time struggling to teach myself on the side rather than feeling like I grasped the concepts in class.

It's unfortunate that our system glorifies the inferior experience through compensation, taboos, and social status.