skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>You are not aware of what the multi-touch patents cover, what the inventions are, and you are not aware of what patents are and so you think the movie "minority report" and non-multi-touch touch screens are "prior art".

I know exactly what the multitouch patent covers, and yes the basic principals are almost entirely demonstrated in the movie Minority Report. Apple did not invent or have anything to do with multitouch sensors, nor were they close to the first to implement such a sensor.

But you're sure that Android "stole it" (or apparently that they learned great insights from Apple's patent application), which is PERVERSELY wrong on so many levels.

When people say "I'm not going to debate this", it's because they have nothing to debate. You've said nothing of value beyond alluding to a laughable patent example while making absurd claims about the insights gained from patents.
I'm not sure what you mean by "rot". Microsoft is supporting C++0x and has created Microsoft AMP.

Visual Studio is still the best development environment available, bar none. How is it not "efficient" or "modern"?
FWIW, Apple has stated that developers should not develop libraries that use the "first two capital letters are a namespace" paradigm, as you are just asking for a conflict with a future Apple-supported library. Like identifiers beginning with _ in C, [A-Z]{2} is "reserved".

(Yes: I, myself, am an offender here, but I've been careful in all new code, and even MobileSubstrate has been adding new symbols using "Subtrate" instead of "MS".)
Yes and it is a real loss for the advertisers too because I do click on ads that I find relevant and I don't mind spending money online (when it is worth the price, which it frequently isn't, sadly).

So why do it? Googles search is (or rather was) good enough to find what I want and I would rather not pay more to buy through ads.

In addition there is the issue with annoying/flash ads, though that isn't much an issue any more because I block flash with a separate plugin.
Right, I know what processes and threads are under Linux; instance of task_struct. But I'm asking because if we're going to understand why he's seeing the performance he presented, we need to know the kind of system he's running on. And how Linux treats threads and processes is one major difference between it and Windows.
I actually like ads.
Google+ now has 25 million users
Apple didn't patent anything first, they bought the inventor and paid him.

Go ask the guy who made fingerworks whether he is better off with Apple paying him or if Google had just ripped his shit off.
Innovators are pro-IP, followers are contra-IP.

Strongly disagree. This kind of statement really needs some supporting evidence.
NYTM Review: Brom.ly and Zaarly
.NET is doing alright in corporate server development, but the deeper problem is that Microsoft let third-party Windows application developers twist in the wind for years. The Windows and Office teams tend to keep their UI code and controls private, so that third-party devs have to choose between making due with old libraries and controls, or spinning their own.
Either Win32 or MFC.
Computers are designed to do more than one thing, but traditionally many servers were purchased per-role. Mission critical apps would only run on one version of Windows, or apps might not play nice with others or with OS upgrades.

It turns out that one of the apps people really need to run multiple instances of is Windows itself. This is largely Microsoft's fault for bundling every app including the kitchen sink in the OS platform itself. As a condition of using their clean little high-performance kernel, you had to accept a web browser and home-user-friendly userspace.

Little surprise that people are kicking the whole package off of Ring-0 and substituting something like vmware for their $five-figure server hardware.

It's that super-isolation that actually allows multiple apps/roles/data categories to finally share the same hardware.
I answered "no" on the poll, but I also have click-to-flash installed. So, if the add isn't flash I see it, but I don't click on flash unless I really need to.
Right, you can't argue the facts so just be disparaging. The Microsoft Surface came out in 2008, not "years" before Apple showed the iPhone.

You're absolutely uninformed about even the basic facts or timeline, yet you're happy to make broad assertions and engage in attacks to the person. Well, where I come from, that means you lost buddy, and I have no further need to rebut you.

Have a nice day!
No, I use a proxy (polipo) with filtering capabilities.
What a heap of shit. A contentious statement that seems to be based on a bad day in the office....
Please don't make me create yet-another-account to see a number.
I don't use AdBlock, but FlashBlock which disables all flash content. I don't have anything against ads that's why I stopped using AdBlock, but I need to block the most annoying ads like fullscreen, sound, following mouse. I only whitelist sites like youtube and other which have "normal" ads.
This poll would be more useful if the "No" answer were also split into ad-supported/not, as that would let us determine whether working for an ad-supported company makes you less likely to block ads.
What would Randi Zuckerberg be doing if her brother didn't "invent" facebook?
which kind of pro google mod changed the link title to something that meaningful? lol.
I might have some different thoughts as far as your statement on easily and reachable goals. I think a much more effective technique is achievable but challenging and out of your comfort zone goals, that can be easily categorized as a success or not. (i.e. Instead of learning the guitar - I hope to learn 5 songs on the acoustic guitar by December)

My personal biggest goals are: (short-term)Get a job at start up that puts me in a position where I get to work hand in hand with the founders => Get involved with Angel Investing by forming relationships with existing ones => (long-term) Assemble a team and be part of a start up from the ground up => Get involved with the Angel Investing community as an investor.

Also, Tim Ferris has some great thoughts as far as goal setting if you are interested.
I think software engineers should absolutely be involved, but more like "expert witnesses". The judgement is better left in the hands of law people with common sense.

And really the merits of various patents these companies holds are not the focus of my argument, I understand you feel quite differently.
Yes, it's part of an effort to reduce distractions in my life. I don't watch or read news either, well, except tech related things like HN and Slashdot. I feel happier that way, too. (Try it for a week and you'll know what I mean.)

I still consume though, buy goods and services, of course. And I'm not cheap about anything. But I try to do so on a cost-benefit-evaluation basis. When the impulse to buy comes (say, the new iPad that I see everywhere), I discipline myself to delay the purchase. After a while I often realize that I don't need or want it. Instead I might buy some activity like a small trip somewhere, or getting a massage or going to a health club.

Anyway, the best advertising imo is a good product my friends or people I respect will talk about and/or show me.

And in a way I hope most people don't ad-block, so that these models stay profitable. Otherwise advertisers will get even more aggressive and Captain Kirk will use a Windows Phone, smoke cigarettes and drink Coca Cola in his new BMW in the next Star Trek sequel all the time. That would be disappointing.

Finally, if anyone invents glasses that also filter out display ads on the streets, I'd buy a pair. Then I'd walk around undistracted, perhaps thinking something worthwhile. For example what the economy, and the world as a whole, would be like, if everyone had those glasses.
In order to patent something, you have to reduce it to practice. That is to say, you have to actually make it work, in the real world.

That Stephen Spielburg was able to do it with computer graphics has no bearing on the validity of someone making it exist in the real world.

The reason I am hesitant to debate this issue is because, as you have amply demonstrated, the anti-patent people often don't even understand what a patent IS, let alone what is relevant as "prior art", and are so exceedingly hostile, and often, quite frankly dishonest (e.g.: you'd have to understand what a patent is in order to understand the multi-touch patents.) that it is just a waste of time.

Literally, I am tired offending the trolls. There is nothing to debate, because I've made my case, and you're just going to object and object and object and find another movie to reference and be proud (rather than humiliated!) at doing so!
Judging by that letter, it sounds like Mark and Randi did a great job separating work and family. Not the easiest thing to do.
Most of the cases where I've wanted to use multi-column layouts were cases where that would let all my content be on one page. The benefits to all your content being visible at once are pretty great, so I'm happy newer CSS specs help.
Slashdot, and especially the comments, are ridiculously hard to suffer through. I unsubscribed in GReader last week after reading uninformed rants that were more offensive than even this piece.
"The Microsoft Surface came out in 2008"

Surface was unveiled in 2007, with the final hardware design being completed two years prior. The project itself started based upon, humorously, Minority Report.

"Well, where I come from, that means you lost buddy, and I have no further need to rebut you."

Yeah you've said that a couple of times now. Kind of funny, really.
"I think people hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want behind closed doors."

People saying whatever they want? How dreadful! Has got to be stopped!!
Based on personal enterprise consulting experience, Enterprise Windows apps are still widely developed using WinForms, VB6, Delphi still exists more than what's comfortable, and if you're lucky enough to work with a cutting edge enterprise, there's some WPF, Expression Blend, or Silverlight sprinkled in there.

I don't have stats but I presume Win32/MFC/GDI dominates the consumer software world, judging by how many Windows apps I've installed over the years that didn't require the prerequisite .net framework installation.
Faked or not, it helped me convert two IE users to Chrome that day.
I think Microsoft's biggest mistake was waiting way too long to bundle the .NET framework with Windows. They waited until Vista to do this, and since Vista was so poorly received, even now you can't be 100% sure. Making things worse is that if you do run a .NET app without the framework, you get a cryptic error message that offers no help whatsoever. This poor out-of-the-box behavior made a lot of people wait to develop .NET apps, IMO.

Lion's "you need to download Java to run this, would you like me to do that for you?" method is way better. But, 20/20 hindsight.

Other than that, it's a fantastic platform and I love developing in it. I don't think it's going anywhere.
.NET has included many mistakes (WCF, Silverlight, etc) - but overall ASP.NET, C#, and especially ASP.NET MVC are solid languages and frameworks and thousands of companies have been able to churn out useful LOB applications on this platform. It has sold a ton of Windows server and SQL Server licenses over the years - which make it a huge success for MS.
Relevant TED Talk:

Christopher "moot" Poole: The case for anonymity online

http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for...
Actually some of the comments mention that they have been using .NET at their companies.

But yeah, /. has been going downhill for years (not surprising, considering that they where the original IT discussion forum back when the bubble was still going).
TL;DR
Your right to privacy interferes with my revenue stream.
I am pro-patent because I've seen it successfully used to protect a startup from an evil corporation-- in this case Microsoft.

Wait... what? No, seriously... what? Somehow you've bought into this patent-everything nonsense so deeply that you think patents are good because having patents protects you from other companies with patents? I'd be hard pressed to find a pro-patent argument that makes less sense.

For the record, I'm not anti-patent. I'm anti-stupid-dumbshit-patent. Patents were designed to provide an incentive to invent when the cost of invention is high, and others "freeloading" off your sunk cost could severely hurt you.

When your "cost" of invention is simply "I sat around for 5 hours and thought of this cool idea to patent", you've come up with a stupid-dumbshit patent. Unfortunately it just seems that most of the patents that fall into this category are software patents.

If, however, you spent millions of dollars developing something that, after being specified and documented, can be reproduced at a fraction of the cost, sure, by all means, get yourself a patent on that and enjoy it.

Obviously it's hard to draw the line: at what dollar amount or length of development time should we consider something patentable? It's a hard question, but surely we can answer it better than we are now. At the very least, limit damages or licensing fees to be gained off a patent to some multiple of the difficulty in developing the patent. That's a hard thing to measure too, but again, it'd be much better than what we have now.
The RIM thing was a giant lie. Remarkable that anyone ever thought it was true, much less would be referencing it now. The random message board commentator, seeking aggrandizement among their fellow fanboys, quickly disappeared and erased their history from the net, worried that their fiction would hold legal consequences.

As to Android, it is entirely possible that it went from being a Blackberry clone to instead being an iPaq clone. You know, the iPaq circa 2000 or even earlier. The one that was all screen. Sure it used a stylus, but that was courtesy of the limits of the resistive touchscreen technology.
Looking for technical co founder / partner (need PHP and MySQL expert)
We are currently looking to start a social networking site and would like a technical co founder to join this effort.

What we need is someone who is strong in web engineering to help us in technical areas and take it to the next level while we are helping with the testing development of the site, business development, funding, user base, marketing, and opportunities. We are looking for help from the following candidate

- Can-do attitude, never give up, and love to solve problems (there is always a solution to every problem)

- You will be one of the co founder, we are partners. We move forward, fall backward and work together to achieve great things.

- software development experience as an web/internet engineer and experience in building back end web engine.

- Strong knowledge and proven hands-on experience with PHP, MySQL, Javascript, AJAX, CSS

- Strong desire to work in a startup, prior experience gets bonus points

- Desire and ability to learn, excel, and 100% commitment to success.

- Must be located in Bay Area (or willingness to relocate) as we will work together day and night to make it happen

All in all, we are looking for a passionate and genius web developer who likes social interaction, build sites, and is always challenged to make something better for the world. When we combine your coding prowess with the vision on where we are going, we can only move forward.

A little bit about us.

One is a second time entreprenuer, worked at a fortune 500 company prior to this. His educational background is MSc in Electrical Engineering. His work background is Product Engineering and Product Management. Passionate about UI, startups, technology. Several years of experience in the wireless engineering and product management domain in wireless and mobile space. He loves to solve problems, creates opportunities, and love challenges.

One is recent Cal graduate currently working at a startup company. His educational background is BSc in Chemical Engineering.

You <insert your profile> :)

If you are interested in joining us and build a social networking site that offers values, please email us your resume at

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Thank you for reading this post. :)
It also says:

"In the 1997 HCAS combination trucks were found, on average, to pay 90 percent of their Federal highway cost responsibility through user fees, but with changes in the fuel tax they now pay only 80 percent of their cost responsibility. The heaviest combinations, those over 80,000 pounds, pay only half of their cost responsibility."

So most trucks you see on the road pay 80-90% of their way already from a purely federal fuel-tax dollar standpoint. The gas tax is just the beginning for trucks. Now consider state licensing fees, permits, mandatory inspections, tolls that increase exponentially per axle, and what must be the ridiculous cost of compliance. Between the DMV and the DOT the papers that need filing fill a 3-ring every year, and there's a fee every other page. (I suppose the question of whether or not that money makes it back into road maintenance is bound to come up but that seems like a whole different issue.)

Seriously, put a sheep in the back of a pickup in Fresno and try to drive him to Seattle without doing anything illegal.
Who is the real Sergey Brin? (2000)
Introducing More New Trust & Safety Features - The Airbnb Blog
Any suggestions where we should all be moving on to next?
Ask HN: How do I make my first web app?
I can code in various languages and have worked on parts of larger (enterprise) web app developments, and some of my own tiny ones as well. I was wondering if some of the entrepreneurs on HN could really get into the hows of the technical and business aspects of their applications from day 1. i.e - how they went from Idea to real world product.

As we know - the idea itself is worth 0.
The number 1 feature of G+ I'd like is federation. Something like that would be immensely cool (and for Google, still very profitable) if it would work like email. If I could log in to the network with any vendor I like. Or run my own box that talks to the rest of them.
I suppose that's the problem with speeds in space... 2.4 km/s would be anything but "a gentle collision" on Earth.
> I think software engineers should absolutely be involved, but more like "expert witnesses". The judgement is better left in the hands of law people with common sense.

I can't disagree more.

Should common sense be how we decide what medical option to pursue? Or whether a mathematical proof is valid? Or even whether a legal argument is allowed - in the US judges determine that in many case, not juries?

What possible reason is there for common sense to determine whether a software patent is trivial or not? The only question should be whether it actually is trivial or not. The people who know that are software engineers.
I've heard that and used it hundreds of times. It is a completely normal expression on college campuses.
"Software developers, and Open Source developers in particular, have been adamantly against software patents for a very long time."

This is exactly as true as the claim that all scientists support AGW theory.

Reality-- most scientists don't support that theory.

But proponents of the theory say that they all do, all over the place. And since there is nobody who actually speaks for all scientists, there's nobody to prove them wrong.

So they repeat it over and over and over and over again, even though it isn't true.

Logically, your statement is easily disproven. I have been developing software for two decades, including open source, and I support software patents.

Now you can never make that statement again. Well, you can't if you're honest.
If you want my technology enough to steal it, then my technology has value, and it is property, just as anything else I might build with my own hands is property.

Perhaps, but the market for this technology is completely inelastic. Regardless of the money/effort/time required to develop this technology, you get the exact same monopoly guarantee in the form of the patent. And you can charge whatever you want for a license, even if that price is entirely unreasonable. You can even be discriminatory, and charge different people different amounts. Or, worse, you can refuse to license to some people, or to everyone.

For a technology that took significant money/effort/time to develop, I can agree with patent protection. But most software patents are comparatively trivial.
But Android OS doesn't resemble an iPaq, it resembles iOS. You keep inferring that everything presented in the original iPhone was an obvious extension of what we'd seen before, but it simply wasn't.
Looks like Brian took people's advice and went with a different photo.
Sixty Hold America Hostage
If Google became the champion of the abolishing patents movement, I think they'd get a lot of support from companies that prefer to remain silent on the issue right now.
>Literally, I am tired offending the trolls.

You spend a good 90% of each of your posts saying nothing of value but instead offending me and pandering to the crowd, desperately trying to drag yourself to some higher ground where your complete lack of facts is overlooked. I hope no one falls for it.

>That Stephen Spielburg was able to do it with computer graphics has no bearing on the validity of someone making it exist in the real world.

Again, what did Apple invent? The concept of multitouch? No, not at all. The screen itself? No, not at all. The interface rudiments? I will say it again that most of them were demonstrated in Minority Report. Specific algorithms to detect movement?

You are the one claiming that Android stole this grand invention, so I ask again - what did Android steal? We know it wasn't the idea, or the physical sensor...and I highly doubt they stole the algorithm...so what?
Your Startup's One Thing
"Can you point to a clear, major innovation software innovation that they are currently being sued for? I can't think of any."

Java ("everything else sucks" - Google), miscellaneous mobile innovations belonging to all sorts of companies via proxy (because they don't actually ship phones). They haven't been sued over VP8 yet but it's likely coming barring licensing.

...

"I'm also not seeing the difference between ..."

Well now you're putting words in your own mouth. What you originally said was:

"point to a single nontrivial piece of software that doesn't infringe on someone's patents."

And I pointed to every piece of software over 20 years old, /hangs mission accomplished banner. Again this is excessively derailing...
RIM overhauls BlackBerry for IPhone battle, releasing three new versions
Minority report was released in 2002. What about interfaces in Lawnmower Man (1992) or Johnny Mnemonic (1995)? Or endless other sci-fi?

Sit a UI designer and an engineer down for a couple of sessions to talk about a touch screen (x,y coordinates coming into software from human hands) anytime in the last fifty years and they will come up with the concept of gestures in at most a few hours. What about Douglas Engelbart's work or the work at Xerox in relation to Apple's later ridiculous attempts to claim the windowed GUI as their own?

You accuse others of making up facts but you are ignorant of quite a few.
Ask HN: Testing you own sites for SQL Injection and XSS
Hi everyone,

I'm getting a bit paranoid about some of my web apps being open to SQL injection and XSS. I'm using http://htmlpurifier.org/ to scrub inputs where necessary, but when it comes to SQL injection, I only know the absolute basics.

Do you test you apps using any tools? If so, which ones?

Likewise, what SQL injection tests do you run to make sure that you're not open to - at best - any of the more common attacks?

Thanks,
Tom.
I have been drinking HN's kool-aid way too long.../// don't be anyone bitch ! (quote by F. Wilson)
To be honest, Slashdot had already been relegated to my "Read while [] on the toilet" material. I honestly don't miss it. The newsworthy items are on reddit or HN before Slashdot anyway, and I really don't miss the more meta or conversational pieces.