Is it too late to be awesome? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/better-humans/4d1d8fae13e9 <comment><USER3> What's so terrible about not being "awesome?"

How about just living a decent life? Being kind and helpful?

There's a kind of virtue ethics at work around these parts, and the primary virtue is "awesomeness." A sociologist or ethicist could write a whole thesis about this community.

It's not a universal idea. Some people have a primary virtue of "decency." Or even "humility." Taste those words for a moment...

"Comparing is as much of a disease as perfection. When we learn to be ourselves, be patient, and how to be comfortable in our own skin, then – and only then – will we achieve true happiness."

An ancient Zen poem says "For and against opposing each other -- this is the mind's disease." Of course, this site revolves around a highly competitive market. Ambition is its lifeblood...

I think that if you want to be happy, that's not going to come from success or ambition or striving. They seem more or less orthogonal.

An interesting question might be: What would you do if you were already happy and content? Think of it as like the question of what you would do if you already were financially independent. Call it emotional independence, maybe. Equanimity?

<comment><USER4> And since when has awesomeness been mutually exclusive with decency, kindness, or even helpfulness?

 _I think that if you want to be happy, that 's not going to come from success or ambition or striving. They seem more or less orthogonal._

Some of us require a certain level of striving to be happy. If we're not being awesome enough, we get depressed.

 _An interesting question might be: What would you do if you were already happy and content?_

But short of a few things I cope with, I _am_ happy and content.

<comment><USER3> I'm not positing any mutual exclusion. Just hinting at a possible overvaluing or a distortion. Maybe that's not relevant for you.

Of course all these words are flexible and can encompass a wide span. If awesomeness motivates you towards real goodness, that's, well, awesome.

But I think that for some, it can have aspects of self-obsession, an excessive concern with entrepreneurial success, an overemphasis on individual achievement causing neglect of softer, less "specular" values -- like kindness.

Not to imply any lack of kindness. What I'm trying to say has more to do with how we value our kindness. The tragedy would be someone with a kind heart who thinks themselves worthless because they haven't completed any "awesome" projects on their own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a university student I'm surrounded by brilliant people, a lot of whom excel in academics. This has always been really frustrating for me.

I think the takeaway message I've learned from school, and in life, is that there will always be someone who is better than you at something. I'm always envious of my peers who are better at (X), and I forget that if I reflect on my own skills, I'll find (Y) that I can do better.

You'll likely never find someone who is better than you at EVERYTHING.

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. I think there's a certain beauty in that, because by working together, we get the benefit of being good at X and Y. This is why cofounders who have complementing skill sets are so successful.

Find something you like, and just do it. Connect with people that do things you don't like to do or are not as good at. The rest will fall in place.

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." - <USER2> Einstein

<comment><USER6> Well said. All I'll add is, thanks to the internet, there is much more comparing going on. An unhealthy amount imho.

This is a great motivator for some people. For others not so much. One needs to figure out where one falls in the spectrum and moderate time spent looking at what the rest of the world is up to accordingly.

<comment><USER7> I try not to think of it as a motivator or something to make me feel minuscule. I think it's real strength is to remind you that things are possible. You may not have to live up to the other people's heights, but it reminds you that other people have climbed mountains the world didn't even know exists. Reminds you not to keep your own mountains sitting in the back of your mind, even if they're just molehills.

<comment><USER6> You don't have to think of it as a motivator or something that makes you feel minuscule.

Given the time people are spending on the internet these days, exposed to things no other generation was, much of this happens subconsciously.

<comment><USER7> I agree on both points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just trying to get the nasty nitpick comment right:

Quoting Lao Tzu from quote sites is to be avoided, except in ironic context. Lao Tzu (Lao Zi) is the supposed authors of a very small Chinese classic called Daodejing. It has 81 poems, and I wasn't able to find anyone that would be close enought to this "be yourself" quote. "Be yourself" is not even a concept that can be found in this book, because in fact "be", and "self" are not Taoist concepts.

What related teaching could be found in this book, you'll say? In fact, it could be more something like "kill your desires", "hide your intelligence", "return to the origin", and many paradox like "the dumbest is the most clever", "the weakest is the strongest", "be not having any will everything happens according to your wishes".

So maybe I can invent a Laotzu quote more relevant to the article: "try to be awesome and everyone is bored, try not to be awesome and everyone will wow in awe"

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been wondering about this line of thinking lately, and I'm confused if its actually productive.

For example: I need to lose about 15 pounds. If I just accepted myself as me, I'd never really work towards the better picture of myself, 15 pounds lighter. Doesn't this apply when trying to better yourself in other ways?

If I'm not imagining a future where I'm better than I am right now, how will I ever get to it? What easier way to imagine how one could be better than to look at what other people have, and hope to have it myself.

I feel like, eventually, people just end up settling and stop fighting to better themselves. I think the older someone is, the more likely the are to have settled. I hope for myself, that I keep fighting.

<comment><USER10> As I've gotten older I've come to discover that there's a really fine line to walk here. You want to be motivated. You want to develop the best version of you that you possibly can.

However, being _CRITICAL_ of yourself is about the most counter-productive thing a person can do. When you are critical of yourself, you do things for the wrong reason. Lamenting about how fat you are leads you to diet, but you never make real lifestyle changes to support it. A personal trainer friend of mine has made the observation that the best way to lose weight and get fit is to first develop the ability to be happy.

There is science to support this mindset. Constant self-teardown comes with real physiological changes in your body. You'll be more anxious, which means you'll spend more time in a sympathetic nervous state. The increase in adrenaline and cortisol leave you feeling sluggish and worn out. Guess what happens when you feel like that? You eat to much, you sleep to much, and you generally do everything you wanted to stop doing in the first place!

There are a whole host of things that go on when you _push_ yourself instead of learning to _be_ yourself. None of those things are very good.

I've been a driven guy. I've been successful in a startup. I've failed terribly. As I reach my mid-30's I've found myself focused on becoming _content_. Surprisingly, I've found that my productivity and desire haven't really changed much. I still want to do really well, but now I keep everything in perspective and I'm much happier for it.

<comment><USER11> Thank you so much for that. If I just started doing something I compared myself to professionals, if my work started to look good compared to them I started comparing myself with best people in profession I knew about, and if I could not find anyone better then I would start comparing myself against imaginary ideal. I knew it was bad for my self esteem but I thought that it will make me achieve more. Thanks for showing me a reason why being so critical about myself is not needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The people who accomplish the most are never satisfied with how much they have accomplished. Series of accomplishments require continuous accomplishing, which requires motivation. These high-achievers continue to accomplish so much because they constantly motivate themselves with thoughts of inadequacy. I assume most people only follow others who they see as more accomplished than themselves in some way. By definition you must follow someone in order to compare yourself to them. Thus, you must only compare yourself to people more accomplished than you. By doing do, you promote in yourself the same feelings of inadequacy that drive thr most acccomplished people.

tl;dr Compare your accomplishments to greater accomplishments by other people. Feelings of inadequacy will motivate you to accomplish more.

<comment><USER13> If you look at some of the most successful people, most of them are driven by other motivators besides success. Many are driven to make a difference in the world (Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, etc), others were super super curious (Richard Feynmann, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Warren Buffett) and pursued / stuck with their passions, and others were at the right place at the right time (and of course people are often some combo of all 3). The thing is, very few people just are addicted to success for the SAKE of success, and some of those people have an unhealthy addiction for money. Success is what you make of it. There are many people in the energy sector driven to eradicate global warming and get off our fossil fuel addiction. Many of them will be never known to the world / famous in any way, but they are always looking to make more and more of an impact daily and be successful over time (even if many of them won't ever be rich or famous).

<comment><USER14> I think many people are seeking success for success' sake - at least it's a significant part of why they do what they do. The fact that they want to make a difference in the world may be true, but I think it's often a mix, and that people fool themselves to believe that their need to feed their ego is smaller than it actually is. The risk from this, is that although people are fighting for a good cause, their ego may interfere in bad ways in certain situations, leading to decisions and actions which hurts the good cause in short or long term (for example by pushing away other people who may do a better job than themselves).

(This, of course, doesn't go for everybody.)

Edit: Note that becoming rich and famous isn't the only way to feed your ego.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I attended a talk given by a Buddhist monk named Ajahn Brahm about a year ago. He said that 70% is always good enough. The reasoning goes that if you strive for 100% (or 110%, like some brag about doing) you will very often disappoint yourself (as well as those around you). If you go for 50%, you won't be motivated enough. So 70% seems about right. (There is a Youtube video of him talking about this subject [1].)

There is tendency today that everybody wants to accomplish so much. I know this from myself: Compared with many of my friends, I have accomplished quite a lot - but it doesn't satisfy me, I need more to be happy. I agree with the author that we should focus more on just being. Because, if you think of it, what happens when you have accomplished whatever you had aimed for? It feels great... for a little while. Then, life is back to normal. We often believe the fallacy that happiness is available somewhere in the future, not here and now, and once we get this or that - THEN we will be happy[2]. And so you risk rigging your life in order to always reach for the next mountain top you have in sight, thinking that it's the final one.

An Australian nurse interviewed people on their death bed about their regrets in life[3]. The second biggest regret was that people had worked too hard.

Think about the real motives for what you do: If you do something to prove yourself for others (e.g. fame and glory), you're fooling yourself. First of all because it will most likely not make you happy, second because you will be forgotten anyway (especially today when everybody claims their 15 minutes of fame). If you strive for something because you think it will make you more happy, you are fooling yourself to believe that happiness is somewhere in the future and not available now.

On the other hand, if the road is the goal, you are more likely rigging your life for lasting happiness. In the end, what is the use of accomplishing things if you are, and continue to be, unhappy?

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6k6DMp1TxQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6k6DMp1TxQ)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixRISCK7pmE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixRISCK7pmE)

[3] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top- five-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets- of-the-dying)

<comment><USER15> I am curious. What was the biggest regret of the dying patients?

<comment><USER14> "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

The rest are here: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top- five-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets- of-the-dying)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Meet Jon Von Neumann :

Von Neumann's ability to instantaneously perform complex operations in his head stunned other mathematicians. Eugene Wigner wrote that, seeing von Neumann's mind at work, "one had the impression of a perfect instrument whose gears were machined to mesh accurately to a thousandth of an inch."

Paul Halmos states that "von Neumann's speed was awe-inspiring."

Israel Halperin said: "Keeping up with him was... impossible. The feeling was you were on a tricycle chasing a racing car." Edward Teller wrote that von Neumann effortlessly outdid anybody he ever met, and said "I never could keep up with him".

Lothar Wolfgang Nordheim described von Neumann as the "fastest mind I ever met", and Jacob Bronowski wrote "He was the cleverest man I ever knew, without exception.He was a genius."

George Pólya, whose lectures at ETH Zurich von Neumann attended as a student, said "Johnny was the only student I was ever afraid of. If in the course of a lecture I stated an unsolved problem, the chances were he'd come to me at the end of the lecture with the complete solution scribbled on a slip of paper."

Halmos recounts a story told by Nicholas Metropolis, concerning the speed of von Neumann's calculations, when somebody asked von Neumann to solve the famous fly puzzle: Two bicyclists start twenty miles apart and head toward each other, each going at a steady rate of 10 mph. At the same time a fly that travels at a steady 15 mph starts from the front wheel of the southbound bicycle and flies to the front wheel of the northbound one, then turns around and flies to the front wheel of the southbound one again, and continues in this manner till he is crushed between the two front wheels. Question: what total distance did the fly cover? The slow way to find the answer is to calculate what distance the fly covers on the first, northbound, leg of the trip, then on the second, southbound, leg, then on the third, etc., etc., and, finally, to sum the infinite series so obtained. The quick way is to observe that the bicycles meet exactly one hour after their start, so that the fly had just an hour for his travels; the answer must therefore be 15 miles.

When the question was put to von Neumann, he solved it in an instant, and thereby disappointed the questioner: "Oh, you must have heard the trick before!" "What trick?" asked von Neumann, "All I did was sum the infinite series."

Von Neumann had a very strong eidetic memory, commonly called 'photographic' memory.Herman Goldstine writes: "One of his remarkable abilities was his power of absolute recall. As far as I could tell, von Neumann was able on once reading a book or article to quote it back verbatim; moreover, he could do it years later without hesitation. He could also translate it at no diminution in speed from its original language into English. On one occasion I tested his ability by asking him to tell me how The Tale of Two Cities started. Whereupon, without any pause, he immediately began to recite the first chapter and continued until asked to stop after about ten or fifteen minutes."

It has been said that von Neumann's intellect was absolutely unmatched. "I always thought Von Neumann's brain indicated that he was from another species, an evolution beyond man," said Nobel Laureate Hans A. Bethe of Cornell University. "It seems fair to say that if the influence of a scientist is interpreted broadly enough to include impact on fields beyond science proper, then John von Neumann was probably the most influential mathematician who ever lived," wrote Miklos Redai in "Selected Letters."

Glimm writes "he is regarded as one of the giants of modern mathematics".The mathematician Jean Dieudonné called von Neumann "the last of the great mathematicians", while Peter Lax described him as possessing the "most scintillating intellect of this century", and Hans Bethe stated "I have sometimes wondered whether a brain like von Neumann's does not indicate a species superior to that of man".

<comment><USER17> Does anyone know of a biography of Von Neumann? I've looked for one many times and never found any. It's like he was five different men – he revolutionized so many fields, any of which would have been an epic accomplishment. He was also the only one who immediately understood the significance and consequences of Gödel's incompleteness result, according to Goldstein's biography of that other genius.

<comment><USER18> Turing's Cathedral[1] is not a proper biography, but it's mostly all about Von Nuemann during the period where he worked on the early computer. I have read most of it while in the bookstore, and it's really good.

[1][http://books.google.com/books?id=6sElRNGXWFIC&printsec=front...](http://books.google.com/books?id=6sElRNGXWFIC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata)

</comment><comment><USER20> My father in law is 80, he lifts weights every day, and can quote Shakespeare to you all day long. I hope to be half that awesome at that age.

</comment><comment><USER18> If you really want to feel inadequate, check this out: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann)

<comment><USER21> Or [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My dad once said to me: "There will always be someone better than you".

It really pissed me off for ages, because I was like, what's the point then? What's the point if I can't be the best at something? But then I realised that if someone's always going to be the best and beat you, you don't have to strive in life to be the best at something. It kills the ego for me, which is a big battle for a lot of us. Being good at it and enjoying the journey is enough. I try to be excellent at what I do, but It doesn't matter if I'm not the best. Even if I am, It's unlikely I always will be and that's fine. For most of us that are average, it's unlikely we're going to be the next "Big thing". But who cares.

On a side note, this article seemed kind of nothingy, I don't think I learnt anything new from it so i'm wondering why it's so high on HN?

</comment><comment><USER23> I feel like we see these kinds of posts fairly frequently.

And I'm glad. I knew everything that the author said yesterday. I probably knew it 10 or even 15 years ago. But it's really difficult to keep these ideas at the forefront of your mind. Being reminded of it often is the only way I've found so far.

</comment><comment><USER24> As someone who's been struggling to find my way in life the last couple years (i'm 22, not in college, and working a low-skill job to make ends meet), I constantly run into this problem.

Indeed, reading HN makes me feel pretty horrible a lot of the time, reminding me of all the cool things people are doing, and that I might be able to do such things if I could only get off my ass. That I've been unable to focus adequately to get any practically useful coding, let alone reading, done in the last couple years has brought me significant distress, and seeing so many brilliant people on HN only makes me feel like i'm falling behind.

It's so easy to feel trapped by this, only entrenching yourself in inaction as you compare yourself to every person you feel is smarter or more successful than yourself.

</comment><comment><USER25> My biggest problem was always comparing myself not to one man, but a great number of people. Unhappy, because I wasn't as cool as one guy, smart as this other guy, didn't have expensive stuff like this third guy. Then I realised that none of them have it all, and if I compare myself to only one of them, I would never trade my life for theirs.

</comment><comment><USER26> No, it's not too late.

Fox example take Paul Stone, who started to workout after age of 60 [1]

Or Leslie Nielsen who's known for being a comedian started to act in comedies at the age of ~54.

[1] [https://pp.vk.me/c418616/v418616330/5e45/LAj3RgtCnIU.jpg](https://pp.vk.me/c418616/v418616330/5e45/LAj3RgtCnIU.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER27> There's a simple solution to this: stop comparing yourself to others and always strive to be better than _yesterday you_.

This way, you can improve every day (week/month/year) and become all that you can be without the stress of knowing that you'll never be the next Bill Gates or Zuckerberg or Musk.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think one problem is that we tend to think about this in terms of willpower. To be awesome, all we have to do is really want it and work really hard, right? I suspect in reality it is much more about habits. Example: write a book by writing 2 hours every day, no matter what. Finish what you start? (Not sure if that is actually a good idea) If you have started one company, starting other companies will probably come much more natural to you. Or Aaron Swartz's "always say yes to everything". Little things like that. Of course you still need to find the right habits. I'm currently reading "The Luck Factor" and it also comes down to making a habit out of meeting more people and making new experiences - it's all a numbers game.

</comment><comment><USER29> What is (or should be) the real driver here is the difference between striving for success and striving for creating value. If you strive for success it always feels as if there's a long way there, no matter how far you get. You can rarely see the best way forward because it's mostly depending on chance.

But if you strive for creating value you can start in an instant, by just being helpful to someone or (in the case of being a tech entrepreneur) building a small web service that you know that a handful of people find valuable.

With time, striving for creating value will take you on a straighter path to success than if you were aiming for success all along the way.

</comment><comment><USER30> Here's the thing about many 'successful' people:

You see Kevin Rose's list of accomplishments and it seems overwhelming and insurmountable by a regular pleb such as yourself.

But Kevin Rose is just a regular pleb – and he certainly wasn't any different than you or I before he got "famous". You know what happened? He had one break-out success, and was then able to leverage that into a wide variety of other opportunities.

So focus on creating that one break-out success for yourself, the rest will come in due course.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's never too late to be awesome. You just have to stop caring if YOU'RE awesome, and do more things you think would be pretty awesome.

When I turned 41, I started taking burlesque dance classes. I got a lot fitter and learnt a ton about how to carry myself confidently. I didn't have either of those things in mind when I started, or when I kept going to class. I was just getting out of the house and enjoying myself.

</comment><comment><USER32> This reminds me of the saying: "Never compare your beginning to someone else's middle." It's never too late to start, so it's never too late to be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER33> Some technology blog posts are starting to become largely indistinguishable in content from Cosmo magazine.

Oh, you feel inferior to you peers, etc.

So what? Do something about it, or shut up. Because you read Hacker News and a variety of other tech blogs you're predestined to be great? What is the difference between you and the teenager that reads Cosmo and wants to be beautiful and famous? Why are you even pursuing fame, or if that's not it, what are you pursuing? Why are you taking time out of your day to write blogs, don't you have something more important to do?

</comment><comment><USER34> It depends on if you define awesome as how others see you or how you see yourself.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think he already answered his own question in another post. Declares he's already awesome because he lives in NY & has an Amex.

[https://medium.com/better-humans/fb2e4d6aea5f](https://medium.com/better- humans/fb2e4d6aea5f)

<comment><USER35> That sentence is more an acknowledgment of a privileged life.

<comment><USER7> I'm a middle class kid that managed to go to under grad & grad school on scholarships. I've lived an extremely privileged life.

My opinions are formed by the life I have lived as it is the only life I will ever experience. I guess my interpretation of awesome is more in line with inspiring awe.

Depending on her background, her situation could very well inspire awe and be something she never thought possible. From my experiences, her examples of "awesome" in other posts are what I would consider "Sweet" even though she has several things I wish I had. If you measured everything in the world on a scale of awesomeness, rather than believing something has to hit a threshold of actually inspiring awe, then her life would be well above mine.

For more common forms of awesome, things like watching my younger brother with autism be able to take my dog for a walk is pretty awesome given everything else I have gone through with him. Living in the suburbs though, getting a piece of plastic that extends credit to me is not awe inspiring.

<comment><USER35> So you're saying that you use the word "sweet" the way she uses "awesome." And let's not go down the road of saying that "awesome" has to be used as if it was "awe some," as people clearly don't use it that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> So Von Nuemann and Kevin Rose are on the same level?

</comment><comment><USER37> Do awesome, don't be awesome.

<comment><USER38> "Don't dream it, be it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I came to a blistering realization about this: _excellence wants to do, mediocrity wants to be_. It's pretty evident. People who are doing excellent things are too busy in the action (flow) to obsess over others' perceptions, while mediocre people (most) have to manage their own social acceptability and success within an established permission system. You can really only have one or the other. You can deep-dive and go for excellence, or you can stay at the surface and be constantly attuned to others' perceptions of you, your work, and your position in society... but you can't be in two places at once.

[http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/careerism- bre...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/careerism-breeds- mediocrity/)

From that essay: _Mediocrity wants to "be smart" and for everyone to know it. Excellence wants to do smart things. Mediocrity wants to be well-liked. Excellence wants to create things worth liking. Mediocrity wants to be one of the great writers. Excellence wants to write great works._

Right. But as Kefka said, "You sound like chapters from a self-help booklet!" Everyone can get behind these ideas-- it's a nice pep talk-- but you're actually going to end up in opposition to society if you try to live that way. It's hard. People in power will try to beat the crap out of you. If you really insist on doing great things, you should expect to pay for it. Trying to do great things at work injects a lot of job-loss risk that most people can't stand; trying to do great things outside of work requires discipline that most people don't have.

It's never "too late". We don't understand the brain, with regard to aging, very well and have _no idea_ when a healthy person's creativity or cognitive power peaks-- it's somewhere between 15 and 70, but highly individualized-- which is another way of saying that there isn't a meaningful enough difference for us to know. (It's like a world in which unfair coins turn up heads 50.000001% of the time; it will take an ungodly amount of time to determine whether a coin is fair or unfair, but it just doesn't matter.) "Too late" is not what one should be worried about. Peoples' perceptions of us change dramatically as we get older. When you're 40, you can no longer exploit the chickenhawking of a corporate middle-manager who did his 20s wrong and wants to live vicariously through someone more sociable and attractive than him, which makes becoming his protege impossible... but, by the time you're 40, you really shouldn't want that. How we're perceived changes dramatically from 20 to 25 to 30 to 40. What we can do (in terms of creativity, courage, integrated understanding) seems to be increasing monotonically until very close to the end of life.

Really, though, "being awesome" is the wrong goal. The discussion should be around "doing awesome".</comment>


Photos of Soviet control rooms - <AUTHOR> http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/27986-2 <comment><USER3> Submitter here. Not my blog post, but glad to see this got some traction!

Random memory of a Soviet control room: in the late 1990s, the rave scene was booming in Estonia and I ended up wrangling an invite to a party called "Beast Feast" [1] arranged by fellow promoters VIBE. The venue was a giant old Soviet-era factory in the industrial zone of Liiva Keskus [2]. The factory floor, complete with random, rusty machines, was used for a "fashion show" featuring models wearing only animal skulls, horns, tails etc, plus stacks of speakers reaching to the ceiling and a thousand-plus ravers dancing. The control room -- which looked exactly like the ones in the pictures -- was carpeted with mattresses, decked out with disco lighting, and there was a DJ playing chill-out music. One of the most memorable parties I've been to! Unfortunately I can't find any pictures of it online...

[1] [http://www.moles.ee/99/May/26/5-3.html](http://www.moles.ee/99/May/26/5-3.html)

[2] [http://www.rrk.ee/?op=body&id=86](http://www.rrk.ee/?op=body&id=86)

<comment><USER4> Reads like a scene from the Planet of the Apes...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nothing can beat Project Cybersyn's control room, IMO.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn#/media/File...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn#/media/File%3ACybersyn_control_room.jpg)

<comment><USER6> Too bad they could not be allowed to succeed or fail on their own...

<comment><USER7> There have been multiple attempts at planned economies throughout history. None of them were terribly successful, and it's not entirely clear why using spiffy early-70's style computers and knock-off Star Trek chairs would make that much of a difference. Although, it does look pretty cool.

<comment><USER8> Most planned economies were founded before the availability of real-time, computer-driven decision support systems. Maybe it couldn't've worked, I dunno, but it was a bold experiment, and probably preferable to the brutal military junta that destroyed it.

<comment><USER7> There's already a real-time decision support system that also happens to be computer-driven these days. It's called the market.

<comment><USER8> You seem to be ignoring people's actual posts to score points against straw Communists. Nobody's saying we should all switch to a planned economy.

<comment><USER7> We were talking about Cybersyn, right? Planned economies (and the merits of a particular Chilean attempt at such) was the point.

I took your post to suggest that Cybersyn used more sophisticated real-time mechanisms to run the economy and was hence quite different from other attempts at planned economies in the past. My point was that those mechanisms, in function, probably would just be an "ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug- ridden, slow implementation of a market" at best anyway.

If anything's a straw man argument, it's the irrelevant discussion of "military juntas", as if military juntas are fundamentally incompatible with using 1970's-era computers to centrally plan and control a country's economy.

<comment><USER8> > *If anything's a straw man argument, it's the irrelevant discussion of > "military juntas"

What? We're talking about how Cybersyn was physically destroyed by Pinochet's junta after they overthrew Allende. That's what digi_owl was referring to with "Too bad they could not be allowed to succeed or fail on their own." This is about the coup and its aftermath, not just an economic policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> All my life, I've had a strange fascination with this kind of thing: control rooms, cockpit instrument panels, or any sort of location with lots of of dials, buttons, gauges, switches, and indicators. Even Microsoft Windows "Control Panel" kind of excited me the first time I saw it.

Now, seeing this posted here makes me wonder if maybe there are others out there who share this particular quirk of mine.

<comment><USER10> Oh absolutely! I've had the same thing too for as long as I can remember. Aircraft cockpits especially interest me, and I can spend hours looking at physical switches.

I created a subreddit, maybe there are more of us? /r/ControlPanels/

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> These are beautiful — especially the Metsamor nuclear power plant (white table tops, with wood trim).

Not strictly related, but the Death Star control panel in the original Star Wars was actually a modified Grass Valley television switcher. [http://www.partsofsw.com/dscntrl.htm](http://www.partsofsw.com/dscntrl.htm)

</comment><comment><USER12> Something I have always imagined doing was to build 'paneling' for lab that followed the theme of a control room like this. At Google we discussed making the inside of a conference room appear to be a shuttle in flight. (it was possible as it had no windows.) We figured we could build a slightly interior wall (maybe 3" thick) and rig up panels with various micro processors and left over displays from the Android project. It probably would have been a $20,000 conference room if we had done it. :-)

<comment><USER13> In Google's ITA Software division there is a conference room made up to look like the inside of an airliner.

Albeit it's far, far roomier than any actual airliner I've ever been on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> These are the kinds of places where I'd be fired on the very first day, likely escorted away by security.

I like to call it intellectual curiosity, but it's really poor impulse control. I'd push all those buttons. I couldn't help myself.

<comment><USER15> you should get into modular synths.

<comment><USER14> Funny you mention that...

I have played at both hardware and software synths. I will never be productive, but I do have fun.

A friend also has a recording studio. (I used to play guitar as a source of additional income, some studio and some performance work.) There are so many buttons, sliders, and knobs! I will go play with them.

One of the reasons I enjoy my practice time (I still play but it's not for financial gain) is because it gives me time to play with the various settings.

It's kind of how I learn things.

This might seem off-topic, but I don't think it is. See, it's the love of poking buttons and moving sliders that has given me the 'hacking mentality.' It is the love of experimentation and willingness to press unknown buttons, metaphoric or real, that seems to be a trait of 'hackers.'

We may not like to admit it, but I suspect a large number of HN viewers would not fare well if locked in a baren room, devoid of everything vut single red button that said, 'DO NOT PUSH.'

I suspect that it is because of our willingness to poke these metaphoric buttons that we are driven to learn, create, and take risks. We gleefully push those buttons and learn more, create new processes, and discover.

Polite society probably calls it intellectual curiosity. Really, many of us just like buttons, knobs, and sliders - be they metaphors or nuclear control reactors.

<comment><USER16> Bret Victor often talks about this how you learn by tweaking and observing results realtime

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice paper going into detail about the circumstances behind these rooms and the Soviet push for Cybernization:

[http://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/articles/Gerovitch- InterNy...](http://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/articles/Gerovitch- InterNyet.pdf)

<comment><USER18> The pictured control rooms are mostly just control rooms of power plants, not levers for adjusting the Soviet economy. The paper is not really about these control rooms.

<comment><USER19> Most power plants have control rooms that look pretty much like these; they fulfil the same function.

<comment><USER18> Yes the 'Soviet' bit just makes these pictures sound more exotic than they are (and it seems they originally had a couple of American ones in there by 'mistake') but the point is, none of this has anything to do with cybersyn- like networked command centers for the command economy. Which is what the linked paper is about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone know what the circular indicators in the middle of some of these control rooms are for?

Right in the centre of the indicator wall here: ([http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/09...](http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/09/5309792-425120.jpg))

<comment><USER21> Closeups:

[https://carlwillis.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/dscf0806_v1.j...](https://carlwillis.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/dscf0806_v1.jpg) (zoom in)

[http://www.m1key.me/photography/chernobyl_questions_answers_...](http://www.m1key.me/photography/chernobyl_questions_answers_2/chernobyl_questions_answers_2_25.jpg)

[https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/45/129495116_40011d1db7_b.jpg](https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/45/129495116_40011d1db7_b.jpg)

<comment><USER22> The first image is from a blog with lots of information and high-resolution photos of old reactors, including Chernobyl:

[https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/](https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Having been in current U.S. nuclear power plant control rooms, they're not substantially different.

<comment><USER24> Same, went on a tour of a U.K. nuclear power plant and its all 1960s tech like this. I asked why and they said you can't afford the risk of bugs/problems for the efficiency gains you might achieve with new kit.

<comment><USER23> I talked to the person who wrote a program that displayed reactor data on a computer screen. She wrote it in FORTRAN in the late 80s.

They're still using it 30 years later. She confirmed that her programming passed Y2K with flying colors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Side note, anyone remembers the Star-Trek inspired control room the NSA built?

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/15/nsa- mi...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/15/nsa-mind-keith- alexander-star-trek)

The sliding doors with a "whoosh" sound are probably among the things every geek loves but is afraid to confess...

</comment><comment><USER18> NASA recently published a picture of Annie Easley standing in front of something impressively retro-future-looking but didn't include an explanation of what it was:

[https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/annie-easley-computer- sci...](https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/annie-easley-computer-scientist- and-mathematician)

<comment><USER26> My guess, after a quick google search: [https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/facilities/erb/turbo/#small- engine...](https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/facilities/erb/turbo/#small-engine- components-compressor-test-facility)

The signs on the top of each section says "air 40 psig" and "ref. air 10 psig", and this matches the capabilities described in the link: "The compressor can draw air from either an atmospheric intake, a 40-psig pressure source, or 10-psig refrigerated air system". The image also has GRC in its file name.

(It might be a complete miss, though)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The first photo is from the NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered merchant ship, built in the US in the late 1950s as a demonstration project for the potential use of nuclear energy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah)

</comment><comment><USER28> This one looks intriguing, any more info on it?

[http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/09...](http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/09/Tsentralnij-pult-upravleniya.jpg)

<comment><USER18> It's part of the control room of this hydro-electric power plant:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boguchany_Dam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boguchany_Dam)

<comment><USER28> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Looks like an analog future.

</comment><comment><USER30> where are the synths

</comment><comment><USER31> It is amazing how many of these control rooms are just huge surfaces covered in dials and instruments that lack any representative structure of the system they are monitoring and controlling.

<comment><USER32> I counted 14 of 22 that integrated dials or instruments into a diagrammatic structure of the system; it could be more that I couldn't see from the zoom level. The degree to which instruments (and especially, status lights it looks like) were integrated into diagrams was the most interesting thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Back in the early 90s I got a chance to visit the BART train control center in the bay area. Surprisingly the controls were as old looking fixed displays as this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER34> I really love those Soviet white hats. Does anybody know if they served any real purpose, or was that just soviet chic?

</comment><comment><USER35> This how all big plants worked before Scadas came

</comment><comment> throw-away-8 Soviet mission control center:

(1973+) [http://epizodsspace.airbase.ru/bibl/energia46-96/357-1.jpg](http://epizodsspace.airbase.ru/bibl/energia46-96/357-1.jpg)

(1980) [http://epizodsspace.airbase.ru/bibl/energia46-96/357-2.jpg](http://epizodsspace.airbase.ru/bibl/energia46-96/357-2.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER36> We are missing the one with Homer in it

</comment><comment><USER37> This is beautiful! It's amusing to think that most of this can be replaced with a single iPad.

<comment><USER38> My thought was exactly the opposite. Some of them have modern computers right in the control room and still have all this gadgetry. There's just no way to reproduce that level of visual information on a small screen. Even at work I sometimes struggle with dual 32" monitors, I just need more real estate and have to constantly switch between windows and desktops. And that's for fairly mundane development tasks.

<comment><USER39> My impression was that the control console is probably coupled too tightly to the control system, that removing and replacing it with something modern wouldn't be feasable or worth the effort.

I find it unlikely that they need to see all those dials at once, but without a modal system to switch between data views they need to show every data point. On a modern system you could achieve the same by having views specific to each task, and an alerting system for when a data point for that task goes out of range.

Here is an image from a modern Austrian steel factory run by 3 people - <USER2> of the screens on the top row are just showing CCTV images:

[http://pop.h-cdn.co/assets/17/25/1498153350-699054458-1.jpg](http://pop.h-cdn.co/assets/17/25/1498153350-699054458-1.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Cool pics are what killed the intellectual quality of Reddit. Let's not upvote this.

<comment><USER41> I think in this case the images can start some interesting conversations about UX/ human interface devices/ industrial design.

Posting memes would be a different story though - I'd probably bail at that point.</comment></comment>


Wikimedia changes mobile site to save an annual 450 terabytes of mobile data - <AUTHOR> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/09/19/mobile-web-improvements/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR: delay image load until the image should be shown on the device instead of preloading it. Use javascript to that when possible.</comment>


PragPub July issue is out (Pragmatic Bookshelf magazine) - <AUTHOR> http://pragprog.com/magazines/download/25.HTML

<comment><USER2> They should add an rss feed for PragPub only or email delivery with a newsletter (i keep forgetting to check for the new issue and i guess i'm not alone).

<comment><USER3> It would be especially nice if an ebook series such as this could automatically be delivered to my ebook reader of choice.

I believe that Instapaper offers something like this for the Kindle; I wonder if this is doable with iBooks?

<comment><USER2> They could send the book (maybe in .mobi format so the no conversion would be necessary) directly to your kindle email address.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, that's just in time. I was just starting to look into learning Clojure. Nice!</comment>


Cloudflare Has Been Fighting NSL for Years - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/finally-revealed-cloudflare-has-been-fighting-nsls-years <comment><USER2> Cloudflare's own statement also on HN here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13372729](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13372729)

Adds more color to this. In any case, it's great that the EFF and Cloudflare have been fighting this.</comment>


Things You Don't Know About User IDs That Will Destroy You - <AUTHOR> http://timetobleed.com/5-things-you-dont-know-about-user-ids-that-will-destroy-you/

<comment><USER2> This blog post shows an interesting difference between the Perl community and the Ruby community. The Ruby community lives to write long blog posts about why you are writing code wrong. The Perl community just makes a library everyone can use to avoid getting things wrong in the first place.

([http://search.cpan.org/~tlbdk/Privileges- Drop-1.00/lib/Privi...](http://search.cpan.org/~tlbdk/Privileges- Drop-1.00/lib/Privileges/Drop.pm))

<comment><USER3> Interesting point, but I think of it as teaching a man how to fish and giving him fish. If you read and understand this blog post,

1\. You can write your own lib

2\. You can spot bugs in other programs regarding privileges

3\. You have an understanding of how privileges work and can transfer that knowledge to other programming languages/problems.

4\. When you use a third party lib for, say dropping privileges, you can actually verify that they are doing it right because you actually understand what is going on and what is needed.

<comment><USER2> Consider the case where the blog post is not entirely correct. How do you tell everyone that cut-n-pasted the code from the blog to fix their apps?

You can't. At least with libraries, someone can report a bug or send a patch, and you can release a fixed version. Any reasonably competent developer will eventually notice the new version and upgrade the module. Problem fixed.

With a blog post, there is no reasonable way to push out new features, patches, bug fixes, security fixes, etc.

<comment><USER3> You are thinking in terms of code. I'm thinking in terms of knowledge.

What you should take away from the blog post is not the code. It is the knowledge. It has given a good starting point, on doing your own research. Just using a lib usually never leads to that.

<comment><USER4> Using a lib can get things done. Sometimes you have to get things done now and have to come back to understanding the problem in depth later.

Debugging through someone else's library is often a great way to do that. (Provided your language/environment's debugging support is good enough.)

<comment><USER5> _Sometimes you have to get things done now and have to come back to understanding the problem in depth later._

This is a great way to create whole _new_ problems.

<comment><USER2> Do you know every implementation detail of the database management system you use?

The fact that proprietary databases exist means that you _can_ use libraries without understanding all the code in them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another way to look at this: if you're typing "setreuid" into your code, you're doing it wrong. Most networked Ruby programs don't need to run with superuser creds in the first place. Factor the need out of your code.

The threat model in this post is a bit dated, too. The EUID is insecure if (paraphrase) "you can execute arbitrary code in the process, because you could just execute setuid()". That's true, but it neglects the fact that if I can run arbitrary code in your process, you're fucked anyways:

* Localhost nobody->root is a speed bump on most Linux deployments.

* If your app works as "nobody", so does an attacker with "nobody" creds.

* "Nobody" has network access, can talk directly to your database, and to every insecure box in your data center.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is the complexity of the *nix IDs completely warranted or can it be mostly attributed to historical precedents? Would there be a way to significantly simplify it without really reducing flexibility (I'm not necessarily looking for a backwards-compatible way)?

<comment><USER2> The problem is not so much of user IDs, but rather how UNIX implements security. "root" can do privileged things, everyone else can't. For example, only the root user can listen on port 80. These rules are hard-coded in the depths of the OS, meaning you have to work around them.

The problem is that you don't want your process-that-listens-on-port-80 to have all the other permissions that "root" does. So you have to drop your privileges after binding port 80, resulting in the complexity of effective and real UIDs (and GIDs).

The solution is fine-grained access control. You don't want to say "run this app as nobody", you want to say "let this app connect to the MySQL server, write to /tmp/my-app, and load shared library foo". Could you implement a system like this? Yes. (SELinux is a start.)

But really, it is time for UNIX to die. "Worse is better" is getting old, and UNIX can't be fixed. Someone needs to implement a real OS (and provide UNIX compatibility so users can easily migrate).</comment></comment>


You Don't Have to Migrate to Python 3 - <AUTHOR> https://switowski.com/blog/you-dont-have-to-migrate-to-python3 <comment><USER2> Actually, you do. Even if CPython is supposed for another 5 years by the likes of Red Hat, the whole ecosystem around it is moving on and you may find your 3rd-party dependencies are no longer maintained for Python 2.

<comment><USER3> Read the article, which covers the over and unders quite well.

For those of us with long memories, it's not that different from the great migration from Perl to Python (i.e., Python2). Although Python2 and Python3 are more similar, they are definitely two different languages, and porting a project to a new language should not be undertaken without due consideration.

<comment><USER2> I've read the article. Maybe the author shouldn't have used a click-batey title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Personally, I don't want to keep installing an outdated run time to keep older software running on target machines.</comment>


Ask HN: Reconciling a quiet workspace with a pair programmming bullpen - <AUTHOR> When I read Peopleware or Spolsky I read about the importance of a quiet workspace to allow flow.
When I read about XP I read about pair programming and collaboration. How do you reconcile the two theories? Can you get into flow with someone else working with you. Can you get into flow with another pair yacking on at the next desk? Are they just different ways of working? <comment><USER2> Personally, I cannot be productive in a noisy environment (sans headphones), and I most definitely cannot be productive pair programming. (Or, good god, mob programming.) Yes, I've tried it.

I've been on one or two interviews where this requirement was brought up. For the common good, I just excuse myself.

It seems possible that some people can actually produce good results via pair programming, but I'm not aware of any examples myself.</comment>


Instagram will now hide likes in 6 more countries - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/17/instagram-will-now-hide-likes-in-6-more-countries/ <comment><USER2> Using a points system is a great way to get users addicted to that dopamine rush when using your app, though.</comment>


Building a better rhyming dictionary - <AUTHOR> http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=81 <comment><USER2> Great, but still no decent rhymes for orange or silver.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any digital agencies that are not so sales-heavy? - <AUTHOR> And perhaps name a few examples of them? Or am I just looking for a pipe dream if "not being sales heavy" is at odds with digital agencies?
I've worked at 2 agencies over 4 years, and the things that make them worse for developers can usually be traced back to the nature of salespeople rushing sales to clients. The PMs are usually spineless when it comes to saying "no" to clients and in worst case scenarios leading to long work days.
I don't know if there's such a thing for agencies to be less pushy on sales and know how to multiply their output without increasing no. of salespeople or clients, so they can focusing on delivering higher quality and be more choosy for reasonable requests. <comment><USER2> I'm sorry I don't have any direct advice.

Even working for internal clients ("the business") I see that "no" or delays are not tolerated, even when there is a good reason. There may not be sales people involved, but the business-IT relation is treated sensitively and IT management is always trying to set and meet stupid metrics.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not a pipe dream, but it's also not all about "salespeople rushing sales to clients".

I work in analytics at an agency holding company, which involves a heavy dose of both dev work across dozens of clients/accounts. But my work isn't really _seen_ as a dev project, so instead of the typical "client <-> account team <-> PM -> Me" telephone game devs get shoehorned into it's usually "client <-> account + me" (with PM being informed of any timelines as an FYI).

I get brought in directly to clients by the account teams when they have a need tangentially related to analytics. And even getting to own the conversation from the outset and throughout, I still have to deal with what you're talking about. It comes down to two things:

\- The account team. Account and PM teams tend to "own" a particular client, and all work from that client goes through that team. If your agency focuses on a particular type of project/niche, this isn't usually an issue. But if your agency does a variety of things for clients, this can suck as the account (and PM) team may entirely unrelated backgrounds from the type of projects that come your way, such that they absolutely botch it on the frontend. That tends to be the biggest issue in my case, but might not be for you. Out of the dozens of accounts teams I work with, there are exactly three that I truly _enjoy_ working with. Those three teams knew what they understood (and what they didn't), deferred and set client expectations as necessary, and were completely willing to listen to internal concerns and push back on the client when appropriate.

\- The clients themselves. Even with the best account team, sometimes the acceptance/execution of the project itself acts as a forcing function with the client. It's not that selling the project was rushed - it's that the project needs would have been perpetually fuzzy _until it was sold and started_. The client lacks the resources (either in time or in skills) to truly understand and define everything upfront, and their exposure to the project as it is underway serves that role. Every now and then you'll have clients that are both aware of this and willing to acknowledge it, and will allow you to create a timeline that lets you resolve all of the planning with an explicit upfront phase in the timeline. Usually that's not the case though, and it takes an account team that's either generally incredibly shrewd or at least well seasoned with the type of project at hand to able to put mitigations in place to soften the impact of the trainwreck to come. Sometimes though it just can't be avoided - even being the one that would ultimately feel the impact of it, I've knowingly signed myself up for trainwrecks because situationally there just wasn't any alternative (either the client was too important/big to say no to anything or the project was too critical to the overall client engagement to say no).

The only way to really get out of that situation is to work for a specialized agency with an industry-leading reputation. By being a specialized agency, your account teams and PMs won't be "generalists" and will be well versed in selling and running the types of projects the agency specializes in. And they'll be able to use that industry reputation as both leverage with clients to do things right and as cover to turn down projects that are obvious trainwrecks and could damage the agency's reputation.</comment>


Microsoft Takes Legal Action Against Barnes & Noble over Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2011/mar11/03-21CorpNewsPR.mspx <comment><USER3> Patents are disgusting as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't matter the industry.

I'm in biotech, and despite the tedious work involved in the process of investigative research--despite the sometimes massive materials and labor cost --patents do not make any sense.

In the end, the products of molecular cloning can be distributed essentially just like software. It's just information. You should not be able to corner off and control information space. If I want to work in a given area according to my interest, I should not have to pay royalties or join an exclusive research team.

<comment><USER4> There's at least a _potential_ defense of patents in traditional industries. When something takes tens of millions of dollars of research to create, there's _some_ case to be made for limited-term exclusivity.

But when it comes to something like UI, which someone hacked up over the course of a few hours... does this justify exclusivity for years?

Patents were created to balance the harmful effect of exclusivity and monopoly with the cost of creating innovation. In software the cost of creating innovation is practically free in comparison to traditional industries, and IMHO the scope of protection needs to be proportionate.

<comment><USER5> Developing a new drug costs about $1 billion on average, from initial research to final testing and regulatory approval. A temporary monopoly of several years seems entirely appropriate, even necessary if you expect private industry to be involved in pharmaceutical research.

<comment><USER6> Or so they keep telling us anyway:

 _Does the pharmaceutical industry exaggerate their R &D costs? _

[http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/21/does-the- pharmaceuti.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/21/does-the- pharmaceuti.html)

<comment><USER7> From the first comment on that article:

 _I never post here, but after seeing this, I just had to. The Light article is very biased and disingenuous - they have an agenda that's obvious from the tone of their text. For a realistic rebuttal, check out:[http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/03/07/the_costs_of...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/03/07/the_costs_of_drug_research_beginning_a_rebuttal.php) [http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/03/08/that_43_mill...](http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/03/08/that_43_million_rd_figure.php)

There are many other realistic, balanced rebuttals to the Light article out there as well. I've worked in the the biotech and drug industry (10 years) and am currently an academic. I've been on both sides of the fence and have a realistic perspective on how much it costs and how tough it is to discover and develop new medicines. The Light/Warburton figure is WAY off._

<comment><USER6> Note his rebuttal is mostly addressed to their own suggested $43 million figure, rather than disputing that the original $1+ billion figure is correct, as he seems to agree with the part of the paper discussing the problems with that number.

There's an couple of orders of magnitude between the estimates, so it's entirely possible for both to be _WAY off_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dammit Microsoft, just as I was starting to feel sympathetic towards the underdog smartphone player, you pull something like this.

<comment><USER8> Not their first time - Motorola and HTC were the first ones.

They tried branding themselves as the underdog with Bing too; but somehow I have trouble picturing them as the underdog.

You can do business with them, you can buy their products, but they don't deserve sympathy. No company does actually; you should treat them just as they treat you.

<comment><USER9> Here's a more comprehensive infographic of who is sueing who. [http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/infographic-whos- suing-w...](http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/infographic-whos-suing-who-in- mobile-10120/)

Nothing to feel sympathetic for anybody. They are all in the business to make money.

<comment><USER10> There's one thing I will point out on that diagram: there are no arrows emerging from Google. Not that we should feel sympathy for them, and perhaps it might just be that they don't have enough of a portfolio, but I think it's worth noting all the same.

<comment><USER11> That most probably means one of two things:

1\. Google hasn't got any relevant patents (unlikely)

2\. Google has a number of defensive patents in other things, and have threatened to countersue anyone who comes after them (like Sun before Oracle), which explains the cowards going after the smaller manufacturers instead.

<comment><USER12> Google actually has very few patents. Which makes sense. You own and generate a lot of patents if

1\. You're interested in shaking-down others (IBM comes to mind)

2\. You've written a big cheque to someone who shook you down and now you're trying to defend yourself.

#1 certainly doesn't apply to Google - not yet at least. And I don't think that Google has been badly burned in a patent dispute with anyone yet, so it doesn't look like they've made generating defensive lawsuits a big priority yet.

One source on the web from a couple of years ago says that Google's name appears on only about 190 patents in total. I did a search and was able to find ~600 patents with Google as the assignee. The same search yielded ~3700 patents for Apple, ~17000 for Microsoft, and ~64000 for IBM. Apparently Apple was issued more than 700 patents in 2010 alone, versus Google's 282. For the last few years, this is how many patents some of these companies have been issued:

#2010: _Apple 722_ Google 282 _Microsoft 3305_ Foxconn/honhai 1885

#2009: _Apple 399_ Google 143 _Microsoft 3160_ Foxconn/honhai 1310

#2008: _Apple 254_ Google 60 _Microsoft 2310_ Foxconn/honhai 1005

#2007: _Apple 157_ Google 35 _Microsoft 1958_ Foxconn/honhai 673

#2006: _Apple 133_ Google 22 _Microsoft 1614_ Foxconn/honhai 653

#1999-2005 _Apple 843_ Google 14 _Microsoft 3643_ Foxconn/honhai 3262

Searching through some of these patents is really discouraging. I remember that when Apple brought their suit against HTC (really, against Android and Google), there were a lot of armchair lawyers here on HN and elsewhere claiming just how obvious some of the patents that Apple was weilding were. At the time I actually believed that some of them had merit. But looking through some of these patents, especially some of the Foxconn ones, is there anyone who really believes that the front bezel design for a PC case (<http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/D512721.html>) or the particulars of a generic USB stick (<http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/D537819.html>) should be patentable? Some of the stuff that I've been looking at over the last hour makes Apple's and Microsoft's patents look like Bell's patent on the telephone.

<comment><USER13> The patents that start with "D" are design patents, not utility patents. I don't really know how big a problem they are. It seems like it would be pretty easy to avoid them if you knew about them, although how you would know about them all I have no idea.

<comment><USER14> My understanding is that a design patent is really only any good against a near-exact copy of the design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The hypocrisy of Microsoft is really a turn-off.

Microsoft statement on this new action against Barnes and Noble:

 _Their refusals to take licenses leave us no choice but to bring legal action to defend our innovations and fulfill our responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard the billions of dollars we invest each year to bring great software products and services to market?_

Then there is their statement regarding their appeal of the $290 millions dollar judgement against MS for infringing on i4I.

 _This case can be summed up in one world – balance," Microsoft's David Howard, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel for litigation, said in a statement. "The current approach taken by the Court of Appeals improperly tilts the scales to reward invalid patents. That approach needs to be corrected in favor of a system that ensures the process for obtaining and defending patents is clear, reasonable and doesn't unduly burden the system or innovation._

<comment><USER16> What hypocrisy? The two quotes you give do not show any sign of hypocrisy.

Microsoft's position is that software should be patentable, but that the standard for obtaining software patents is off and the courts are not doing a good job dealing with them. Both of the quotes you give are consistent with this view.

<comment><USER15> In the first instance they are wrapping themselves in the righteousness of their claims which are at best questionable. In the second they are lamenting how wrong it is that a company has to defend itself against spurious claims.

<comment><USER16> The mens rea for hypocrisy is that the alleged hypocrant believes one thing and is acting in a way inconsistent with that belief. They may be _wrong_ about their belief, but that is irrelevant.

You assert that Microsoft's claims are questionable. Assuming that is so for the sake of argument (I have not looked at the patents so cannot say), I see no reason to believe that _Microsoft_ thinks their claims are questionable.

In your first case, they likely believe that they have valid patents which they are asserting against an infringer. In your second, they believe that invalid patents are being asserted against them.

There is simply nothing hypocritical here.

EDIT: had the word "patentable" in the second paragraph where it should have said "questionable".

<comment><USER15> If we were in a court of law then I would agree with you but since we are not in a court of law I will hold to a different definition of hypocritical: applying a criticism to others that one does not apply to oneself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> patents:

[http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=deQCAAAAEBAJ&dq=5...](http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=deQCAAAAEBAJ&dq=5778372)

[http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=JvQAAAAAEBAJ&dq=5...](http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=JvQAAAAAEBAJ&dq=5889522)

[http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=DwEJAAAAEBAJ&dq=6...](http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=DwEJAAAAEBAJ&dq=6339780)

[http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=oKgVAAAAEBAJ&dq=6...](http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=oKgVAAAAEBAJ&dq=6891551)

[http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=jJcVAAAAEBAJ&dq=6...](http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=jJcVAAAAEBAJ&dq=6957233)

<comment><USER18> I actually took the time to read those patents, and as broken as I thought the US patent system was, I didn't realize it was that bad. One of the patents is actually a patent on displaying a temporary loading animation when a browser is downloading rather than having a dedicated loading status indicator. Another patent is for displaying a document while the background image is downloading rather than waiting for the background image!

<comment><USER19> True story. I worked on Hewlett Packard's first digital camera project around '97 or so. We were getting ready to freeze the firmware when the final legal review turned up a patent that another company (don't remember who, wanna say Samsung?) had been granted. The patent covered menus on the back of a digital camera where the cursor moved across menu items when you pressed up and down. We were asked to scramble and make the menu move underneath a static cursor to avoid exposure.

The best part was that the patent was granted sometime around 1980, if memory serves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. It presumably adds weight to consolidating Android patent litigation (Apple vs HTC, Oracle vs Google, Microsoft vs B&N, Etc.)

On a related note, when I was first pitched on the idea of OpenMoko and 'Open Source Phones' in general, I responded that the existing infrastructure anti- bodies wouldn't take kindly to something like that existing. When Google went there with their psueudo-OSS (POSS) product, at least they have the capital to defend against spurious attacks.

So the good news is that all around the table everyone has gone 'all in' (to use the poker vernacular). That suggests to me that this is the end of the beginning. My prediction is that we will have 6 to 10 years of litigation ahead (it is time limited by patent lifetimes in terms of starting new litigation beyond that time frame).

At best, we'll get Google holding out to the end. That will result in a pretty definitive doctrine for creating an open source phone by 2020. At worst, these will collapse into an MPEG-LA or Public-Key-Partners scenario creating a leech like entity that bleeds the public dry, enriches the players, while allowing them to side step direct blame. (such a settlement would most likely 'require' that nobody portion of the fees paid back to the rights holders be public)

Nothing particularly disruptive on the horizon unfortunately. I keep hoping for a 'wifi' smart phone that uses a network built with the white-space bands in the US. Of course they would keep a low profile, given the nature of their threat, but they would also have to raise probably 200 - 300 M$ to deploy and haven't seen that either.

The pessimist in me thinks there will be a run on Vaseline.

</comment><comment><USER21> This reminds me of Ballmer's claims that Linux infringes on Microsoft patents. They ultimately resulted in nothing, I see this heading in the same direction.

It seems more like a scare tactic than anything else. If they really wanted to go after Android, Google or Samsung would probably be included. Instead, they're going after some lower profile (though still very recognizable) manufacturers. To me that says they want publicity, not necessarily legal results.

<comment><USER22> I'm afraid not. This is something else entirely. Microsoft is rapidly losing their relevance and they're fighting to find a way forward. Something I wrote back in October when the Microsoft/Acacia patent licensing news hit.

"Microsoft has identified patents as the most effective attack against anyone seeking to profit from FOSS. Rather than attack FOSS directly, you dump as much money as you can in to littering the intellectual property space for a given product with patent mines. Step on a patent mine and all of the sudden you're paying Microsoft (or someone else) for sitting on their ass and building a patent portfolio rather than innovating with any real products."

[http://www.bradlanders.com/2010/10/08/the-new-patent- troll-e...](http://www.bradlanders.com/2010/10/08/the-new-patent-troll- economy/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> As a software engineer I pledge to never work for or in any other way assist the following companies as long as they continue their anti-competitive abuse of software patents that is harming our industry and the future of mobile computing: Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, Kodak, RIM.

Will other devs pledge with me?

<comment><USER24> This is a fine idea.

I think, along the same lines as a talent revolt, an organization wherein developers can pool a monthly fee to push our interests as an industry that thrives on actual innovation might be in order.

Say $30-$50 a month/dev or other interested individuals to go to funding a 'Patent Defense Fund' for members, building and maintaining a prior art database, and buying useful patents for the use as the little guy's nuclear deterrent.

<comment><USER25> Does the Open Invention Network accept donations, or companies without many patents to contribute to the pool?

<comment><USER24> I don't know. The Open Invention Network is Linux centric so it is not really what I was referring to above which would be more of a cross-industry entity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ugggh. Since the idea behind patents is to promote innovation, and not prevent it.. why can't that be a measure evaluated in the process of granting or enforcing the patent?

Microsoft should have to provide a compelling argument for how much money went into the 'research' around these UI paradigms, how without that investment these ideas would have never come about, how allowing them time to recoup that investment is better for the world than allowing other entities to copy the work.

In short, we're all collectively allowing these companies to file and enforce these patents ... we should expect them to prove to us that they're worthy.

<comment><USER26> Or maybe just try disallowing patents altogether for a couple of decades to see how that works out?

<comment><USER19> Don't get me wrong.. I'm as cynical as the next guy about the patent system.. but I do think the merits of the lucid arguments for it ought to be considered in a re-think. If you're spending loads of money on research to make an idea possible, and that idea is easily copied in a way that undercuts your ability to profit.. then I guess I get that. I just think you ought to have to _prove_ it.

Effectively, this would come pretty close to eliminating software patents altogether... but presumably wouldn't hurt the abilities of biotech, pharma, medical devices and the like where (I assume) the research dollars are often very real.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Mobile is getting too complicated. At last count that I saw:

       Apple: suing 2, being sued by 3
       Toshiba: being sued by 1
       Sony-Ericsson: being sued by 1
       Sharp: being sued by 3
       Samsung: being sued by 2
       RIM: suing 2
       Qualcomm: suing 1, being sued by 1
       Oracle: suing 1
       Nokia: suing 8, being sued by 2
       Motorola: being sued by 3
       Microsoft: suing 3
       B&N: being sued by 1
       LG: being sued by 2
       Kodak: suing 5
       HTC: being sued be 2
       Hitachi: being sued by 1
       Google: being sued by 1
       Elan: suing 1

<comment><USER27> This is older, but the visual is impressive: [http://www.technewsdaily.com/smartphone-companies-in-a- vicio...](http://www.technewsdaily.com/smartphone-companies-in-a-vicious- cycle-of-suing-and-countersuing--1403/)

<comment><USER28> Whoa. Looks like the Watson ball.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> How is this even legal in the US? - in the UK you can only sue the producer of violating product and not the distributer, and even threatening a distributer without having first won a court case against the producer is illegal (to stop companies strong-arming distributers with patent threats regardless of the validity of the patents which the distributer can't reasonably expected to be knowledgable about).

It seems in this case the lawsuit is against functionality in Android and B&N are merely the distributer.

</comment><comment><USER30> Microsoft claims that the patents infringed include "natural ways of interacting with devices." I checked my thesaurus and alternative words for _natural_ include: normal, ordinary, everyday, usual, regular, common, commonplace, typical, routine, standard, established, customary, accustomed, habitual.

I thought patents were supposed to be issued only for "novel" innovations?

</comment><comment><USER31> There's no point being angry with Microsoft as, like any company, their stated goal is to make money. Anger should be directed at the US patent system which creates an environment in which businesses must act this way -- not an entirely fair statement given that companies like Microsoft no doubt influence patent legislation, and do so generally for the worse.

If this bothers you don't rage against companies for playing the game, donate to the EFF <https://www.eff.org/> or call your elected representatives.

</comment><comment><USER32> [http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2...](http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2011/03/21/android- patent-infringement-licensing-is-the-solution.aspx) has some more details

<comment><USER33> It amazes me that anyone really believes that stuff. I posted this comment there, don't know if it'll show up:

If Microsoft truly had "innovated" all this great smartphone user experience, why is it that nobody seems to want a phone with a Microsoft OS?

But the really stupid thing is that Microsoft is far more vulnerable to patent litigation than anyone else at this point. Barnes & Noble can survive a judge's order blocking sales of Nook a lot longer than Microsoft can survive a shutdown of Windows or Office.

The obvious conclusion is that Microsoft itself doesn't believe it can innovate in a fair market competition.

Like stars, the end state for large technology companies is a black hole of litigation and patent trolling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think if Microsoft wanted to declare "developer friendliness", they would unilaterally declare that they won't engage in offensive patent actions, and encourage all other companies to do the same. Or, just make it entirely opt- in; they promise not to sue anyone who won't sue them.

I suspect it would cost them not much more than their current startup outreach efforts, and would build a lot more goodwill.

</comment><comment><USER35> If you can't fight 'em, sue 'em. When will the software patent insanity end?

<comment><USER33> When it's someone other than lawyers writing the law.

<comment><USER36> I think if we have someone other than lawyers writing laws things will get worse, not better.

The patent system has serious problems, so does Microsoft Windows. Do you think Windows would be better if it weren't developed by software engineers?

<http://www.ladas.com/Patents/USPatentHistory.html>

<comment><USER37> Your analogy doesn't really hold, because software engineers probably use the software they create, so they have an incentive to make it good. Lawyers have an incentive to make laws such that you need more lawyers, which the patent system succeeds at marvellously.

That's not to say that there's really an alternative, just pointing out the perverse incentive structure.

<comment><USER38> Sorry, but that doesn't make sense. Equally, one could make the case that software engineers have an incentive to make bad/incomplete/burdensome software so that they are still needed to provide fixes/updates. Lawyers also "use" the law, it still applies to them.

The patent situation won't change, as the players involved are too keen of their portfolios.

<comment><USER37> I think the perverse incentive you point to wrt software is a real one. I think that's why the tools that engineers use are usually the best pieces of software.

I don't think patent lawyers are generally have to use patent law in the same way that software engineers have to use software.

<comment><USER33> Of course they don't allow the patenting of processes essential to patent lawyering so the analogy doesn't hold.

But my point was that the patent system really is "used" by lawyers and they do, in fact, optimize it for their purposes (e.g., extracting wealth from others who actually produce things of value).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Is there a reason for the "Click Here to Install Silverlight" link at the top of the page? Is there a video or something on this page about the legal action, or is it just a friendly suggestion?

<comment><USER40> Seems to be a standard Microsoft home site thing.

<comment><USER41> That's the only way someone will install this thing, after all... No other site will do that.

<comment><USER42> netflix

<comment><USER41> I'd rather not use Netflix.

<comment><USER7> And we all know that the web habits of the majority of broadband internet users is primarily based on rbanffy.

<comment><USER41> I can't speak for the majority of broadband users. I can only say I'd rather not use Netflix than install Silverlight.

I have lived just fine without it anyway and chances are my TV can do it on its own without Silverlight.

<comment><USER7> You claim that no other site would give a reason to install Silverlight. Someone mentions Netflix, a popular website which depends on Silverlight being installed. You then say that you would prefer not using Netflix to installing Silverlight. Your comment then becomes

1) A non sequitur. Your own choice has no bearing on the last two comments except to voice your own feelings about silverlight.

2) A suggestion that your own feelings for Silverlight reflect the vast majority of broadband Internet users, directly contradicting all available data.

I chose the most charitable interpretation of your comment, as option 1) is clearly off-topic and not relevant to the thread or the article.

<comment><USER41> > Your own choice has no bearing on the last two comments except to voice your > own feelings about silverlight.

You got that partly right. I have no need for Silverlight.

> A suggestion that your own feelings for Silverlight reflect the vast > majority of broadband Internet users

Maybe you are reading too much in my comment. Anyway, Silverlight adoption is low, pointing out few people feel the need to install it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> If you can't lead the wave, ride on it.

<comment><USER41> Or crash it so nobody rides it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Anyone has a list of the patents in question? It seems like if the description is right, it has something to do with the UI. I was expecting something like the usual patent suit over the FAT filesystem used on SDCards or something like that. This is more serious.

</comment><comment><USER45> I hope an American lawyer can answer this (or at least someone with a good knowledge of the US legal system).

What can an individual (even one outside of the US) do to effect change in the software patent landscape? Who needs to made aware of the problems in the patent system? How can these people be reached? What will it take to get them to introduce changes that reduce the number of these lawsuits?

Is there anyone running a website dedicated to 1) cataloguing obvious ideas to act as prior art, 2) collecting cases for use in lawsuits involving software patents, 3) systematizing steps for how individuals can make a change?

</comment><comment><USER46> Does there exist some organisation which acts as an umbrella treaty against patent abuse. For example a centralised pool of patents held by all member companies in the organisation is used as a deterrent against patent abuse, in the event that any member of the organisation is attacked with a patent, all other members attack the aggressor with their patents?

Patents seem to be enough of a thorn in the side of business that it would be beneficial for at least a significant amount of businesses to participate in such an organisation. If this does not exist, why not?

<comment><USER47> If you don't want to build anything, it doesn't matter.

Patent trolls are basically ghosts with guns. There is nothing to really shoot at to kill.

You can potentially take their gun away by invalidating their patents, they have no big downside risk. There is no profitable software development portion of the company that you can blow up.

<comment><USER46> Except in this particular instance, and in many other instances, it's not just pure patent trolls doing the abuse. Microsoft (and many of the other players in this war) does actually have a profitable software development portion of the company that could be blown up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> That's why you never build your business in US...

<comment><USER33> It really doesn't matter. If you want to sell products into the US or the industrialized world in general, you are put at risk by the patent system.

<comment><USER48> Sure... But as i see, the patent system in US is a mess. That can make my business fragile : I develop some app and then some troll sues me, so now instead investing in innovation , i have to invest my lawyer !

Maybe you have to do more paperworks in other Countries (ex. Germany) but your business is not in danger because bad use of patents. Sure other countries have also patent trolls but the system is not bad and currupt as US.

<comment><USER33> What I'm saying is that being based somewhere other than the US does not make you immune to the effect of US patents.

Even if you refuse to sell your product into the US market (good luck), as in this case, your customers can be sued in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Does anyone make generic mobile hardware yet? The concept seems to have paid off for personal computing.

<comment><USER12> How feasible is this? To have interchangeable and commoditized component smartphones? Probably not feasible at all I would think. The desktop pc gives up a lot of performance and simplicity for compatibility and modularity. But the constraints that they're designed within are pretty simple - <USER2> performance and minimize price, and try not to pull any more than 15 amps out of the wall. Smartphones need to optimize for CPU performance, component price, power draw, component size, rf stability, and then they still need to have an attractive design to appeal to fickle phone customers. I don't know how much leeway they would have to establish a uniform hardware design to minimize os and driver customization that would be necessary for an installable-os platform.

<comment><USER49> I disagree. There are some interesting multi-core SoC parts hitting the market, ARM is 'in', the move to solid state storage is effectively complete, and multi-touch screens provide a rich interface without the bulk of keyboards and pointing devices. Go back and look at the OQO, but swap in modern hardware and VM tech. Include 802.11 if it is cheap and efficient enough, but provide a slot for drop-in 4g, bluetooth, DRM (the Nook/Kindle plug... probably not an iPod but maybe a Zune plug), etc. --note that having only one 'net' slot pressures providers to bundle content, allow subscribers to extend connectivity plans to cover a content device... it gets complicated but it both creates a product quality incentive and provides opportunities for providers to profit by differentiation.

Build in something like Xen and plan on syncing the user disk image to the network, and run expensive processes on external devices (or AWS) when available. Dock to your laptop to build the presentation; deliver it from your this thing. Dock the thing to any TV and play a movie, without having to move the content from one device to another. etc. etc. etc.

I fully expect these to be commodity parts made by the likes of Dell or HP inside of 8-12 years.

<comment><USER12> _I fully expect these to be commodity parts made by the likes of Dell or HP inside of 8-12 years._

Setting aside the fact that neither Dell nor HP actually make any of the parts inside their _PCs_ now, I think there are too many separate issues that you're bringing up here. Clarifying,

1\. Will netbooks (you mentioned the OQO) be built on modular, user-swappable hardware components.

2\. Will smartphones be built on modular, user-swappable hardware components (you said, " _802.11 if it is cheap and efficient enough, but provide a slot for drop-in 4g, bluetooth, DRM_ ")

3\. Will smartphones be build according to a fixed hardware/software HAL that is well specified enough that no OS or driver customization is needed and user-installable and substitutable OS's are possible.

#1 is possible IMHO. A few years ago ASUS was selling a customizable laptop platform that small computer stores could build and sell as their own brand. It was big and bulky and went away quickly, which is always going to be a problem with modular hardware, so I don't see this as ever being very popular. But someone might try it again with netbooks.

#2 is just never going to happen. Forget about it. if you _provide a slot for drop-in 4g, bluetooth, DRM_ , someone else is going to build a competing smartphone with all of that built in but without the bulky connector and housing. It'll be smaller and sexier than your monster-smartphone, and it'll probably have better battery life with the extra internal room for a larger battery. Modularity is irrelevant when you can just include everything that's cutting-edge at the moment and you'll just get a new smartphone in a couple of years under a new contract anyways.

#3 might happen, but I still doubt it. It goes back to what I said about constraints and room for innovation. When something big needs to change with the PC HAL (like USB3), Intel, Microsoft, Dell, and a bunch of others have to get together and formulate something like XHCI to provide a common hardware interface - otherwise every USB3 chip would require a separate loadable driver. In the embedded market and with smartphones, there's no constraint on the hardware interface - you just throw the chip in and then add a kernel driver for it. Time saved, competitive advantage gained.

How much longer would it have taken for NFC to be included in smartphones if Samsung, HTC, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, and others had to get together and hash out a common hardware interface for NFC chips the way PC manufacturers do with stuff like UHCI/EHCI/AHCI/etc? A lot longer. And given that no one expects user-installable and substitutable OSs on smartphones, there's no incentive now or in the future to provide one. And given that a smartphone platform that provides a common HAL is going to be at a competitive disadvantage wrt smartphones with custom hardware, there's no thin end to this wedge.

<comment><USER49> First, thanks for the nice response.

"Setting aside the fact that neither Dell nor HP actually make any of the parts inside their PCs now"

I was referring to the whole device as a 'part', and don't really expect Dell or HP take over from Broadcom, TI, and so on. Anyone that sells a tablet could sell this.

1: Hopefully not. Ideally, hardware should perform well for the lifetime of the device, without having to swap out any of the internals. I gave up screwdrivers a few years ago.

2: I don't think I said smartphones... but you could use the slot to turn whatever it is into a phone, if you really need it. Personally, I will use something akin to Google voice or Skype over 802.11, but mobile data connections are fine. It needn't be bulky either -- the smaller express card form factor was nice, for instance.

3: Can you run your OS on Xen, etc.? Then everything will be fine. A good prototype device would run an AMI directly from your AWS account... a killer device would be able to expose exotic integrated hardware features when available, but it would be up to an OS to deal with it. Now, that's obviously more difficult, but not as difficult it was ten years ago.

Point taken on the NFC example. In my world though, people only need to agree at the VM level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I normally defend Microsoft, but then they pull crap like this. This lawsuit dance is ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER51> All they really want to do is make Android devices cost more so their fee for software on their own hardware will look competitive.

Interesting how they aren't suing Google directly?

</comment><comment><USER52> I have listed the patents in my blog post on this: [http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/03/microsoft-sues- barne...](http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/03/microsoft-sues-barnes-noble- foxconn-and.html)

1 of them was previously also asserted against Motorola. 4 of them weren't.

Since Microsoft already has 23 patents in suit against Motorola, Barnes & Noble will know that the 5 patents asserted today are but a small selection of Microsoft patents allegedly infringed by Android.

<comment><USER53> _If Barnes & Noble refused to pay (which is what Microsoft says), it's actually a matter of fairness that Microsoft enforces its patents because otherwise those who respect Microsoft's rights would be at a competitive disadvantage versus non-paying infringers._

Jeez Florian, you have come a long way since your campaign against software patents.

A few days ago you blow up the Bionic GPL issue as if it was an unprecedented tactic used by Google (and were soundly rebutted on LWN by the way ;) and now this.

Have you received funding from Microsoft at any point, perchance?

<comment><USER6> Does it actually make sense to talk about "respecting" "rights" granted to you by a patent before it has been proved in a court of law? There's clearly some disagreement about what "rights" they have or there wouldn't be lawsuits happening to establish exactly what they are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Does anyone see a gap here for a PatentWar app that runs on Android?

<comment><USER54> Similar to drug wars but no drugs, just pools of patents :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> they already reached a settlement with Amazon last year. MS is going to get their way with B&N too.

<comment><USER41> Sadly, it only enables them to troll even more.</comment></comment>