Instagram insists littergram app is renamed - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-kent-36148093 <comment><USER2> Lucas should have his lawyers send a telegram to Instagram's lawyers explaining where the _gram_ part of the name comes from, and ask them to change their name.

The idea that large companies can own a word, that they themselves have appropriated, is at least egotistical, at worst unethical (imo).

<comment><USER3> Here's how the BBC describes the product:

"Littergram invites people to share pictures of rubbish."

It's pretty clear that -gram here is used to signal that this is a picture sharing app.

If Instagram didn't exist it's unlikely Lucas would have called his app Littergram.

<comment><USER2> > "Littergram invites people to share pictures of rubbish."

I think they put the wrong app name in there. Given that sentence, they are identical apps.

<comment><USER4> LOL!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Instagram also insisted we change our name from Instapainting.com to something else or remove all Instagram references (we used filestack.com which includes Instagram as an upload option).

When I complied and removed the Instagram reference they then decided to extend it to all Facebook references (like button, Facebook upload, etc) on the grounds that people might get the insta prefix confused with Facebook since it owns Instagram.

<comment><USER6> I have built apps that integrate closely with known popular video streaming services (hint, hint), and I've dealt with both their legal departments.

1\. Most people are clueless about the law / their rights. Companies will try and bully you into taking your site down, without any legal basis.

2\. Read up on nominative fair use of a trademark. You are allowed to make use of a competitors trademark, even for commercial purposes.

3\. You probably didn't have to make any of those changes. While I'm not a lawyer, both legal departments backed off after sending them a well-argued reply to their bullshit (sorry, that's the only way to describe it) arguments. I do work with an excellent IP law firm, but I didn't even have to contact them to handle this.

4\. I highly doubt a tech company would sue you in a meritless case. Even a simple case will cost them $30-50k. The in house lawyer contacting you is often a paper pusher that has to scout the internet for "possible infringements" of the mark. They'll need to get approval to sue you, and risk vs. reward will be considered. If you're based outside of the US, even better. They'll usually have to sue you in your local jurisdiction.

5\. Obviously, be prepared to fight if they do come after you.

<comment><USER7> My understanding is that a small percentage of legal disputes involving lawyers result in a court action actually being raised and only a small percentage of court actions actually run - most of these settle "at the door of the court".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They need to take a page out of this guys book.

[http://www.slutsofinstagram.com](http://www.slutsofinstagram.com)

Link is SFW, about a magical duck named Slutsof and his tales in the land of Stagram.

<comment><USER4> If he wanted a holiday he should visit [http://gotahoe.com](http://gotahoe.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I clicked on the link, I thought the article was going to be about a dispute about an app highlighting all of the digital junk on Instagram/Facebook feeds.

It occurs to me that my brain now readily connects these brands to trash. There was a time when that wasn't the case.

<comment><USER2> Which may be what this is actually about; having the words 'litter' and 'gram' together. Speculating that 'keep-britain-tidygram' might not have attracted attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> They should send a bunch of anagram digram via telegram, cabelgram or sonogram, possibly including an angiogram or mammogram to tell that what tits they are being.

Perhaps they could contact Polygram and use paper with a monogram of a decagram, hexagram, octagram, parallelogram, trigram, or pentagram.

If we prapared a cartogram or histogram it could serve as a diagram of their foolishness.

It would certainly serve as an epigram to this whole program and then even an engram will not find a memory of it.

<comment><USER11> Calling lawyer and C levels executives tits is very offensive for the mammary glands and their bearers. Tits are awesome. They nurture life, they look pretty and they are instant antidepressant for a sizable chunk of males (and a lot of women in my recent environments, but that is another story). And they are also forbidden from Instagram - so I guess people working there have no idea how they look like.

<comment><USER12> Its also offensive to a certain type of bird.

<comment><USER4> Not to mention feathered animals!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Instagram sounds like an appropriation of Telegram (invented 200 years ago?). So proof of prior art in my opinion.

If they plan to do this in a UK court then he can represent himself pretty cheaply. Think of all the publicity.

I'm not a lawyer but I've been watching Suits (3 Seasons), I could definitely win this for the guy.

<comment><USER3> I've been listening to a lot of Rumpole on Radio Four Extra.

Let me know how I can help.

<comment><USER13> Your credentials blow mine out of the water. I'm promoting you to head council for the defence.

<comment><USER3> Any Ally Mcbeal fans here who can advise us on American law?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Am I the only one here who thinks Instagram has a point here? This guy named his photo sharing app littergram which clearly is a reference to Instagram. There might actually be people in the target audience of littergram or Instagram who think these apps are related. If Instagram is evil for doing something about this, I really have no idea what constitutes as good trademark protection.

<comment><USER15> So if I advertise my kissogram service using that word then people will think it's from Instagram?

How about my hydraulics company BigRam?

Suppose you think Apple are infringing Facebook by using the term face-time?

Good TM protection is stopping people from using your trademark in a way that confuses the origin of goods/services of theirs as being yours.

Littergram if surely a reference to sending a message (-gram) about litter.

Similarly, FWIW, Instagram aren't ripping off Instapaper either in my opinion but they're a lot closer to it than the Littergram service.

If Instagram wanted a more unique name they should have chosen one that wasn't the combination of a well-known prefix and suffix.

<comment><USER16> I find the case a bit borderline, but I can see Instagram's point. It's not _just_ the -gram ending context-free.

Unlike kissograms, or even the Telegram app, Littergram is specifically about photo sharing, which risks confusing people into believing they and Instagram are related.

TBH I think the guy has done a good job of getting publicity. He should use this opportunity to get some goodwill, and use the publcity to change the name to something close enough but not infringing.

I'll offer LitterBot ;)

<comment><USER17> Litter book?

<comment><USER2> FaceTrash - because he's trying to get people to face up to trash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As somebody pointed out, Telegram want's Instagram to change their name :)

Actually, this may be one of the best things that could happen to LitterGram from the marketing point of view, I too had tweeted to FB and Instagram asking them not to be so narrow minded.

<comment><USER19> We could invent a new app where budgies could vocally send selfies to each other and call it tweetfacegram...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Instacart has photos... Instapaper has social features... FB is instadumb.

<comment><USER4> Instapaper was on the scene well before InstaGram...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looks like Facebook wants to be next "evil corporation" in developers minds. Microsoft already knows how difficult is to wash out this reputation.

<comment><USER4> That was established years ago when they got rid of all Facebook apps. At that point, Favebook was actually pretty cool - in fact it was an extensible platform and you could do cool things.

Now it's a pure advertising machine. If Facebook disappeared tomorrow, not much would be lost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Telegram and Instacart are next.

<comment><USER23> Wow, I can't believe those Telegram people thought they could get away with making up a name out of 'Telephone' and 'Instagram'.

<comment><USER24> I'm more appalled at Alexander Graham Bell for his blatant ripoff of Apple's "iPhone" trade mark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> All *book words should be banned because of Facebook trademark.

<comment><USER26> As well as face*. Clearly Mark owns all marks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is Instagram's problem that they think people might accidentally think Littergram is Instagram?

<comment><USER4> That's not what I meant when I called your photos rubbish!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> _be_ renamed. Really a careless error for BBC.

<comment><USER29> So "Insists it be renamed" vs "insists it is renamed".

IMHO the first option sounds formal and archaic. The second sounds more in tune with contemporary English.

That said "insists they rename it" would get rid of the passive and avoid the problem entirely.

<comment><USER30> Yeah that was the first thing I noticed as well. I'm somewhat surprised (a little sad, even) that the BBC chose not to write it in the subjunctive mood, which is precisely what is required here.

I thought when I read the headline that Instagram was insisting (that is, reiterating) that Littergram was already renamed.

<comment><USER31> The subjunctive is ingrained in my internal English grammar model, as is the who-whom distinction. I've been thinking about dropping them, though. They have started to sound a bit elitist.

<comment><USER30> Well, you can always adapt your speech to your audience. But I don't see why it should be seen as elitist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I can't believe people are defending Instagram here... They haven't got a case but are bullying with their lawyers as all big companies do. How pathetic! Queue the armchair lawyers saying Instagram has to because trademarks require enforcement and other nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER33> Previous 'discussion' [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11587265](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11587265).

Not sure how the dupe detection works here, but I submitted the same exact link yesterday.

<comment><USER34> I believe HN's algorithm discounts links which didn't attract much attention last time, so as to allow for interesting links that happened to be overlooked to get a second chance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Any clues as to what Littergram's legal position would be if they were to completely ignore Facebook?

Would Facebook really bother with blackmailing ( _court fees are expensive_ ) a small nonprofit into changing it's name?

<comment><USER4> They have to I'm afraid. Trademarks can only be made on words that are not considered generic. If the trademark does end up being used by the general public as a common or class name for a particular product, then you lose the exclusive right to the mark. You therefore _have_ to defend it, even when you'd really rather not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Who is going to mistake "Instagram" with "Littergram"?

And what about my valentine's day Candygrams from 10, 20 years ago? Should we rename those too?

This seems a bit ridiculous.

<comment><USER4> Since when do candygrams take photos?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> If they think they will win this fight they should talk to the old Lindows linux distro/company..

</comment><comment><USER38> My favorite childhood cereal Golden Grahams should demand Instagram change their name.

</comment><comment><USER39> Latergramme just changed their name to later.com....

</comment><comment><USER40> Fuck Facebook.</comment>


World's first 'tax' on Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18440979/

<comment><USER2> Actual URL is <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18440979> (no trailing /)

 _Edit_ : Main discussion is here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4109137></comment>


Haskell and the Perl Community - <AUTHOR> http://cooking-with-lisp.blogspot.com/2005/04/haskell-and-perl-community.html

<comment><USER2> This is 6 years old. In the meantime I dont think this cross fertilization has gone very far.

<comment><USER3> A lot of the Perl 6 operators [1] have a Haskellish feel to them, especially the operators that modify operators.

[1]: [http://glyphic.s3.amazonaws.com/ozone/mark/periodic/Periodic...](http://glyphic.s3.amazonaws.com/ozone/mark/periodic/Periodic%20Table%20of%20the%20Operators%20A4%20300dpi.jpg)</comment></comment>


There is room for 1.2T new trees to absorb more C than human emissions each year - <AUTHOR> https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-02/ez-pcc021119.php <comment><AUTHOR> A few years ago, I did the math on planting trees to offset your carbon emissions, and came up with an affordable $15/year/person for the average US resident: [http://shindyapin.tumblr.com/post/141034501197/climate- chang...](http://shindyapin.tumblr.com/post/141034501197/climate-change- solution-simplified)

There was only one problem: it did not seem feasible to scale to the point of offsetting all of the human-caused CO2. Now, a new study says that is is feasible (see the original post link).

I have been offsetting my family's carbon for the last four years. If you want to do so, as well, you can donate here: [https://trees.org/carboncalculator/](https://trees.org/carboncalculator/)</comment>


The Curse of Konzo - <AUTHOR> https://www.damninteresting.com/the-curse-of-konzo/ <comment><USER2> > Other doctors already at the scene included a young medic from Sweden named > Hans Rosling, who was working in one of the affected areas as a District > Medical Officer.

Hans Rosling was known to me for his (TED) talks and his mesmerizing data visualizations but I didn't know that he spent 20 years of his life studying konzo. He has such a fascinating biography [1].

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

<comment><USER3> Sad to read he died about a year ago. I didn't realise it was him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I couldn't make it through the article due to the font size. Only 13 lines of text fit on my phone screen, each with ~25 characters. I know the current design trend is toward larger fonts, but this is ridiculous.

<comment><USER5> I thought the site was pretty clean, and it's definitely refreshing with a site linked here that does not show a paywall or crash the browser due to some badly written javascript.

I do agree that the font size was a bit large though, but that can be easily fixed by simply reducing font size in the browser. Firefox (I'm sure there are many other options, e.g. Pocket) can show the site in article mode where you can easily adjust the font size to your liking. Problem solved!

Very interesting article by the way!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Loved this episode, quite interesting.</comment>


Blunt Network Administrator Job Posting - <AUTHOR> http://jobview.monster.com/getjob.aspx?JobId=144461403 <comment><USER2> I thought this was actually quite well written: honest but not hyperbolic, and not glamorizing the hard work like you see in many ads ("must be passionate about widgets!"). No ping-pong tables or free lunches, and even a bit sheepish about the social activities---in contrast to semi-mandatory drinking sessions sold like a perk. My only complaint (albeit a big one) is that if they recognize the job is undesirable, they should be compensating accordingly, so that ad should have included a salary range and a range for the vacation days.

Btw, a great book for surviving an environment like this is Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas Limoncelli. I'm not a sysadmin, but it has a lot of good advice for developers also.

</comment><comment><USER3> As fun as that was to read, I would never apply.

The type of person who is attracted to this position will be a very unique person, to say the least.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps that was the point. Someone may not want this job to be filled for whatever reason?

<comment><USER5> I would say it was the point, but not for the shady reason you think. Rather, it ensures that people applying know what they are getting into immediately. Quite a good pre-filter.

<comment><USER6> It could be a job posting to satisfy the requirements of PERM ([http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/perm.cfm](http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/perm.cfm) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like this might be pretty effective. There are plenty of emotional robots out there that won't mind the stress levels and just want to constantly be useful.

<comment><USER8> It could be written: Seeking admin who needs constant validation of their existence, with limited desire to improve the system maintainability, who will reinforce the idea that their job is a black art.

<comment><USER9> HN can make a gold nugget sound like a turd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It struck me that there are many parallels in this posting with the realities of being a clinician at such a hospital.

</comment><comment><USER11> I find the job posting to be completely unremarkable; they are essentially hiring a Consultant from a VAR (Value Added Reseller).

It's pretty much what I do today, except I do it for many customers and my current VAR doesn't have me on a on-call rotation, though it wouldn't be remarkable if I was on a rotation or depending on the VAR, permanently on call.

This is a dog whistle ad for consultants who maybe want to stop consulting independently or consultants who want to stop working for a VAR.

<comment><USER9> I don't think you're wrong, I run a small MSP, I got the same sense you did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How much to you want to bet someone was told to hire their own replacement?

</comment><comment><USER9> What do you all figure a job like this should pay?

</comment><comment><USER13> Can't be worse than working in the Bay Area.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how much a position like that pays.

<comment><USER15> Barely enough to cover the medication required to keep your blood pressure at a healthy level. Luckily when you fall over face down in a balmy server room the people you need to save you are close by.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> When clicking the back button in Safari, Monster popped up an alert attempting to make me stay and subscribe. That's just not very nice.

<comment><USER17> Same in Firefox. Quite rude.</comment></comment>


The Difficulty of Faking Data (1999) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.kkuniyuk.com/Math119FakingData.pdf <comment><USER2> This is awesome, and could be a fun project for introductory students. It gives practice with:

\- Extracting digits from numbers (easily done with a few function calls in Python, or some math)

\- Calculating frequency of a known set of items in a sequence

\- Some application of simple mathematical formulas[1]

I wouldn't mind trying this at some point...

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law#Statistical_te...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law#Statistical_tests)

</comment><comment><USER3> Benford's law offers an approach to detecting fabricated data by looking at the distribution of the most significant digits of the data presented and matching.

There's a paper that was published in the last 5 years, which I unfortunately can't seem to find. It detects fabricated data by examining less significant digits and taking advantage of the fact that our data is often discrete.

The main idea is that an experiment surveyed 20 people about some statistic that take an integer value (age rounded down, the number of times participants blinked in a second, etc.), you should never see a mean value of, say, 1234.56. Why? The average of 20 integers must have a decimal part of {0.00, 0.05, 0.10, 0.15, ..., or 0.95}, so if the author reports some other statistic, then immediately you know that there's something fishy going on.

</comment><comment><USER4> This brings to mind a classic pre-Disney, pre-NYT FiveThirtyEight article applying some of these principles to take some pollsters to task.

\- From 2009, Strategic Vision Polls Exhibit Unusual Patterns, Possibly Indicating Fraud: [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/strategic-vision- polls-...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/strategic-vision-polls- exhibit-unusual/)</comment>


Amazon In-Car Delivery - <AUTHOR> https://amazon.com/keyincar <comment><USER2> What could _ _possibly_ _ go wrong? Actually, this is an innovative idea to try to solve the problem of how a retailer with little to no physical locations can be more convenient. If weren't constitutionally impossible I could see Amazon wanting to take over the Postal System...

</comment><comment><USER3> Previous discussion:

 _Audi and Amazon to try car-boot delivery service (2015)_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9426589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9426589)</comment>


New form of copyright troll - <AUTHOR> http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/progressive-political-forum-fights-lawsuit-sentence-news-excerpt/

<comment><USER2> Interesting story, but the poster here substituted an inaccurate, flamebait title for the original.

<comment><USER3> _"Progressive political forum fights lawsuit over five sentence news excerpt"

By Stephen C. Webster copyright

Progressive political forum fights lawsuit over five sentence news excerpt. The practice of excerpting news and linking to its source is what drives the blogosphere, engages millions in political discussion and aides the dissemination of information the world over.

However, if the so-called "copyright troll" company Righthaven LLC is successful, a vibrant political forum for American progressives could be shut down, all thanks to a five sentence excerpt from the Las Vegas Review-Journal that caught the paper's attention._

Now how many sentences is that now ...</comment></comment>


Being a "Great Coder" and 10000 Hours - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/msg/d52aff66b951b460 <comment><USER3> There really is a meme here I think, and it relates to ego.

Having said that, I definitely do think there is truth in massive variations between programmers, though I personally think that is a combination of a small pre-requisite talent (the ability to code at all, which I think a surprisingly small amount of people have - simply a genetically determine brain configuration), and mostly attitude + hard work.

For example, I took part in the recent Stanford AI class, though not about programming specifically, I was utterly down-heartened when I heard they sent out those 'send me your CVs you clever people!' emails to the top 1k students, it just made me feel like a lot of people were taking part in order to participate in a 'look how much cleverer I am than you' pissing match.

That kind of things ruins the collaborative 'learning for the joy of learning' side of things and has a tendency to make the whole thing into a sort of nasty elitist thing. I really wish they hadn't done that (N.B. I did fine on the course - 98.7% - so this isn't sour grapes).

The biggest problem with anything like this is the idea that 'here is some test of inherent intelligence - I am far better than you so you are inherently unable to do this thing' which is just the biggest barrier to actually trying to do something - if you think you inherently suck or at least are simply mediocre, your motivation to do that thing is severely reduced.

or perhaps I'm just ranting/projecting here :)

<comment><USER4> The best coders I know (including agavin, who comments below) are all insanely hard workers. There are a few other correlates, but these seem secondary to me:

\- willing and able to rapidly learn new tools (especially languages, debuggers, build/test infrastructures, and profilers)

\- understand software at many levels (so-called "full stack" programmers)

\- more interested in producing a working system than in technical details

\- self-confident enough to seek experts and extract information from them on areas of ignorance

\- have a strong aesthetic sense of code

Definitely "being really smart" or "having a Ph.D" hasn't been a correlate in my experience; if anything, I've seen these to be negatively correlated with code production and quality.

And distribution of coding ability definitely seems to follow a normal curve; a handful of coders I know are 6 sigma out. There are many more two-sigma outliers, and tons in the middle, as you'd expect.

<comment><USER5> _Definitely "being really smart" or "having a Ph.D" hasn't been a correlate in my experience; if anything, I've seen these to be negatively correlated with code production and quality._

Unfortunately this is largely the case. It's in many ways similar to why many on HN don't want to do Java enterprise LOB apps. It seems like painful drudge work. For a lot of really smart people who did their PhD -- the work it takes to build a production web app is painful drudge work. They'll happily build the prototype that proves the concept and their done. Everything else is a painful drudge work -- a solved problem ("I can reduce what's left to what Facebook did. QED.")

<comment><USER6> Um.. most PhDs in the experimental sciences involve lots of drudge work, and 14 hour days, and the people who make it are generally very hard workers. This may not be true in theory or engineering.

<comment><USER7> I have a PhD in CS. There's a lot of "drudge work" in the design and execution of experiments. I just spent four days designing, executing and analyzing experiments to see if our model was accurate and my implementation was correct. (Both are, which is nice.) But those experiments will never be published - experiments like them will, but not those. Those experiments are what I call "guiding experiments" - they're not rigorous enough to convince others that what we did works, but it's enough to convince me we're doing the right thing, and give me the confidence that things will work out as expected when we do the full, rigorous experiments.

So, yes, research has its own grunt work. And some of my code will make it into production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A little off topic but somewhat relevant: When someone asked Larry Wall why there aren't any Perl certifications to classify the experts, he replied "I'm not going to tell people whether they're certified or not. My approach to language design has always been that people should learn just enough of the languages to get their jobs done. They shouldn't have to learn the whole language to begin with. But with certification, you have to be learning the whole language."

In my own experience, this is especially true if you're self-employed / startup guy. Am I a great PHP coder? Not by a long shot. Does it in any way affect our user-experience or how much money we make? Again, not by a long shot.

<comment><USER9> Isn't that the blub paradox? What if there was an unknown-to-you language feature that you were implementing by hand, or worse, if you were avoiding an end-user feature entirely because it would be too much work and so you're not even considering it? How would you know if it could affect user experience or revenue if you don't know about it?

I've certainly used a language for a while, and then read the book on it, and said "oooh!", and then gone back and fixed all my old code. I could have saved a lot of time if I had known about that feature in the first place. (The extreme case are the posts on thedailywtf.com of people who don't know about loops, but there are much higher-level examples, too.)

That's not to say you can't run a perfectly usable and profitable startup knowing just a little bit of PHP (and as Larry says, more power to you!), but I don't know how one could claim that it has no effect.

<comment><USER8> In real world this isn't the case. First of all, when you're working on projects, you see that there are some things which you're doing over and over (like CRUD). Now at least in my opinion it is okay to create your first site by using mysql_real_escape_string like functions as long as by the end of the day it gets the job done. Because my priority as a small website owner is always getting new signups. And as far as I'm concerned, my lead does not care how I'm inserting his email into the database. But had I spend my time learning the proper MVC design, I maybe would have lost three precious months of leads which does indeed make a difference to my bank account.

Second of all nowadays you're never working alone (even when in fact you're working alone). What I mean is every programmer nowadays uses Google and StackOverflow to do a lot of his work. So when you're doing something wtf like using the mysql_real_escape_string, you maybe once in a while try to check how other programmers are doing it because maybe for you it takes too long or you're just stuck. And then you learn a thing or two about how to do is more easily. Still, it doesn't mean you have to become a great programmer of the language first, instead you just need to hone the things which you need the most for your business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's important to also continue striving for self-improvement. If you hit a level where you've stopped wanting to learn more and started wanting to simply compare yourself to others, of course you'll look good by comparison - <USER2> you're not getting any better.

I started programming using Python. When I started, I wanted to understand the "feel" of Python programming, and that was all my mind could comprehend. Now that I have a decent smattering of Python knowledge, I now realize I don't have a total grasp of transfer protocols and I should probably learn a lower- level C language as well. I started off not knowing one thing, now I have added two more.

I'm still a better programmer, but now I realize I'm clueless about even more stuff than I was before.

<comment><USER11> This is a very good point. I thought I knew a lot about programming/CS until I decided to get my M.S. Now, the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know.

It is actually a little defeating in the sense that I have had to accept that I will probably never know as much as I would like to.

<comment><USER12> Identifying gaps in your knowledge is half the battle.

Learning and getting better isn't limited to eliminating known unknowns, it includes becoming aware of unknown unknowns.

Once you can google a problem, there is a very high chance you'll be able to solve it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _People would rate you "great" but you'll be able to say "How would you know?". At which point, the better you get, the worse you'll know you are. Anybody who rates themselves as "great" is probably on the uphill side of the learning curve._

This attitude annoys me greatly. I understand Dunning-Krueger and all, but I still don't buy the idea that skill is inversely proportional to confidence. I think it's simplistic to think that confidence directly implies lack of skill and vice-versa.

I mean clearly no one likes an ego-maniac who acts like a know it all. But at the same time, sometimes people are right when they say good things about themselves. Even if they act completely narcissistic.

In fact, I would say that maturing has done nothing but increase my confidence in my skill level. I think that I can say that I'm a good programmer and that I hope to be a great programmer some day without being cocky or egotistical. It doesn't mean that I'm always right or that I don't make mistakes. But at the end of the day, I have confidence in my abilities.

<comment><USER14> I think that "confidence" bifurcates once you gain experience. There's confidence in your ability, and there's confidence in your accomplishments. The former tends to decline, because you realize there's so much more out there that you _could_ be doing to but just don't have the time or mental capacity for. The latter tends to increase as you rack up projects and see people use them.

I thought I was hot shit when I entered college, and I had the test scores - but no tangible accomplishments - to prove it. And then I tried to convert those test scores into tangible accomplishments, and found that maybe I wasn't as hot shit as I thought I was. I think I'm significantly dumber now than I was as a 19-year-old hotshot fresh out of high school. I can see all the alternative ways of doing things, and all the mistakes I made, and all the mistakes I'm _still making_. And looking ahead of me, I see all this complexity and all these challenges for the things I want to do, and I didn't see that when I was a wide-eyed kid, and it makes me feel pretty stupid.

But looking behind me, I've done some pretty cool stuff. FictionAlley.org. Write Yourself a Scheme in 48 Hours. Ported Arc to JavaScript. 2 products for somebody else's startup that never went anywhere, and a startup of my own that also never went anywhere. Wonder Wheel & Search Options. The websearch visual redesign of 2010. Google's Authorship program. Google's first canvas-based homepage doodle. The [let it snow] easter egg.

And I think about how I just made tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of people happy last weekend, and it feels pretty good. So even though I don't know anything, I must be doing something right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The problem:

As it is mentioned in the email. People tend to believe, being great is about knowing a lot of facts and stuff from memory. Having information about stuff others don't know. While the fact is intelligence and knowledge only acts as catalyst in the path to success. They are not success or don't lead to success in themselves. Unless you don't understand this you will keep wondering why you are not getting successful while some guy you consider mediocre is winning.

What matters in real world is productivity. Ability to discover things quickly. Learn quickly. Learn to understand and properly state problems. Search for solutions quickly. And then use the best tools at disposal to build things in as little time with acceptable quality in the problem domain. Intelligence and knowledge of facts in this system at maximum fastens your rate of success nothing more nothing less. But yes practice helps. But practice in the right areas.

If you believe reading algorithm and data structures text books and searching for puzzles online will make you a good programmer, then I'm not sure. It may prepare you for interviews, it may also get you a job a bit web giant. It may make you look super intelligent in front of a panel or your team. But in terms of producing software for solving business problems, those facts from memory and even their practice at maximum serves as a catalyst not a crucial ingredient to success.

Apart from practicing writing programs. Learning API's, best practices, tools, techniques and your other usual day to day programming tasks. You also need to practice to be a better team player, you need to learn design, you need to learn customer interaction skills, you need to learn how to gather requirements.

You need to learn how to manage resources - time, money and people effectively. You need to learn effective ways of running software teams. The list goes endless.

Its no longer "Can write awesome code" == "Success". There are a gazillion parameters that will decide you success. And programming is just one of many of them.

Here is the shocker. You don't really a 1000 years of life to give 10 years to each. And even if you had a 1000 years of life you would be bored of giving 10 years to each and you would keep forgetting what you did decades back.

So, just be more productive and iterate your work endlessly. Find flaws and fix them. Do it in iterations. You will be taken care of.

<comment><USER16> _So, just be more productive and iterate your work endlessly. Find flaws and fix them. Do it in iterations. You will be taken care of._

I think, somewhere in there, you have to learn how to make sure you're taken care of, even if it's just learning how/when to ask for things you deserve for your efforts. Every workplace isn't a strict meritocracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Revisiting your old code is like reuniting with an old friend, and also your friend is now disfigured. Despite this evidence that I've improved so much in 10+ years of writing code, my self-assessment has stayed constant: very good, close to great. (This must be how Zeno's arrow feels.) Tim Daly's post provides some welcome clarity. I'm happy to still have a ways to go. "The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne."

<comment><USER18> Well look on the bright side, in Chaucer's time the "lyf" was shorter. Chaucer himself died at 57.

<comment><USER19> That might just add to the pressure, though, if you think about it too much.

        It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age,
        he had been dead for five years.

        —Tom Lehrer

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wouldn't it be awesome if one of those "looking for a technical co-founder" types would say they were looking for a programmer "who knows how bad they are"?

<comment><USER21> Not everyone who thinks they're bad at something is wrong.

<comment><USER20> but _everyone_ who thinks they're a "ninja" is wrong.

<comment><USER22> The dictionary basically defines "ninja" as someone who is skilled in stealthy movement and camouflage. Interpreted by me to mean someone who can sneak in and do the job without being seen.

Given the innate ability to do the job of programming from anywhere, at any time, I am of the opinion that many programmers can meet the description of ninja. I know in my career, I have worked closely with several people whom I have never actually met.

I do think the usage of ninja is silly, myself. But I do understand that it is more descriptive than just telecommuter, which still seems to imply some physical contact with others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Curiously I think you missed the more important point of the post. The literate programming insight is clearly more valuable as a "take-away" idea.

Literate programming has the potential to allow a program to "live". Certainly it allows a program to outlive the authors. Most programs no longer have the original authors available. Look at the thousands of dead programs on sites like Sourceforge. Or consider the number of commercial programs that are no longer maintained by the authors.

Your program should be written to pass the "Hawaii test". That is, you give a new hire your literate source code, send them on a fully paid trip to Hawaii for two weeks. When they come back they should be able to maintain and modify the program as well as the original authors.

Literate programming is not documentation. It is a form of communication. You need to motivate code you introduce. You need a good story line. You need to get it past an editor-in-chief.

See "Lisp in Small Pieces" for a great literate program example.

Tim Daly firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER24> _The better he got, the worse he knew he was._

The inverse Dunning–Kruger effect: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect>

<comment><USER25> Why do you say it is the inverse and not the regular Dunning-Kruger effect?

<comment><USER26> Surely silvestrov miswrote and meant "converse", not "inverse".

And it's because the classic statement of the Dunning-Kruger effect is that the unskilled have an unrealistically high estimation of their own abilities. It doesn't talk about what the skilled think.

<comment><USER27> Actually, it does say. People assume that they're closer to average than they are, whether they're above or below the true average. The Wikipedia link above even says "the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> 'Great' doesn't mean anything if not a relative value. So saying you are great just means saying you are one of the best. That's all that counts.. who cares if you're not as good as the mythical uber-coder?

Sure, once you reach the other side of the bell curve, you realize you don't know anything, _compared to everything there is to know_ , but that doesn't make you anything less than great.

</comment><comment><USER29> I liked the comment about literate programming. When I need to write a new set of related functions (or classes if I am using an OOL), a great way to start is by writing function stubs, and then write the internal comments. Even better to not immediately write the code. Anyway, this works better for me than TDD.

</comment><comment><USER30> one of the things everyone seems to forget about the whole 10000 hours thing is that the research says it's 10000 hours of mindful practice. that's a lot harder than 10000 hours of practice...

<comment><USER31> Same reason I don't type properly. I've clocked tens of thousands of hours of typing, but next to none of deliberate practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I, of course agree with point author makes in this post, however 10,000 hours is also meme that Malcolm Gladwell uses to sell his books. I read articles that disprove his assertion and show that often he will fudge data to make a point.

Still 10,000 hours is really good metaphor and it should be understood as such. It is a lot like that left and right brain, sounds really good and people pick this up because it sounds good.

<comment><USER5> The 10,000 hours predates Gladwell. He just wrote a book based on existing research. I haven't seen anything that actually disproves the assertion (again, it's not Gladwell's). Do you have references?

<comment><USER33> The problem is that isn't not just 10,000 hours. It's 10,000 hours of "mindful practice".

That amounts to a huge, ill defined, fudge factor that allows you to discount any counter examples.

So it's not clear that 10,000 hours is a falsifiable statement.

<comment><USER5> _So it's not clear that 10,000 hours is a falsifiable statement._

It not as tightly defined as we'd like, but I think it's still fairly close to falsifiable. For example, I think the Dan Plan is a good experiment. He has a pro golf coach and clearly is doing deliberate practice. It's only one data point, but I think if we get several people like Dan who tend to fall on one side or the other then I think we have strengtened or weakened the theory significantly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> if i understand correctly, the dunning-krueger effect means i should just accept i am god-like????</comment>


City as Character - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/city-character <comment><USER2> > Getting lost in the text-cities of Joyce, Döblin, and Dos Passos.

I've long wished someone would make a computer 'game' of Joyce's Dublin. And where is the James Joyce of the interactive multimedia era?

<comment><USER3> This might not be the answer you want to hear, but I've seen Andrew Hussie's "Homestuck" draw a lot of comparisons to "Ulysses".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't seem to pay attention to this article. Perhaps its because I haven't read Joyce's works? It seems very hard to read but perhaps that's just me.

<comment><USER2> Challenging, but beautiful, rewarding and enlightening!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems interesting, I added it to my read later list but this font is killing me. I'll need to change it to read it.

<comment><USER6> Yeah I prefer sans serif over serif fonts for reading things on my computer. Serif fonts in the body text are primarily suitable for print.

It might be that people with retina displays find serif comfortable on their computer screens as well.</comment></comment>


Monsanto 'compiled dossier' on political opponents - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48253577 <comment><USER2> This is basic lobbying work. They used publicly available data (like Twitter posts or news articles) to annotate an excel file of public figures with mentions such as "Potentially an ally" or "Detractor".

<comment><USER3> ...which is against the law in France.

Edit:

> Le Monde reported that the list was "problematic" under French law which > prohibits the construction of a database "revealing the political and > philosophical opinions of a person without their consent".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Honestly, why wouldn't you. We're in a call out culture period of time. If you're running a business it makes sense to research the people most likely to become a problem for you in the future.

Not personal, just business.

<comment><USER5> > Not personal, just business.

Ah yes, the oldest way to get out of responsibility for actions. "It's not personal, I just personally want my business to succeed even if it comes at a cost to you."

<comment><USER4> People's definition of what is right is different. Why not give your vision a bit more force behind it.

That's not immoral, it's just the way to get ahead of the detractors.

<comment><USER5> Specifically why I left morality out of it. If one brings morals into it, you end up using phrases like "it's not personal, it's business" to justify morals or disregard responsibility from actions.

I don't think there is anything wrong with adding "force", or "force majeure" in some cases, behind ideas. Just don't pretend that it doesn't cost anything or that doing so is not having an effect by slinging around meaningless apologies like "sorry, it's not personal, it's business."

<comment><USER6> If you're playing chess against someone, it would be absurd to ignore the positions of their pieces when deciding your next moves, especially given that the positions of the pieces are open knowledge. Stop trying to make strategic decision making into an illegal or unethical thing. That's absurd.

<comment><USER5> > Stop trying to make strategic decision making into an illegal or unethical > thing. That's absurd.

What? Could you please explain this and point out when it happened?

<comment><USER7> The dog whistle of "get out of responsibility".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The First Amendment is so fundamental to my American understanding of liberty, that I'm dumfounded to learn that a developed country like France has a law that says it is illegal to write a paper summarizing someone's publicly expressed political views.

How different is their concept of liberty that they would even consider a law against compiling public facts?

<comment><USER3> Perhaps they too should create blacklists of suspected communists to be reported to the government for extrajudicial consequences. Then France can enjoy freedom like America.

<comment><USER9> FWIW, everybody pretty much agrees that McCarthyism was bad. And, more importantly, it's a thing of the past. To be honest, litigating present issues by citing the past positions of people who are now mostly dead is kind of odd and nonsensical.</comment></comment></comment>


RubyMotion pros and cons - <AUTHOR> http://merbist.com/2012/05/04/macruby-on-ios-rubymotion-review/

<comment><USER2> This is probably one of the better articles on RubyMotion: mainly in that it's fairly balanced...it annoys me to see posts like "Why Ruby Motion is Better than Objective-C", or "Ruby Motion: The Worst Thing to Happen to iOS"...

As an Objective-C developer who knows very little Ruby, this probably isn't for me. But I can't see how opening up iOS to a wider range of developers is a bad thing: personally, I'm an Objective-C fan, but I can see why people don't like it, and if you're at a start-up or a small team looking to get some app deployed and you don't want the hassle of learning Objective-C then this seems like a great alternative.

So like any language or environment there are pros (the REPL looks amazing) and cons (closed source, at least in my view). And whilst I'm sure this wasn't the intention of RubyMotion at all it's actually making me revisit Ruby as an Objective-C developer and see if I can improve my knowledge and experience of it. No bad thing!

</comment><comment><USER3> _Even though ARC made memory management much easier for Objective-C developers, when using RubyMotion you don't have to worry about memory (well at least not explicitly, don't be dumb and create a bazillion objects and hold references to them either)_

I'm not convinced about this. Here's a quote from the rubymotion runtime guide:

 _RubyMotion's memory management system is designed to simplify the development process. Unlike traditional Objective-C programming, object references are automatically created and destroyed by the system. It is very similar to Objective-C's ARC, in design, but it is differently implemented._

 _Object cycles, when two or more objects refer to each other, are currently not handled by the runtime, but will be in future releases._

There are a lot of things that look really cool about RubyMotion, but it doesn't seem to me that memory management is massively different to the situation in Objective-C with ARC on, or indeed C++ with smart pointers.

They haven't said how weak references are going to be handled, but it seems like the programmer will have to specify that a reference should be weak. In that case, the difficult part of memory management in a non-gc langage --- making sure you avoid either reference cycles, or inadvertently deallocating objects --- is still there in rubymotion.

(disclaimer: I haven't used rubymotion -- I'm just going on what's been published about it)

</comment><comment><USER4> _REPL/Interactive shell

RubyMotion doesn't currently have a debugger, but it does have something Objective-C developers don't have, a REPL working with the simulator. ... You can click on a visual element in the simulator and start modifying the objects in real time in a terminal window and see the modifications in the simulator. It reminds me of the first time I used firebug to edit the html/css of a web page and saw the changes in real time._

This might be the real strength of RubyMotion. Maybe someone should take Squeak/Pharo Smalltalk and create a utility that can be used as a REPL working with the iOS simulator. Smalltalk is basically Objective-C minus the C parts, types, and the glue to attach the C parts, so it would be the perfect REPL for the simulator. All you're left with is keywords and variables. Developers can insert this into projects for prototyping and debugging, but take it out when they deliver apps.

<comment><USER5> I did the original Cocoa Squeak VM, and in the end found it too heavy-weight for my taste, so I developed Objective-Smalltalk instead. It's been in use in a couple of my products for a number of years, and recently I've adapted it for use in iOS. Even reserved the objective.st domain, but haven't populated it yet...

<comment><USER6> Would love to check it out. Any way to get notified when you do?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Optionally typed Ruby would be interesting indeed.

Kind of wondering how that would work in practice though...

<comment><USER8> Have a look at Mirah[1] a statically typed ruby-like language that runs on the JVM, by Charles Nutter, the main jRuby developer. Here's an article [2] with short descriptions of Mirah and other Ruby-dialects or Ruby-inspired languages

[1] <http://www.mirah.org/>

[2] [http://www.igvita.com/2010/12/14/beyond-ruby-mirah-reia- rite...](http://www.igvita.com/2010/12/14/beyond-ruby-mirah-reia-rite/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> bought it earlier today was able to get all sample apps running on the simulator in couple of minutes, lot eadier than getting started on objective C and xcode.

plan to spend time in weekend in getting some small project ported, will update

</comment><comment><USER10> From the article:

" _Yesterday, RubyMotion was released and let's be honest, it is the best alternative to Objective-C out there._

Really? Not so sure. How about Mono Touch? Not only it also compiles to native code, but it has a more mature IDE (MonoDevelop, with autocompletion), can use Interface Builder files, and has lots of apps done with it already in the Mac App Store. It's also able to target Android and Windows Phone, if you want. Oh, and it's been in use for far longer so a lot of bugs have been ironed out.

<comment><USER11> Having developed in MT and ObjC (but not yet bit the bullet on RubyMotion), I can concur that this statement is valid. MonoTouch was an emulation, making it at best slow to catch up and at worst a version behind iOS. It also had a fairly funky debug scheme, having to use IP and not the wire. Granted, you get the REPL in lieu of a debugger with RubyMotion, but given how incredible the REPL is, I imagine a debugger will follow. As for cross-compilation, that wasn't so much MonoTouch as MonoCross, something that falls in to "jack of all trades, but master of none." MonoDevelop may have autocompletion, but it was buggy as all hell for me, and RM is positioning itself as using _any_ IDE, where MonoDevelop locks you in as Xcode does.

<comment><USER12> Doesn't MonoTouch use Visual Studio ... or is it something else?

<comment><USER10> You can use it on Windows, IIRC, but for Mac where VS is not there, you use the cross platform MonoDevelop IDE (+ XCode for parts).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Delivering pixel perfect fonts with rails, slicehost, & selenium  - <AUTHOR> http://webpulp.tv/post/5579525428/learn-how-to-deliver-pixel-pefect-fonts-to-all-browsers

<comment><USER2> Enjoyed the episode. Look forward to more... thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER3> +1 awesome episode as always.</comment>


Show HN: Take a 5 minute break to see some trending tech and reddit stories - <AUTHOR> http://breakforfive.com/

<comment><USER2> Cool idea! Suggestions:

Add Upvote/Downvote buttons, so you can figure out which content a given user enjoys more.

Potentially integrate with the 'read later' type of tools.</comment>


I'm suprised nobody has talked about "remote desktop" possibilities on iPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.macnn.com/articles/10/02/01/existing.software.said.to.be.compatible/

<comment><USER2> This isn't a "virtualization possibility" for the iPad; it's a remote desktop client. The iPad has a fast but simple single-core ARM CPU, without the ISA extensions that make virtualization reasonably fast on modern Intel and AMD desktop + server kit. Virtualization would be painfully slow, and furthermore, rather useless unless virtual machines were allowed to run in the background.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right, I updated the title to "remote desktop".

Got overexcited this week playing with Wyse on my iPhone:

<http://www.wyse.com/products/software/pocketcloud/index.asp>

And looking forward to seeing what comes around the corner for the iPad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wish Apple would release a version of their Workgroup Manager, Remote Desktop, and Server Admin for the iPad. Add one the third part ssh clients, and the would make for a much nicer life,</comment>


Hex.pm: Package manager for the Erlang ecosystem - <AUTHOR> https://hex.pm/ <comment><USER2> For anyone looking around for a new language to try: give Elixir serious consideration.

I've been learning Elixir over the last few months and it's been a breath of fresh air.

EDIT: In case it's not clear from the context, hex.pm is primarily the Elixir package manager, but it works for the whole Erlang ecosystem too, hence why it's referred to as a package manager for "the erlang ecosystem".

</comment><comment><USER3> You'll find a large number of these packages are actually Elixir, as hex is the native Elixir package manager :)

Lovely to see this becoming more mainstream, and good marketing choice by Eric by making it the "Erlang ecosystem package manager".

If you're interested, the package manager[0] and website/API[1] are open source.

[0] [https://github.com/hexpm/hex](https://github.com/hexpm/hex) [1] [https://github.com/hexpm/hex_web](https://github.com/hexpm/hex_web)

</comment><comment><USER4> Well done! Great looking website.

I primarily use Erlang and is good to see it finally has a standardized package manager and that both Elixir and Erlang can use hex packages.

Rebar even moved under the main Erlang organization in Github:

[https://github.com/erlang/rebar3](https://github.com/erlang/rebar3)

A nice step forward

<comment><USER5> Elixir really seems to have given Erlang a much needed boost in some ways.

<comment><USER6> Yes, David! This might be a good time to breathe new life into Chicago Boss, huh ;)

<comment><USER5> Probably not:

* It's not well liked in the broader Erlang world because of compiler magic.

* Elixir has Phoenix, which is now _the_ project in that space.

Also: I changed jobs and moved so... don't use Erlang at work any more, sadly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hex runs on Heroku. I wonder how many dynos it uses. Any ideas?

<comment><USER8> Not sure what the current stats are but a year ago the maintainer tweeted some stats about it [0].

        hex.pm on single 512mb Heroku dyno.
        250rpm,
        request time 23ms 95% percentile,
        43mb memory used, ~0.15 dyno load.

I suspect there's a lot more use these days given the growth of Elixir, and I'd be curious to see newer stats.

[0] [https://twitter.com/emjii/status/591240463782391808](https://twitter.com/emjii/status/591240463782391808)

<comment><USER9> It still runs on a single 7$ hobby dyno. Package and registry downloads goes directly to our CDN so the dyno only gets traffic for the HTTP API and website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It'll be great to have categories for packages.. For instance: ORMs / AWS clients / Social SDKs / Authentication / Caching / Internationalization / Cryptography / Machine Learning / and so on..

</comment><comment><USER11> Is this a new project? How come it has such high download numbers already?

<comment><USER12> Not a new project, but a new website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> heheheh: [https://hex.pm/packages/leftpad](https://hex.pm/packages/leftpad)

<comment><USER14> Thank god - we're safe.

EDIT: serious point - does anyone know off-hand what hex.pm's unpublish policy is?

<comment><USER15> My understanding is: you can't unpublish an existing package, like in npm's leftpad situation. You do have a one hour window to change or revert a published version of a package, after that the published version is read-only.

Docs: [https://hex.pm/docs/publish](https://hex.pm/docs/publish)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's with the ".pm"? Brings back bad memories of perl.

<comment><USER17> "package manager" I'd wager. Not "PERL module" :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Do you provide a lock file?

<comment><USER19> AFAIK maintaining a lock file is left to the tool that fetches and maintains dependencies.

For Elixir, mix maintains the mix.lock file. Hex integrates with mix.

For Erlang, rebar3 maintains a rebar.lock file. There's a rebar3_hex plugin for Hex integration with rebar3.

<comment><USER20> rebar3 supports Hex packages as dependencies out-of-the-box, IIRC. The plugin provides additional functionality like searching and publishing: [https://github.com/hexpm/rebar3_hex](https://github.com/hexpm/rebar3_hex)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> can this be installed using homebrew ?

<comment><USER22> It's automatically installed when you type: brew install elixir</comment></comment>


XML and Scheme - <AUTHOR> http://okmij.org/ftp/Scheme/xml.html

<comment><AUTHOR> SSAX, SXML and SXSLT are available as a package for Racket:

[http://pkg-build.racket-lang.org/doc/sxml/](http://pkg-build.racket- lang.org/doc/sxml/)

`raco pkg install sxml`[1]

I was recently looking for an enlive[2]-like library to use with a Racket- based project and couldn't find one. Yes, Racket has powerful syntax manipulation and pattern matching[3] built-in, but I wanted functional transforms of X/HTML akin to what enlive gives me in my Clojure-based projects. SXSLT seems to fit the bill quite nicely.

[1] [http://docs.racket-lang.org/raco/](http://docs.racket-lang.org/raco/)

[2] [https://github.com/cgrand/enlive](https://github.com/cgrand/enlive)

[3] [http://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/match.html](http://docs.racket- lang.org/guide/match.html)</comment>


Adobe's Record Revenue Proves Successful Business Transformation Is Possible - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/12/adobes-record-revenue-proves-successful-business-transformation-is-possible/ <comment><USER2> I find Adobe's current model strongly distasteful as both a consumer _and_ producer of software.

As a consumer, the cost of ownership is now slightly to significantly higher over the total lifetime of the software, depending on how often you upgrade. Cost aside, for me it simply doesn't "feel" right to rent software.

As a producer I've put my money where my mouth is. My companies software used to be purchase only ([https://www.rackforms.com](https://www.rackforms.com)), though we did add a subscription model around the same time Adobe made the switch. However, I did not, nor will I ever, remove the customers ability to purchase outright.

Just because recurring revenue is good for me doesn't mean it's right for my users. In fact, my "purchase outright" option remains more popular.

I believe if Adobe actually gave users a choice they're data wold reflect mine. They've certainly lost me as a customer until they change course.

<comment><USER3> > _I believe if Adobe actually gave users a choice they 're data wold reflect > mine_

I checked out your site, and not sure if I agree with this. With your pricing a consumer using your product would only have to use it for 5 months before the self-hosted option becomes economically attractive.

To buy Photoshop CS6, alone, would cost $700. Adobe CC prices it at $9.99/mo - meaning you could use their CC option for 6 years before breaking even. In those 6 years, with CC you would get upgrades as well - OTOH even if you were to upgrade every 3 years, you wouldn't break even.

IIRC, Master Collection was $3,000, and is now $600/yr. Meaning if you bought Master Collection you would break even with CC if you only upgraded 5 times a year.

To make your analogy more apt, you should price your non-cloud offering at $600, and then compare how many people prefer it to cloud.

Personally, I think their decision to end their standalone offering had more to do with simplifying DRM than anything.

<comment><USER2> A great point. I'm actually running a holiday promotion right now, the standard price of our self-hosted package is indeed $599. Oddly enough, even with that pricing the ratio remains consistent. At least half of my users consistently choose the purchase outright option.

No doubt in my particular space other factors figure: For example, to run the self-hosted package requires a web server, a higher barrier of entry, perhaps, than just a machine capable of running Photoshop. It may also be that the cloud service provides a full hosting package complete with cPanel, phpMyAdmin, etc, negating the need to have a standard web hosting service.

I suppose my point is I try and make both packages a great value proposition from a price/feature standpoint. Believe me when I say my life would be easier if I only offered one, but in the end customer _choice_ trumps all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's not just the subscription model that irritates people. The software itself has become irritating in various ways. Creative Cloud is a multi-app hydra that feels like it attaches to your system like a facehugger. Lots of people are looking for and finding exciting alternatives like Affinity Designer/Photo and Sketch. I didn't realize how slow the Adobe apps were until I started using Affinity. Those apps are _fast_. Not only that, but they are fun to use and got me really excited about creating things again. Super bonus: you just drop the apps in your app folder to install. Boom. Despite moving to the cloud, the Adobe apps feel legacy compared to newer options.

One reason why Adobe continues to make a lot of money is that Photoshop and Illustrator files are like what Word and Excel files are in businesses and universities: currency. People trade these formats around, which makes them way more durable. But that durability can't make up for a more important aspect of some software — especially creative software — whether or not people love using it. Go to the Affinity forums and witness the fire in people's hearts. I imagine there was a time when people felt that way about Photoshop. It's not that I want Adobe to fail. I just want great software.

All I'm saying is: don't mistake Adobe's ability to make money as a sign of love for its products.

<comment><USER5> The funny thing is that InDesign was able to beat QuarkXPress in a similar way.

<comment><USER6> How QuarkXPress became a mere afterthought in publihing: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7360076](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7360076)

[http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2014/01/quarkx...](http://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2014/01/quarkxpress-the-demise-of-a-design-desk-darling/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Adobe has a monopoly with Photoshop and they basically just raised their prices by going subscription. I don't know a single person who's been happy about it, but they deal with it because there's not really anything they can do about it besides using an older version of Photoshop if they have access.

Not sure why it's surprising at all that they have more revenue. It's not like the people who were using it can just stop using it; it'll take time for an true alternative to come up if there ever will be one.

<comment><USER8> I've been happy with it. I'm not sure how I follow it being a price increase. I'm paying $9.99/mo with all updates included. Wasn't CS6 $699 when it was released? I don't understand why people are so outraged that a company wants to make money off of software they created.

<comment><USER9> The $10/month is a good deal.. but if you want any other app, it's $240/year; or $600/year for the suite.

But (previously) virtually no one upgraded every year. The product was good enough years ago, and the features added were rarely more than minor improvements. People would buy the suite, and then use it for 3-5+ years.

With the new pricing, it's like you're forced to upgrade every 2-3 years.. so it's an accelerated upgrade cycle. And that's why everyone thinks of it as a price increase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a change in pricing structure. I'm not sure that is a completely different business model. They previously sold yearly upgrades. Now they sell a monthly subscription to give you ongoing upgrades. Not dramatically different.

Also, Adobe's customers were often prosumers, and the $1,500 price point for the product suite is much less appealing than $30/month. Any prosumer can afford $30/month for Photoshop, etc.

<comment><USER11> At those numbers, it could easily be seen as a price cut.

($1500/$30) = 50 months / 12 ~= 4.16 years. More than 4 years to break even, not including time-value of money.

\---

Edit: The actual prices are probably closer to the actual turnover for people upgrading Photoshop.

($1500/$50) = 30 months / 12 = 2.5 years.

($1500/$75) = 20 months / 12 ~= 1.67 years.

<comment><USER9> less than that. $30/month is old pricing. It's now $50/month with a year contract or $75/month month-to-month.

[https://creative.adobe.com/plans?promoid=NV3KR7S1&mv=other](https://creative.adobe.com/plans?promoid=NV3KR7S1&mv=other)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it proves that when you a monopoly you can have any business model and succeed and until you have a viable competitor. While amateurs can complain about the subscription model, for the average business customer we are stuck with Adobe. There are a lot of one of apps that are making their niche such as Sketch ever since Adobe dropped Fireworks. But no company has been able to go ahead to ahead with Adobe's full offerings.

Affinity is certainly the world's best hope especially with Apple naming them some of the best apps available this year. In another year or two they could surpass Adobe for small shops but Adobe will still win for a long time because in business you need to hand off files to other people and other companies and they all use Adobe and you can't ask or expect them to use a new product like Affinity's offerings.

However, over time as more people test Affinity and there maybe a chance unless Adobe gets their act together.

<comment><USER13> Scary thought: Adobe buys Affinity and makes them part of CC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> They have only transformed their distribution model. Big whoop for a semi- monopolist with a largely captive audience?

</comment><comment><USER15> If you are using photoshop for web design, consider switching to Sketch 3. I recently made the move and it is not only a reasonable alternative, it is better and cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER16> Again, the Creative Cloud is not just for individuals, it's the future. Just trust me.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78yigV0GYGQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78yigV0GYGQ)</comment>


Facebook bug disables women's accounts, asks for government ID, fix in process - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/female_facebook_users_take_to_twitter_complain_of.php

<comment><USER2> And this is one of the reasons that I don't like the idea of facebook being my universal log on for lots of different sites. It takes things from mild irritation at having to find another way to waste time, to a potentially major problem when I can't access services that I use every day.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Facebook having complete ownership and control over my identity is a scary thought. The site is far too reckless and cavalier with its banning of people, business sites, apps, etc. I've read far too many accounts of banishments without any given reason or response to complaints...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> FTA "It's hard not to wonder if the issue could have anything to do with yesterday's announcement of a new messaging system on the site that would work using your Facebook username for an @facebook.com email address"

I don't like when blogs do that: the link between female accounts-only disabled and Facebook's new messaging system is pretty weak. The only reason they make the link is to have people read that other story about Facebook. TechCrunch does that all the time and I find that slightly annoying. It feels like the kid who brings up unrelated stories just to show he knows stuff.

<comment><USER3> Actually, that's not at ALL why I wrote that. I wrote that because I found it hard to not wonder if the two things were connected. Suddenly, user names are becoming @facebook.com email addresses.

I also wrote this line before Facebook ever responded to our questions (which they did just a moment before posting) and didn't remove it. Before the explanation, Boy Genius Report was speculating that it was a hack because of the request for a government ID. A quick Google search showed that a government ID request seemed to be a standard thing when Facebook wants to reactivate certain accounts, so I figured that wasn't the case and postulated that perhaps it had to do with Facebooks latest change...its messaging system.

The only reason I ever put links into a story is so that if you don't know about that, and it's readily accessible, you don't need to search for it. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It will be a cold day in hell before I send a copy of my ID to facebook. WTF are people thinking?!

<comment><USER6> There are worse threats.

It took me less than 15 minutes to find a decent photo of you, what I think is your work address (zip 60603), possibly your home address (number is 519) and phone number (726 in the middle). I didn't come up with your date of birth but I can make a pretty good guess about your wife's (digits add up to 2011) and the date of your wedding (adds up to 2022).

I'm sorry if that completely creeps you out. I tried not to give anything personal away here and that's all readily available online.

That's not from a scanned copy of an ID that Facebook would hopefully attempt to protect.

<comment><USER2> Wow, that might be a little creepy but it's very eye opening. Especially as maukdaddy lists "information security" as his business, so is presumably not too reckless with his details online.

I'm assuming you started with his HN profile, googled his name, found what appears to be his blog and took it from there?

Maybe these days having a common name is a good defence against ID fraud!

<comment><USER5> I'm not too careful with my birthdate or anniversary. LinkedIn is a huge source of information leakage, but the business and networking value outweighs that. You could datamine my twitter and find most important dates and events.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As someone who remembers BBSes and Usenet flamewars, I can't emphasize enough how bad an idea it is to have your real identity linked to everything you do.

It also makes it very difficult if you ever need to go on the lam, because they'll know every place you might go. Every friend and relative. Whether you're trying to avoid a gambling debt, a stalker, or the government.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is impacting a friend of mine. Suddenly disabled with no explanation.

I told her to submit a login/password bug, if only to get it read by a human over there. And to decline sending a photo ID if asked.

</comment><comment><USER9> How does Facebook validate government IDs without actually having them? Anyone with Photoshop can be anyone they want.

</comment><comment><USER10> only women were affected. Facebook's got several anti-woman policies (for example banning pictures of breast-feeding, and prohibiting domestic violence survivors from using pseudonyms) but in this case they're blaming a bug. it would be it would be interesting to hear more about what the actual issue is.

<comment><USER11> I frequently get friend requests from fake profiles on Facebook (sometimes as many as 2-3 per week). They always list themselves as having gone to my high school (which is why I am positive they are fake, since I went to a tiny high school), and they _always_ are attractive-looking women. I do not list my sex on Facebook, but it is possible that the bot recognizes my first name as male and therefore friends me with a female profile, and that there are other spam profiles which are male, but I am almost certain this is not the case since I see in my news feed whenever one of my high school friends falls for the spammer, and they are again always female profiles. So I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of spam profiles on Facebook are of females.

The most widespread method of stopping spam in any form is to use flags to train an machine learning algorithm that picks out particular patterns in spam. These algorithms don't have political agendas, they just pick out common characteristics of spam. It is therefore entirely unsurprising that any such spam detector would learn to only flag women, and therefore to be expected that a bug in that algorithm which generated false positives would affect only women's profiles.

The reason you are downvoted is not because you are trying to highlight women's issues (I got 50+ karma for calling out another comment as sexist against women a few weeks ago), but because you were quick to imply a sexist motive for behavior that most any hacker would have immediately recognized as a natural consequence of how poorly-performing spam-detectors behave.

<comment><USER10> a spam detector that's biased against women certainly could account for this behavior.

why don't you see that as sexist?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand: What constitutes a _fake_ Facebook account? Why does Facebook need to establish your real identity? Serious question, as I am not a Facebook user.</comment>


Ask HN: What have been your experiences with .NET? - <AUTHOR>

A bit of background: I'm taking part in a Canadian incubator program. My co-founders and I have been given the option of using half of our money to pay for development from the program's development partners at a good rate, or to take the money in cash and source our own development.
The development partners only have a background in .NET programming. We're worried about this because we may not still have access to this team after August, and the two members of our founding team with development experience don't know .NET. How common are strong .NET developers who thrive in small startup environments?
That said, there are some benefits: the developers we have access to have a ton of experience, we won't have to spend time sourcing external development, and they're charging us roughly at cost for their hours.
Our timeline is pretty strict: we need to have our product ready by August. But we also don't want to compromise our potential for future growth.
Any advice or experiences you can share would be incredibly helpful, as we need to make our decision in the next week. <comment><USER2> Scenario 1:

The developers on your founding team could learn .NET over the summer (in your spare time), pay the licensing fees starting in September, and take over development then. Surely the licensing fees aren't that big, compared to developer salaries (are they)?

But you wrote "we likely would not be able to handle _everything_ [development-wise] between just the founders." So you'd have to hire some more .NET developers. I'm sure there are lots of .NET developers out there, but they'll probably charge enterprise rates. Maybe you'll get lucky.

I also worry about the founders not being able to fully understand what the .NET programmers are doing. That could cause problems. For example, the founders, being unfamiliar with .NET, might not know how hard it _really_ is to constitute the splitzerblivits with the kazmeltrix. Schedules could slip.

Scenario 2:

Start now with a framework your two developer co-founders know. Take the cash to get some more developers right away (who know that framework). It sounds like there are no licensing fees, so that's good. Also there would be no need for the founders to spend time learning a new framework. Too bad for the experienced .NET developers, but then it was only ever going to be a short- term gig for them anyhow.

Maybe make a list of the pros and cons for each scenario. I've probably missed some, because I don't know all the details. Then you can make a clear-eyed decision.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice, Troy!

As for learning .NET over the summer, there definitely isn't enough free time in the incubator/program – it's half-education, half-building-companies.

Re: .NET developers charging enterprise rates, that's something I've heard anecdotally. Do you (or anyone else on HN) know if it's actually true? Payscale says that a "software engineer" with 2 years experience with .NET costs about the same as 2 years of experience with Rails...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The chasm between quality .Net developers and bad ones is a steep curve, but good .Net developers certainly do exist. I do not think you need worry, .net is a well supported platform thet attracts talented folks.</comment>


Judge Denies Apple Request To Stop Amazon From Using "App Store" - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/07/07/apple-amazon-lawsuit/ <comment><USER4> This ruling involved Apple's attempt to block Amazon's use of the term "app store" pending trial in this case. Apple claims infringement and dilution of its mark. To win on infringement, it must ultimately show that it has a legally protectable mark and that Amazon's use of the term "app store" to describe where it sells apps for use on Android devices will likely confuse consumers about the origin of the goods being sold. To win on dilution, it must show that the mark is protectable, that it is "famous," and that Amazon's use of it dilutes its value.

To get a preliminary injunction, Apple needed to convince the judge that it is _likely_ to win at trial and also that it will be irreparably harmed if Amazon is not blocked from using the mark during the time leading up to trial. The judge said no to the preliminary injunction, not on grounds of lack of irreparable harm (that issue was never reached) but on the ground that Apple was not likely to win on the merits of its claims at trial.

Marks are classified as generic, descriptive, suggestive, arbitrary, or fanciful. Any mark that is suggestive, arbitrary, or fanciful is protectable. A generic mark is never protectable and a descriptive mark normally is not either - but the latter can become protectable if it acquires distinctiveness in the public mind through what is called "secondary meaning" (which generally means that a company has advertised a product or service to such a degree that the public comes to associate the mark with the producer of the goods or services as opposed to seeing the mark as descriptive, e.g., "Holiday Inn").

Apple claimed that the "app store" mark is suggestive because its meaning is "not inherently obvious" and because Apple was required to devote a lot of resources to educate consumers about the service.

Amazon claimed the mark is generic in merely describing a store where software apps are sold.

On this key issue, the court ruled as follows in assessing whether Apple was likely to succeed with its claim: "The court assumes without deciding that the 'App Store' mark is protectable as a descriptive mark that has arguably acquired secondary meaning. The court does not agree with Amazon that the mark is purely generic . . . but also does not find that Apple has shown that the mark is suggestive, as there appears to be no need for a leap of imagination to understand what the term means."

So far so good for Apple (with its major advertising, it may well be able to prove secondary meaning at trial).

But Apple got sunk by the second factor it will need to show if it is to win at trial and that is the "likelihood of confusion" factor. On this point, the court weighed eight factors as required by governing precedent but, in effect, really boiled it down to the fact that consumers buying apps for Android devices will not really believe that they are buying them from Apple or from an Apple-authorized source when they see the term "app store" at Amazon's site.

The court also rejected Apple's dilution claim as a basis for granting preliminary relief, basically finding that "App Store" did not constitute a "famous mark" on the evidence shown by Apple to date (it is here that the generic references to "app store" by Mr. Jobs and others come back to bite Apple).

All this suggests that Apple will have an uphill fight at trial on this one (as it should, in my view).

The 18-page decision is well-reasoned and may be found here: [http://www.scribd.com/doc/59494852/Apple-v-Amazon-Order- Deny...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/59494852/Apple-v-Amazon-Order-Denying- Motion-for-Preliminary-Injunction). Also, my prior comments on the case: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2351910>.

<comment><USER5> I feel a little sorry for Apple on this (and I don't care much for the company in general). When they introduced the term 'app store' it came across as very much part of their branding - much as iNoun and iVerb do.

I didn't care for the term, because I'm old-fashioned enough to dislike contractions such as 'app'. But at the same time, I thought it was a _fantastic_ bit of brand management, because the shortened word reflected not only the parent brand (App[le]), but the miniaturized computer that the iPhone actually was, and also managed users' expectations about what an individual app would do - rather less than something as grand sounding as an 'application', but still handy. If Microsoft had been first to market with such a device, I feel sure they'd have called the apps 'programmettes' or something equally unwieldy :) The 'store' part was also shrewd branding - <USER2> made it clear from the outset that apps had a value and that users were expected to invest in extending the device's features. This was a bold move on Apple's part, but one that paid off in spades. If anything, it reinforced the idea in my mind that 'app store' was an Apple thing. I am _astonished_ to find that they did not have a trademark registration in place, or at least an active claim. 'App' was not a new word, as such - the phrase 'killer app' had been around since the 80s - but outside of the software industry, few referred to programs as 'apps' on a regular basis. See [http://correlate.googlelabs.com/search?e=app&t=weekly](http://correlate.googlelabs.com/search?e=app&t=weekly), [http://correlate.googlelabs.com/search?e=app+store&t=wee...](http://correlate.googlelabs.com/search?e=app+store&t=weekly&filter=app+store), and [http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=app%20%2Ciphone%2Cp...](http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=app%20%2Ciphone%2Cprogram&cmpt=q) \- hardly conclusive, but strongly suggestive.

The problem stemmed from Steve Jobs' habit of talking about the Apple 'lifestyle' as if Apple products were ubiquitous and were the only technology platform people used - true enough for many of the firm's devoted fans. This reflected in the deliberately generic naming patterns for Apple offerings - iTunes, iPhone, iMovie and so on. But Jobs got into talking about apps and the app store as generic items, because he was preaching to the converted; if he had kept emphasizing ' _the_ app store' then maybe it would have reinforced the term as 'the specific software distribution service offered by Apple, Inc.'. It's a fine line to walk, of course; ubiquity and inevitability are usually good connotations for a brand to have, but so are freedom and exclusivity. In Apple's case, they were running up against the limits of their famous 1984 Think Different ad, and trying to balance the actuality of vendor lock-in with the feeling of openness and user-centricity. If they had sought a trademark for 'appstore' or variations thereon at the same time they launched the iPhone, it would probably have attracted little notice, but it seems as if they took a gamble on the strength of their secondary meaning, and lost.

[Edit: Apple _has_ applied for trademarks on 'appstore' in many countries but no registrations have been granted. Foolishly, I referred back to my comment in the other paragraph instead of to the judgement, and confused myself in the process.]

Lovely work by Amazon's lawyers, at least to my amateur eyes - the blend of reason, case law and statute makes Apple's overreach look all the more strained, and the longer the Amazon appstore stays up and the sky in Cupertino fails to fall, the weaker Apple's arguments look. At least, weaker by comparison - they still made a good case. If nothing else, I'm grateful for discovering the existence of _Interstellar Starship Services Ltd. v. Epix, Inc._

<comment><USER6> > but outside of the software industry, few referred to programs as 'apps' on > a regular basis.

So? Of those who did, nobody did it in a branded way. It's a generic term - <USER3> obvious shortening of an existing word and one many people had come up with.

Why do we care how much time, effort, or money was spent to brand a generic term? That's not useful to the people. Trademarks should be used (and thus given) to help differentiate companies. Letting a generic word be turned into a trademark should, if at all possible, be very hard.

If you want a trademark make up a word, like Google, or use a fanciful word for the context, like Apple.

<comment><USER7> > Why do we care how much time, effort, or money was spent to brand a generic > term? That's not useful to the people.

Isn't it? If you told someone you got food poisoning from the All Bran at the free breakfast at Holiday Inn while representing Network Solutions at a conference on Windows development, are you really asserting that people wouldn't be able to recognize the brands involved despite the generically descriptive trademarks?

<comment><USER6> It'd be wonderful if those weren't trademarks. What if someone asks my to get them an all-bran cereal, then bring it to their holiday inn, the Hilton Beachside, for breakfast before a conference discussing network solutions, where we pitch CRM technology to window developers who make transparent building panels?

Mightn't I get confused by all those stupid companies who term-squat on otherwise useful parts of our language?

Trademark law pays off well when we allow for names like 'Google'; it's new (not stepping on existing terms or usage) and thus also unique. But names like Network Solutions are actively harmful. They do cause some confusion. In fact, a low-level imperceptible bias is what they're counting on.

Trademark law would lose 92.4% of its complexity (and burden to society) if we simply stopped allowing generic terms or combinations of generic terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think its good for users to associate "App Store" with a generic place to find and download applications on any platform; like the terms "program" and "browser" it helps to have standard ways of communicating basic concepts of computer/device use. Its a benefit to _everyone_ (Apple, Android, Microsoft...) that users can more easily interact with their systems sans training.

<comment><USER9> Trademarks and branding are strange things. One would assume that giving a term wide-spread use would be beneficial to everyone, but it seems that it's bad for companies. I still don't quite get it myself...

For example, "Google" as a verb:

<http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/do-you-google.html>

I assumed that "Google" as a verb is a good thing for Google. It would imply that they've managed to get a huge mindshare. Google's lawyers disagree.

<comment><USER10> Because you can lose legal muscle behind your name if it becomes such common use that users might use the word without knowingly referencing your company's brand.

Kleenex is the staple case.

<comment><USER11> Q-Tips are another one, IIRC.

Or, of course, Spam (but Hormel has been enlightened on the topic so it hasn't been a legal issue AFAIK).

<comment><USER12> Another classic one is Band-Aid.

<comment><USER13> thermos.

<comment><USER14> kerosene.

<comment><USER15> xerox. (fedex?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Finally! An American judge with some common sense!

Honestly, though, I think this is a good first step. I enjoy some Apple products, but I'll be more than happy to see them lose this. If they can trademark "app store", then what's next? They trademarks the term "app(s)", as well?

<comment><USER17> They trademarked "280".

<comment><USER18> This is not true.

They trademarked a very specific icon which happens to contain the digits 2, 8, and 0 in that order. (If you have an iOS device, it is your "Maps" icon.)

They did not trademark "280".

<comment><USER19> A bit of history: when AMD and Cyrix started gaining market share selling their x86 chips, Intel went to court to try to trademark "486" and failed, so the 586 became Pentium.

<comment><USER20> If the drug company that made the morning after birth control drug had not been able tom trademark RU-486, I wonder ifbtheymwould have called it Preventium?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This looks like the judge just denied the preliminary injunction. It's a good first step, but this battle is far from over.

</comment><comment><USER22> Try as I might, I couldn't get this text from Apple's Back to School promotion to sound non-weird:

> Where can I use my Back to School Card or code?

> You can take advantage of this unique offer to purchase apps from the Mac > App Store and the App Store[...]

</comment><comment><USER23> I like Apple, but sometimes, they do really strange things…

<comment><USER24> I dislike apple, and am happy on this ruling, but still think the amazon app store, though good in theory for price competition, hurts the "one place to find all" mentality for consumers.

<comment><USER25> ...Good?

Are we really happy with not having alternatives to the walmarts of this world? I would wager that most consumers _appreciate_ alternatives.

<comment><USER24> I know what you mean its just not really the same thing here.. if every store had their own 'app store' then whats the point of an app store anyway? Again as someone who has lived through a world before app stores, as long as _the_ app store is fair its really the way to go.

<comment><USER25> I have yet to see a " _the_ app store" that is fair, and I have a rather hard time imagining one even existing in the real world. As long as they have exclusion policies, I want as many different "app stores" competing with each other as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Apple needs to sit back down. People have been getting way to carried with trademark suits over the years.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't think naming your store the App Store is good for branding anyway if you're Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER28> "app store" should be a generic phrase. We all know that Apple's App Store is THE app store, so it should be referred to as "the app store" not just an 'app store' (which there could be many of).

</comment><comment><USER29> I think this ambiguity of terms is bad for consumers. My mom might buy Apps through the Amazon "App Store" and expect it to run on her iPhone. I think Amazon is coat-tailing on Apple's branding in a deliberate attempt to create a false sense of equivalency.

<comment><USER30> How would one's mom buy an app from Amazon's android store without doing it through an Android Phone?

<comment><USER31> Like so: [http://www.gadgetsdna.com/how-to-install- android-2-2-froyo-o...](http://www.gadgetsdna.com/how-to-install- android-2-2-froyo-on-iphone-3g/3501/)

<comment><USER25> Yes, that looks exactly like something my mother might accidentally do.

<comment><USER32> First thing I've seen on the internet today to actually make me laugh out loud.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>