JetBrains Doomsday Sale - 75% off for 24 hours only - <AUTHOR> http://www.jetbrains.com/specials/ <comment><USER2> All their server issues must mean they are dealing with unprecedented demand.

It makes me wonder: When demand is THIS intense for a 75% off sale, you think it'd mean a more optimal "normal" price point would be at 25-50% off your current normal prices, wouldn't you?

<comment> martin-adams It is because the offer plays to our human nature. We perceive we are getting something worth 4 times the value but fear that if we do not act now we will lose it forever.

The fact that the servers are going down and people are excited by the offer also means that we will feel left out if we do not do what our fellow humans have validated as a good choice.

If they offered the product at a cheaper price normally, they are devaluing the product, which is not what they want to do. This is a $100 product for $25, not a $50 product for $50.

<comment><USER3> Yeah but parent is saying that if they had correct pricing they would be able to handle this level of demand.

75% off for your product should create a much larger sales revenue, but within a certain factor. Beyond that just shows that most of your potential customers view your software as being heavily overpriced.

<comment><USER4> Not really.

If you've got a great product and there's no competition on par in the market, you can charge what ever you like and people will pay (photoshop, maya, resharper, etc).

A sale like this just spikes interest and no doubt drives a lot of chatter which will pull other full price paying customers to the site to buy more stuff.

As a company with shareholders, can you really justify throwing away profits by cutting your prices permanently by 75%?

For this to be a reasonable proposition you need 4x your current customer base that you can _prove_ wont buy your product unless you slash the price.

You'd probably see some rise in volumes, but 500%?

O_o I"m dubious.

(I've always thought the Jetbrains stuff was quite modestly priced; compared to say, Xamarin's offerings)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Judging by how slow your site is at 7am EST, I'd say your sale is a big success :)

Anyone used AppCode? I'm tempted to give it a try, but what's its killer features compared to Xcode? If refactoring works with ObjC++ that'd be a great start; worth EUR23 alone.

<comment><USER6> AppCode has been a wonderful tool for me. I have been using it since the EAP of 1.0. If you've used IntelliJ IDEA before you will feel very comfortable here. The refactorings are great and only getting better. The debugger and the ability to inspect variables much more easily that in Xcode is awesome. I just recently renewed my support on AppCode and I could have saved some cash, but the tool is so inexpensive as it is that I don't care. But, I am going to buy my upgrade to IntelliJ IDEA 12 today. I've had every version of IDEA since version 2!

But, again AppCode is an awesome tool. When you consider the only way JetBrains can write a tool that reads Xcode projects is to constantly reverse engineer what Apple puts out, it's quite amazing.

<comment><USER7> Any major limitations of using IDEA with Ruby and Python plugins, versus RubyMine + PyCharm?

I prefer the idea of a single extensible IDE, but can't figure out the tradeoffs by reading the descriptions.

<comment><USER6> I've never looked at the difference between the three. But, from what I have read/understand, is that IDEA Ultimate can do anything RubyMine or PyCharm can do via their respective plugins.

Here's an old doc from JetBrains about RubyMine and Intellij IDEA: <http://devnet.jetbrains.net/docs/DOC-1146>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm an Eclipse user who has always thought about switching to IDEA, but the poor Emacs keyboard shortcut support has made it difficult to adapt to. With IDEA 12, they've made some major progress in Emacs keyboard shortcut support ( [http://blogs.jetbrains.com/idea/2012/03/more-emacs-for- the-f...](http://blogs.jetbrains.com/idea/2012/03/more-emacs-for-the-favorite- ide/) ). It's still missing at least one minor thing that I'm used ("Quit" action, by default that is CTRL-G in Emacs), but I may be able to get used to that or find a workaround. At $50, I can't pass this up just in case I do end up switching to IDEA.

I occasional use Python (and sometimes this involves Django). I wonder, does PyCharm have any extra features that make it worth getting in addition to IDEA? Or is IDEA good enough for this already?

<comment><USER9> Not sure how they play this out in the future but for IDEA 12 vs latest PyCharm they first added the new python-related features to PyCharm and then to IDEA python plugin. The codebase seems to be the same but release cycles differ.

Also some of the plugins are available only for PyCharm but this will hopefully change (for example, Lua plugin is only for PyCharm).

As of today I haven't found a way to add new packages to virtualenvs in IDEA but they are easy to install in PyCharm.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The response was overwhelming! We should be back up and running shortly :-)

<comment><USER10> Please do share the results (number of sales up or down, revenue up or down if you can).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ugh. I tried adding a product to the cart and got a "Some JetBrains services are currently down for scheduled maintenance. We'll be back online shortly. Thanks for your patience." page.

Someone chose a really bad time for scheduled maintenance... I'm doubting it was scheduled.

Hope they get this resolved soon.

<comment><USER12> Working on it. Sorry about this.

<comment><USER13> So was it scheduled or do you lie to your [potential] customers as a matter of policy?

<comment><AUTHOR> In response to comment: "If you put up an error page that says "scheduled maintenance" and the "maintenance" is unscheduled then that's a lie. It's not a mistake unless you accidentally put the wrong page up or something like that. It's a pretty common corporate thing: they have a panic situation and instead of saying "we're overloaded with traffic and can't keep the server up but are trying hard to meet the load; please try again tomorrow" or something they say "scheduled maintenance". It's barefaced lying and it's a pretty good indicator IMO of low morals. What's more if they said they had problems I'd personally be sympathetic. If they say they've "scheduled maintenance" at a busy time then I'm inclined to think they're pretty poor at running their business."

@pbhjpbhj - With 100% certainty there was no let's put up a "scheduled maintenance" page to mislead anybody. If you have followed this post, facebook, twitter, our blogs, etc. it has been clear that this was purely a volume issue and the priority was to get the website and shop up and running as quickly as possible. There are people who have been and continue to work very hard to take orders and support all of those who are experiencing issues. There have been some things to learn from this process and ensuring a proper message page appears if/when a likewise issue raises its head again in the future. We welcome and appreciate feedback from all but let's nice turn a great promotion for JetBrains developers into something ugly that it is not.

<comment><USER13> > _there was no let's put up a "scheduled maintenance" page to mislead > anybody_ //

So why not a "site overloaded" page then.

I'd guess it went down like

1: "the servers are melting; Rackspace say they can handle it for $X million"

2: "take the site down while we switch over to Amazon"

1: "what do we tell customers"

2: "just stick up the 'scheduled maintenance' page".

It's perhaps on the level of lying to your boss that you got stuck in [road] traffic on the way to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can anyone vouch for RubyMine? Its going to be my first venture in to the language, is it a good tool to have?

I'm looking at Rubymine and PHPstorm, at these prices ill call it a Christmas present from me to me.

Unfortunately lots of other people seem to have the same idea and the site is currently bricked.

<comment><USER15> One vote for rubymine. It handles all the rubyisms like rvm, rbenv, bundler and the various servers nicely as well as syntax hightlighting for all the ususals plus haml, coffeescript etc.

It also looks like it will be getting nice Torquebox integration soon if you are a jruby / Torquebox person.

I must admit though that I do not use the advanced features half as much as I should.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Mayans took an obsidian axe to their e-commerce server early.

The contract I'm on doesn't have an escape clause for apocalypses, so I'm gonna need that software soon.

<comment><USER17> Do we have any feedback for the problem from Jetbrains?

<comment><AUTHOR> @skiabox we are working on it. sorry for any inconvenience.

<comment><USER14> Getting to the end of the working day here in the UK, will there be any extension to the sales time?

Not a demand, just really want rubymine and phpstorm =)

<comment><USER18> Get to work before noon tomorrow and hope it will be done by then :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can someone chime in with how Pycharm compares to Komodo Edit - or maybe just if you've had a positive/negative experience with Pycharm?

I'm starting to get a little frustrated with Komodo, and I remember liking a very brief Pycharm demo I tried a few years back, but I'd love to hear an HNer's opinion if you happen to use it day to day.

It seemed to have a pretty good reputation back then, but one of the concerns I had was hearing something on HN about it occasionally "optimizing" or making modifications to your code unilaterally.

Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER20> What about WingIDE? Does it make sense to switch to PyCharm?

<comment><USER21> IMO not, I personally like WingIDE more but I am using PyCharm on OSX as it is better integrated and has a better virtualenv support. You can always just try PyCharm for free

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone know how, say, IntelliJ handles Javascript? or RubyMine?

For instance, If I've got a Rails project with JS in it, do I need both WebStorm and RubyMine?

Wish there was "one IDE to rule them all!" type of thing. I don't work in just one language.

<comment><USER12> We use the same core for JavaScript, HTML, CSS among all IDE's. They're often not available at the same time because we ship at different times. Otherwise all the same.

<comment><USER23> Are you saying that if I buy AppCode WebStorm would be redundant/unnecessary?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I like the Copyright date range at the bottom of that page.

I recently renewed my WebStorm license (it's valid till August 2013). If anyone from Jetbrains is reading this, can I renew it for another year today?

<comment><USER25> From their terms page: Regardless of the actual upgrade subscription renewal date, your new upgrade subscription term will always start on the date following your previous upgrade subscription expiration date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So, I can't pass up this price. (I've been meaning to try you, and this pushes me over the edge.)

However, your Order Details page, prompting for name, address and other contact info, and payment type (but not account details), is coming across via HTTP rather than HTTPS [1]. I would _REALLY_ prefer that to be HTTPS.

[1] <http://www.jetbrains.com/eshop/checkout/displaySummary.do>

P.S. I "forced" the Shopping Cart page to HTTPS by editing the address bar. I can then proceed; however, the pages still contain some elements delivered via HTTP.

Upon reaching element5 to process my payment, I find that its data collection page (the first page I reach, and which is asking for my credit card information), is delivered via HTTPS but also has some elements delivered via HTTP -- that is, the HTTPS connection is "broken".

You really should have a look at revising and improving your payment processing.

P.P.S. Ok, on that first element5 page, I chose the link to "Change Payment". The next page I received was fully HTTPS, and selecting the credit card option, I'm back to a page prompting for CC details, but this time it's fully HTTPS.

If anyone wonders why I'm writing this here ("HN isn't a bug tracker"), the OP has identified themselves as being with JetBrains, and I'd really like to see this fixed -- and thanks for the sale price, if I can help their conversion rate a bit by making the purchase flow look a bit less... "troubling".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> \----- Message From JetBrains

Update from payment processor: all pending orders are expected to be confirmed/processed by EOD today (CET) ~ in approx. 6-7 hours.

After confirming orders, JetBrains will be handling license delivery that could take up to 48 hours but we'll be working as fast as we can.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

For official information stay tuned to: <https://twitter.com/jetbrains/>

Best Regards - Robert Demmer

<comment><USER27> Thank you Robert!! We are anxiously awaiting licences! What a wonderful discount, so excited to have picked up my copies!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28>
        We're thrilled that you've come all the way here to buy our products! Thank you!

        However, we did not expect the load on our servers would be this high. We are working hard right now to fix the problem.

        Please be patient and come back in a couple of hours.
        There's still time...

        -The JetBrains Team

Oh alright.

<comment><USER29> I was actually able to successfully purchase my upgrade. However, I have yet to receive my new license code and it's been about an hour.

<comment><AUTHOR> The emails for these are backing up. You can receive it in minutes and in some cases up to 2 business days. Please hold tight. If you purchase was made you will get your license key. If you want to use it now you can download the fully functional trial and enter your license when you receive it. You may also what to check to make sure it wasn't flagged as spam.

<comment><USER27> Will do thank you!

<comment><AUTHOR> Your welcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I am trying to buy PyCharm but the price is still $99 in the JetBrains shopping cart. Is anyone else seeing that?

edit: Sale prices are back.

edit2: Purchases complete still working, still awaiting license code.

<comment><USER5> 3 hours after purchase here, not even an order confirmation email (though I did get the purchase confirmation page and an order number which I've now lost thanks to a browser crash and my inability to find a pen.)

I don't have any reason to doubt it'll come, but I'm kicking myself for not waiting until later when everything would have been running smoothly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hang tight scrumper, if you got the purchase confirmation page you are all set. An email will follow with delay because of the volume.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I can see you're busy and the page did say "12 hours." All good here; even if not I'm sure you'll make me whole again.

Bit cross with myself for not writing down the order ID, but usually an auto- email comes straight after.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It seems like it's up again, but it's now not applying the discount? (Trying to buy Resharper c# version). The discount is there until you add it to your cart.

Edit: it seems fixed now!

</comment><comment><USER32> NOOO my boss is on vacation until next year, how am I supposed to get approval?

Edit: Oh apparently it's for personal editions only.

<comment><USER33> Just buy your own copy, you are allowed to use it at work but you can't share it with other people.

Also you have to buy it with your own money.

<comment><USER34> From the license page, it does not look like you are allowed to use your copy at work (would be great if this were possible ;) ):

"Personal licenses are not available to companies in any way or form. Transfer of personal licenses to any third party and/or reimbursement for personal license purchase by a company are prohibited by the Personal License Agreement"

<http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/buy/buy.jsp#personal>

<comment><USER35> I've glanced through the license. You are allowed to install it on as many machines as you need as long as only you use it. I can't see any limitations on what work you can do or who for.

My conclusion is that as long as you have paid for it you can use it at work but cannot reclaim expenses for it or transfer it in any way.

<comment><USER36> > but cannot reclaim expenses for it

How is that a valid condition (legally)? If you bought a programming book on your Kindle, Amazon would have no legal ground to prohibit your company from reimbursing you.

<comment><USER37> There's no legal grounds for prohibiting reimbursing you, but there's lots of grounds for revoking your license if you violate the terms of the license.

It's actually a valid scenario. Suppose you want to evaluate IDEA for your company but need more than 30 days. You could buy the personal edition and use it. After your evaluation is done, the company reimburses you. If you liked it, presumably your company bought a site license at the same time which you can use instead. If you didn't just stop using it.

<comment><USER36> I understand that it would circumvent their price discrimination strategy but that doesn't mean they can put whatever they want in there. I don't begrudge them extracting as much value out of the market as they can but I just don't understand the basis for revoking a license in this case. As long as the other terms and conditions are met, and if the license were revoked, would their be legal recourse for the license holder (I know this is getting ridiculous but I'm wondering)? I would think it would be found a valid use of the license, but IANAL.

BTW, I have no interest in doing this; I'm just curious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Looks like their servers have had a meltdown ... Clearly they underestimated the planet-wide morphic resonance across software developers for pre- apocalypse deep discounts on IDEs :)

<comment><USER13> > _Looks like their servers have had a meltdown_ //

No no, didn't you read it's just "scheduled maintenance". No biggy, nothing to do with extra traffic at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> So is IntelliJ IDEA just as good for python development as pycharm and then some? or does pycharm have more or better "python" features because its specialized?

</comment><comment><USER40> I downloaded a trial of PhpStorm last week, and loaded an old CodeIgniter project into it.

The app flagged objects, methods, and variables that were created in other files as "undefined."

I could see how that would be helpful under other circumstances, but does anyone know if PhpStorm is set up to play nice with most PHP frameworks?

Also: For smaller projects, is there any advantage to buying a Python IDE over just using a tricked out version of Vi?

Auto complete is nice & all, but Vi is Vi.

<comment><USER41> PHPStorm plays nice when any framework. The issue it's going to have is when Frameworks do not clearly document, or when they make bad decisions about things. You can, of course turn off different levels of inspections to account for the project you are working on. However, I've found that for the most part, if PHPStorm is flagging something like "undefined method," it's essentially saying "you are hoping that this works as expected." It's a form of static analysis.

I'm not surprised that an old CodeIgniter project flagged these issues.

As for vi, I use vi every day as well. I switch between that and PHPStorm. It depends on the context that I'm in. Both are wonderful tools. But I can assure you, auto-complete is a basic feature of PHPStorm. It's akin to 'set nu'.

Edit: This comment comes off as a bit snarky. It's not intended to be. I think JetBrains and it's line of products are excellent, and I've only ever had good experiences with them. I wouldn't want my comment to reflect poorly on them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Really a good deal... Upgrading to IntelliJ 12, and getting a license for AppCode at the same time. After many attempts, I was able to get through the checkout but even Element5 which is used for the checkout process is I think under load... Getting to the Thank you page after entering the CC information took a while but it finally went through...

Glad that the Mayan came up with the end of the world! That made my day!

</comment><comment><USER43> This web-site needs Cloudflare or similar. I cannot get a darn thing to load.

<comment><USER44> My advice: don't say your site is down for "scheduled maintenance" when it's obviously because of an unexpected surge in traffic. It just makes you look dishonest. (Well, either that or really terrible at scheduling your maintenance periods.)

<comment><USER45> A hell of advice. Will pass that over to the team who's maintaining JetBrains estore. Thanks )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I've been using PyCharm for 2 years now and I love it. I am thinking of buying WebStorm, as the web app I work on has gotten a lot more JS heavy.

Would I be better off getting IntelliJ and getting plugins for it, or having PyCharm and WebStorm separately? This has an impact down the road when I have to renew licences!

<comment><USER47> Is there a reason you need Webstorm? From what I have tried to find, Pycharm includes Webstorm features and any missing features (Node.js) can be downloaded as a plugin.

Do you know any specific feature that you are looking for that is not in Pycharm? I am in a similar situation and was wondering the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Has anyone else paid but not gotten their license info email? It's been several hours and I still haven't gotten my license info.

Update: Thank you for the replies. Glad to know I didn't accidentally mistype my email twice. I agree, their license server might be hiccupping now that they got the order system fixed.

Update 2: Still haven't recieved an email. Just logged into my bank account (I used my debit card) and I don't see any holds or anything. I'm beginning to wonder if the transaction actually went through. In the order process there's the page that said if it takes longer than 30 seconds click the link below to continue. I had to click the link and the following page had an order or reference number (which I didn't bother to write down because I assume these things go through fine... I've never had a problem before).

<comment><USER48> Still waiting for mine, but given the issues they've had today, I won't be surprised if it takes hours to receive the license info in my inbox. I was actually able to order with no problems, at least.

<comment><USER49> Do they send out an email confirmation of payment? I haven't received any emails, but also don't want to accidentally process two orders.

<comment><AUTHOR> @MoOmer, if you finished the transaction the email will arrive. Glad that you were able to make your purchase. There is a backlog of emails to be sent but if the order was completed you will be all set.

<comment><USER11> Still haven't received an email. Just logged into my bank account (I used my debit card) and I don't see any holds or anything. I'm beginning to wonder if the transaction actually went through. In the order process there's the page that said if it takes longer than 30 seconds click the link below to continue. I had to click the link and the following page had an order or reference number (which I didn't bother to write down because I assume these things go through fine... I've never had a problem before). I also don't want to accidentally double order, so at this point, I'm now prepared to have not spent the money should the order process have gotten borked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> You know what would make this a really awesome sale? If we could just buy it all for an even bigger discount.

<comment><USER51> With the exception of reShaper, YouTrack, and the Obj-C environment, I think that's called IntelliJ…

<comment><USER39> Are you saying that intelliJ has the features of pycharm and appcode? or am I misunderstanding?

<comment><USER52> Yes, it does, via plugins for PHP and Python. Based upon the other comments here, it seems the release cycle of plugins lags a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I had never heard of WebStorm before, and on the wikipedia page, they seem to say that all of its functionalities are part of IntelliJ IDEA.

Is it true ?

If I buy IntelliJ IDEA, will I be able to do everything that can be done in WebStorm ? (just trying to not buy both if it is not necessary)

<comment><USER54> It's my understanding that Idea can do everything the other products can do. The others are just cheaper as they have limited features.

EDIT - From reading the comments I think appCode is separate but the others can be installed as plug-ins to IDEA, I presume for free.

<comment><USER55> so true, and IDEA is worthy of every penny you will spend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I have WebStorm and it is great. I was thinking about phpStorm and appCode. Can someone confirm that IDEA with Plugins will have the same feature of those apps? I am trying to see what is best to buy separate apps or IDEA alone and add plugins.

<comment><USER57> AppCode is not a part of the IDEA bundle. It follows XCode more closely than the generic project format that IDEA and the other apps use.

<comment><USER56> Thanks for the answer! I am going to try to find whats a part of the IDEA bundle so that I have a more defined picture before purchasing :-D

<comment><USER58> Check out this comparsion chart: [http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/editions_comparison_m...](http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/features/editions_comparison_matrix.html?IU)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I am not happy with the poor differentiation between personal (individual developers) and companies: owners of small companies can earn less than an individual developer, expecting to earn more in the future but with much more risk.

<comment><USER60> Small LLCs comprised of one or two[1] folks do seem to fall into the commercial license bucket; a "corner case", though.

Which means there's no need to rush to order today.

[1] This based on the 50% control requirement listed in the existing JetBrains license.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> NOOOOO. I've been waiting to upgrade Resharper for VS2012 and their page is offline.

<comment><USER61> A personal license for Resharper is exactly why I've been hoping for a sale.

<comment><USER33> Sick of waiting for my work to buy a volume licence, but seeing as it's a nicety and not a need to have, I might as well do the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Now the situation is even worse: I've been able to get to the ordering page, only to be rejected by their payment provider (which is probably overloaded as well).

Tried a second time to pay with PayPal, which accepts the transaction: however the confirmation page displays an error, saying to contact sales, and the form to contact sales ends up throwing up another error.

Now my credit card payment is in a indeterminate state, while the PayPal payment got through but I wasn't given a license key and there does not seem to be a reliable way to get one.

Luckily I still have my license for the previous IntelliJ version, it looks like I will use it for quite a while.

<comment><AUTHOR> @quicksilver03 - keep me posted we will make sure everything works out. (robert)[dot](demmer)[at](jetbrains)[dot](com)

<comment><USER62> 3 hours after ordering:

* PayPal has debited my account, but no order confirmation from JetBrains and no license key

* my credit card has been charged as well, I have an order confirmation from JetBrains but no license key

* I have been able to submit a request to sales, but that was when I thought that only the PayPal order had gone through

Robert, in the end I'll tell sales (if and when they get back to me) that IntelliJ IDEA is such a good product that you can keep both payments and give me one upgrade license.

<comment><AUTHOR> The license key can come in minutes and up to 2 business days later. If you have been billed you will get the keys. Again, send me your details and I will make sure we get you sorted.

<comment><USER63> 2 days? I'm curious why software companies still use Digital River. As a customer I've run into issues with about half the orders I've placed through DR subsidiaries.

<comment><AUTHOR> From what I know 2 days is on the extreme side but stated in the delivery policy. Should be much quicker albeit some delay due to the volume of orders.

<comment><USER64> That really sucks, I finally managed to get PyCharm and WebStorm today and was hoping to also get 1yr license extension for both. It looks like it is not possible w/o the license key, which is nowhere to be seen so far...

<comment><AUTHOR> @marekmroz, the license key will come if the order was completed. If you need to get started in the meantime you can grab the fully functional trial download and enter the key when it arrives. It may take some time due to the volume of orders.

<comment><USER64> Hey @rdemmer, I appreciate the effort you and other Jetbrains guys and gals put in keeping HN up to date with the server meltdown situation, but your comment does not address my (admittedly first-world) problem at all. I know I can get the trial and register when the keys eventually arrive. What I am saying is that if they arrive _after_ the sale ends, I won't be able to get promo price on 1 year license extension, as to buy the extension one has to provide the license key.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Can anyone tell something about developing professional Android projects? Are there any downsides when you are used to Eclipse? Does Intellij support Android development in similar advanced state as latest ADT for Eclipse?

<comment><USER66> I downloaded the demo of IntelliJ IDEA with the intention of playing with Android this morning. Setup was a lot more difficult than I expected, in that I had to do a lot of configuration before it would work, but it wouldn't outright error. So, creating a new project before adding the JDK and Android SDK resulted in an empty src and gen directory, but of course, no error. Once I fixed that up and opened an existing Eclipse project, it seemed OK, but not enough to wow me senseless. The GUI editor didn't seem to understand my layouts, so I was presented with the XML layout instead. This bummed me out since I wanted to see their GUI editor.

So far, not that impressed over Eclipse, but we'll see. I'm going to keep monkeying with it for the rest of the day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I placed my order some 7 hours ago, but I still haven't received a confirmation e-mail. Are the orders being vetted manually? That would be a tough bottleneck to eliminate - humans don't scale like computers. :P

<comment><USER68> Same here. I got the order number (which, like an idiot, I didn't write down), but I don't have any confirmation of purchase from DR element5. :/

If, in the end, it doesn't go through, I'm OK with that too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Work supplies IntelliJ. But I figured I'd upgrade my personal license (v9) "just in case". Plus add AppCode and WebStorm, just to try them out.

Alas, when I got to checkout, the discounted prices are not reflected in my cart.

<comment><AUTHOR> The shop is being updated and for a short time was showing the full prices. Please try again and don't purchase until you see the discounted amount. Should be working now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> I want intellij idea, but it seems doomsday has fallen on there servers...

<comment><USER45> Sorry, working on the problem. Current back-to-service estimate: 2-3 hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Haha I just upgraded my Resharper license last night. That was a mistake.

</comment><comment><USER72> Before I read about the server issues, I was about to say that I found it quite amusing that for a "Doomsday Sale" the receipt email states:

      The publisher of "PRODUCT" has been notified and is
      responsible for delivering this product. JetBrains s.r.o
      will deliver the product within 48 hours.

End of the world, if the planes fall from the sky, electricity goes out and the sun starts to burn us up slowly, I don't care if I can't use it, if they can still get me the products within 48 hours, kudos to them :D

</comment><comment> homer-simpson Can someone explain to me what does it mean to "renew" the license? If I pay for the license now, assuming the world does not end tomorrow, will I have to pay for it again next year? How much?

<comment><USER73> The renew is for the subscription license for upgrades. With some of the applications you can get all the updates for free for a year and then you would have to buy a new subscription if you want newer versions if you don't want to pay any more you can continue to use the version you have until the end of the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> OH MY GOD! ReSharper for $50!!!! Take my money! This is seriously awesome. And based on how hard the site's getting hit, your sales team is having a pretty awesome day too :)

</comment><comment><USER75> I've been pretty satisfied with just using Eclipse and PyDev/Aptana Studio so far with Django. Any thoughts on the advantages of PyCharm?

<comment><USER76> PyCharm now manages virtualenvs like a champ. It's absolutely bloody great.

<comment><USER39> do you know if that goes for the python plugin for intellij IDEA too?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> I've really gotten into Sublime after being 100% text-editor for perl, HTML, javascript and PHP for years and years.

Can anyone tell me why I should switch to this IDE?

What am I missing out on? Many of the 'smarts' seem dependent on writing code in a particular way (eg, using PHPdoc) or following their file naming conventions.

I'm eager to try anything that's better. But I'm not getting it.

</comment><comment><USER78> I've always been very pro-Eclipse... however this kind of price and the feature list have me clicking the IntelliJ buy button

</comment><comment><USER79> In case you're not able to get through right now: The offer is valid until Friday, 21 December 2012, 5:11 am CST (GMT-6)

<comment><USER80> I'm inclined to believe (if they want to be nice to their customers) that they'll extend the offer if the site remains unavailable like it is right now for the next 24 hours.

<comment><USER45> Of course, if we're into an extended out-of-service period, we'll prolong the offer. Current service restoration estimate is 2-3 hours though. Sorry, please hold on )

<comment><USER79> If far as I'm concerned, you were definitely in an extended out-of-service period, but this morning it appears you decided NOT to extend the offer. That's too bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> btw - personal licences only (i.e. not commercial licenses).

<comment><USER71> As I understood it a personal license is just a named license (you can still use it commercially).

<comment><USER81> From the documentation:

Personal licenses are not available to companies in any way or form. Transfer of personal licenses to any third party and/or reimbursement for personal license purchase by a company are prohibited by the Personal License Agreement.

So not sure what to make of that exactly... Individuals can buy it and use it commercially but companies can't? Even if you're a contractor working in your spare time, you are likely to be registered as a limited company.

<comment><USER82> i have a personal licence and use it for work. no-one has sued me. it's my ide. i bought it. i use it. that is how i expect things to work.

surely the commercial licence is for when a company is buying it, and expects to have N programmers, who are replaceable, using it at any one time. that's a completely different use case.

the only frustrating thing is that if you have multiple machines (say a desktop and a laptop) and switch between them (eg working one project on the laptop in living room; leaving the ide open for another project in the office) then it complains. you can fix this by blocking some firewall port (bonjour iirc). oh, that and the complete LACK OF SUPPORT FOR C / C++... in intellij idea.

<comment><USER12> Personal license means it's in your name, nothing more. Whereas Commercial license means it's in your company's name and therefore unnamed, so it does not belong to a single individual but to the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> Remember that IntelliJ have plugins that makes it have the same features as Webstorm, Phpstorm, rubymine and Pycharm, except for one feature: "Open Directory". If you get IntelliJ you must create a project in order to edit the files in a directory. :-/

<comment><USER84> Is it genuinely identical? E.g., I get Python refactoring and Django/Mako/Jinja template support directly in IntelliJ?

<comment><USER83> I've not tried it. Best would be if you downloaded both trials of PyCharm and IntelliJ and tried it out yourself.

<comment><USER83> The "Open Directory" feature made me get WebStorm in addition to IntelliJ.

If you want that feature in IntelliJ, please vote for: <http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-75833>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> I'm in Bolivia but I get prices in British Pounds including VAT costs. What gives?

If I use a service like HideMyAss.com to get the US page, I can see the goods in dollars and that price I should be charged.

Any suggestions? I shouldn't have to pay VAT as I'm not located in the EU.

Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> @sergiotapia, you can switch your country... on the purchase page you should find text below the table to do this...

Purchases from 123 are charged in XYZ. If you are not from 123, please select your country

<comment><USER85> Thanks! That dropdown was really hard to find, and the text for that option has bad contrast with the background.

Works!

<comment><AUTHOR> Happy to hear that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> Damn! Only bought phpStorm last week, would have been nice to have got a 75% reduction.

</comment><comment><USER12> Message from JetBrain \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---

We apologise for the issue with the e-shop. We're working on solve it and please do not worry, you'll get your chance to buy the products you like. Thanks for your patience.

Hadi Hariri JetBrains s.r.o. Develop with Pleasure!

</comment><comment><USER87> Wow, this is great. My PyCharm upgrade is due and I might get the IDEA license too!

<comment><USER55> you could just purchase IDEA and install python/ruby/c++ plugins for free

<comment><USER54> If there is one thing they learn from this sale, it's that no one seems to understand what IDEA is, and how each product relates to each other!

<comment><USER88> Is it true that there's no difference between IDEA with plugins and PyCharm, etc? I haven't used these products before so have no idea and I've heard a few people saying similar things.

<comment><USER89> Only real difference I'm aware of is the release schedule; as far as I can tell the plugins get major updates with IntelliJ releases, not alongside the separate IDEs.

(It's possible I'm wrong, just my observations)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Is anybody else still waiting for their license keys? I reached the confirmation screen (which I saved, hooray) but I've yet to see an email, charge on my credit card, or receive anything else. My order was 20+ hours ago.

</comment><comment><USER91> Jetbrains site seems to be down completely now; I keep getting a maintenance page

<comment><USER92> Yeah, sorry about that, we've been faced with unprecedented demand. Stay tuned while we fix this...

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> It seems they got HNned / slashdotted / reddited (?) pretty quickly. Here's to hoping they can get it back up soon - I postponed buying a license because I didn't have enough money on my paypal account last time.

</comment><comment><USER93> Really would like to buy this, I was wondering if someone could answers a few questions if they've used the products.

I'd buy RubyMine, PHPStorm, and AppCode. Do RubyMine and PHPStorm have the same functionality as WebStorm?

</comment><comment><USER94> This deal is pretty awesome. I had trouble deciding on whether to get RubyMine instead of IntelliJ. I went ahead and got myself a copy IntelliJ because of all the language/IDE plugins. Great deal today!

</comment><comment><USER95> My order just went through. It looks like the order processing is back up!

</comment><comment><USER96> Fantastic! I've been trying out PyCharm and really loving it. I'm used to programming in nice cozy Windows IDEs, so this is making picking up Python a lot easier for me than using vi or Sublime.

<comment><USER97> Funny, I find the IdeaVim plugin that emulates some Vim functionality to be one of my top reasons for loving all the JetBrains products.

<comment><USER96> The big thing for me is stuff like good code completion. I import a library and can just type "objectname." and then it tells me all the properties and methods of the object. I don't know if there are any plugins for Vim to make that work, but in Pycharm it works very well straight out of the box.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> Am I the only one who can't stand their interfaces? It looks terribly out of place on OS X (the icons, those tabs!). I don't know why it seems every app built on Java has to look like that.

<comment><USER54> There are some nice themes in the new one, but yes it's not up to the polish of XCode. However it does work very well...

Being cross platform has it's issues, see iTunes on PC? However Adobe seem to do a decent job, perhaps being a creative company helps.

<comment><USER99> Seen iTunes on a Mac?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> Ugh, I literally bought RubyMine a week ago for $69, and now it's only $17. Sucks for me for missing out on the savings, but it's a fantastic product and well worth the original price.

</comment><comment><USER101> Is it randomly picking a country it "thinks" I'm from? I opened seven products in different tabs and it's defaulting to US, Netherlands, Belgium, Russian Federation, US, US, and China.

<comment><USER11> I think that has something to do with it being the end of the world and all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> I hope it becomes "48 hours only" because they are getting slammed.

<comment><USER45> Sorry, working on restoring service, current estimate: 2-3 hours.

<comment><USER87> No need to be sorry. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> Unless their aim was to just create hype and not actually do much sale, it's _extremely_ badly planned execution.

Their site (shopping cart actually) has been down for nearly 4 hrs now.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can assure you that this was not to "just create hype" and that the team is working to get up and running as quickly as possible.

<comment><USER102> I trust you that it's just bad planning, been waiting for hours with my CC in hand.

<comment><USER45> Current estimate to restore service: 2-3 hours.

<comment><USER103> I have finally checked out! I've purchases IntelliJ! 3 hours in the making!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I wonder how much revenue they will lose to people who will just find it easier to pirate their products because they've essentially made them impossible to buy.

</comment><comment><USER104> Nooooooooooooooo... I bought the Intellij IDEA 12 upgrade 3 days ago... I paid 111€ (including VAT) instead of 27€... I now it's irrational, but I'm sad.

<comment><USER105> 47€ *

Their dollar-euro conversion rate is pretty bad.

<comment><USER104> I paid 111€ to upgrade (94€ + 19% french VAT). If I were to upgrade now, it would cost 27€ (23€ + 19% french VAT).

I wonder if I should just cancel the upgrade and buy a new license. According to the terms and conditions on the Digital River website, I have a legal "cooling off period" of two weeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> Agh, I just bought an Idea license less than a week ago!

<comment><USER107> you can renew it beforehand with discount for one more year ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> I'm looking at getting RubyMine as soon as the site allows. Question: If I have both Windows and Mac, do I need to buy two licenses? Anyone know?

<comment><USER64> You only need one license (as long as only one instance of the ide is running).

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> Payment processor works ok, but the Jetbrains site needed some F5 hammering before it let me through. Guess I'm prepared for the comets now...

</comment><comment><USER110> Seems like a good idea to make a lot people know the product and renew the product for $59 next year. I'm in as soon as the site is back up

</comment><comment><USER111> Ruby Mine for $ 17 ! not bad at all ! hope they extend the offer period though, as no one is able to access it at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER112> I am in the US but when I go to checkout the prices are listed in British pounds. Anyone else having the same problem?

<comment><AUTHOR> On the product page before you hit buy, below the table with the various license options, you can change the country. Look for...

"Purchases from COUNTRY are charged in CURRENCY. If you are not from COUNTRY, please select your country."

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> Do these have Emacs key bindings?

I primarily code in Ruby and Javascript, should I buy those individually or get IDEA and find plugins?

<comment><USER8> In the past, the deficiencies of their Emacs keybindings have made it difficult for me to switch (from Eclipse which gets this mostly right, and has the Emacs+ plugin if you need more Emacs features). But IDEA 12 made some big progress in this area: [http://blogs.jetbrains.com/idea/2012/03/more-emacs- for-the-f...](http://blogs.jetbrains.com/idea/2012/03/more-emacs-for-the- favorite-ide/)

I've only used it briefly, but the only thing missing that bothered me was lack of "Quit" action (defaults to Ctrl-G in Emacs) which I use frequently, but they appear to be getting all the important things correct.

I'm not sure whether these improvements have made it to their other tools besides IDEA 12.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> Just bought PyCharm and WebStorm - any idea when I'll get my download link? Really keen to start using these tonight.

<comment><USER39> I think you can go ahead and download them, you'll get a license later on that you can then apply. Someone please correct me if Im wrong.

<comment><USER95> Yeah, you can get a free 30 day trial of the "premium" IDEs, and you can enter in your license information at any point during the trial in the IDE itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is correct and I believe the delivery of the license key can take from minutes up to 2 business days from ordering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> Is the purchase confirmation email working?

</comment><comment><USER115> This is damn awesome. I was waiting exactly for this. Now I just hope that JRebel offers a similar deal.

</comment><comment><USER9> The prices for EU seem to be wrong after adding to the cart.

$25 PyCharm becomes 94.05 EUR. $50 IDEA becomes 189.05 EUR.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, shop was being updated. Should be working now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> Waiting for my IntelliJ license. I would rather prefer immediate receipt of license on payment.

</comment><comment><USER117> really loving attention to detail with the circular Mayan motif around the sale price! I'm definitely getting my own re-sharper license. Kind of wish they had a whole product suite special price. I'd probably get it just to have for possible future use.

</comment><comment><USER17> I managed to pay for IntelliJ IDEA but I've got no emails for about one hour and a half!

</comment><comment><USER118> @hhariri / @rdemmer - any partial refund for anyone who recently purchased something? :)

</comment><comment><USER119> You guys need to ditch element5 and switch to a payment processor that can scale.

</comment><comment><USER120> Almost there with PyCharm ... next is RubyMine and IDEA (and upgrade to AppCode).

</comment><comment><USER121> Damn, I was going to buy 5 team city agent licenses, but they're not on sale! =(

</comment><comment><USER122> Out of curiosity, why such discrepancy between the price to US vs EU customers?

<comment><USER123> I just tweeted @JetBrains with the same question. 37 USD becomes 35 EURO(as opposed to ~25 EURO with more up to date currency convert). It's a pity because if I got USD equivalent pricing, I was planning on buying more of their products for stacks I just want to play around with(RubyMine, IntelliJ)

<comment><USER122> Pretty much the same as. $50 converts to ~£31 or ~€38 rather than the €47 currently charged (all ex-VAT / Sales Tax). I was planning on buying a few different products but I just don't appreciate being charged more for an electronic product because of where I live, 75% sale or not. Now it might be that European card processing fees are higher than the US but certainly not €10 worth on a €38 transaction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER124> The sale is officially over but the new price is $50 which is still a steal!

</comment><comment><USER125> I like their products but no C++ support prevents me from being a customer.

</comment><comment><USER17> I am trying for an hour to buy anything but they have serious problems! :(

<comment><USER92> Sorry about that! We're working to get things fixed very soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER126> Shut-up and take my money!

</comment><comment><USER127> The sale is over, and now a personal licence is even cheaper ? (50$)?

</comment><comment><USER128> I cant wait for the cart to be up. I have 4 purchases to make.

<comment><USER129> you do know that buYing intelliJ gets you virtually all of the other IDE's as free plugins?

</comment></comment><comment><USER130> Wow, almost a week to the day after I upgraded to IDEA 12.

</comment><comment><USER131> 50 bucks for IntelliJ IDEA?! This is more than a bargain.

</comment><comment><USER132> I've tried switching to Intellij from Eclipse a few times, but it's just too different and I don't feel like the UI is all that great. This is a great deal but I just don't see the justification to buy Intellij.

<comment><USER133> As someone whose lived in both environments, I can assure you that Intellij is far more _intelligent_ in every single respect. I haven't done much RCP development so can't speak on that front, but in terms of JavaEE or web, there's no comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER134> I need pycharm student licence! is that included?

<comment><USER80> No, but the personal license is now actually cheaper than the academic license (at least for IDEA), so you're actually better off. Pretty sure the academic license is no longer valid as soon as you finish school.

</comment></comment><comment><USER135> The site seems to be back up and running now.

</comment><comment><USER136> Totally worth the wait for it to go up again!

</comment><comment><USER137> Same for me , it shows 99$ in the cart.

<comment><AUTHOR> Should be fixed now. Sorry for the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER138> Any news when the shop will be back up?

</comment><comment><USER17> www.just-ping.com gives 100% packet loss from around the world pings to jetbrains.com

<comment><USER92> We've been caught with unexpected demand. Please stay tuned while we work to resolve this. Sorry!

</comment></comment><comment><USER139> Just upgraded yesterday. DOH!

</comment><comment><USER116> When will the site be up?

<comment><USER92> We're working to get this fixed ASAP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER140> Still not loading for me.

</comment><comment><USER141> What's will all these _Dooms Day_ sale. I wonder whether it's really clever?

</comment><comment><USER55> intellij idea 50 bucks only, this is a steal !!!

</comment><comment><USER142> Vim. That is all.

<comment><USER143> There's a plugin for that. <http://plugins.intellij.net/plugin/?id=164>

</comment></comment><comment><USER144> Beta releases are available for free. If you can bear the bugs.</comment>


USPTO invalidates Apple's "rubber-banding" patent asserted against Samsung - <AUTHOR> http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/10/23/uspto-invalidates-apples-rubber-banding-patent-asserted-against-samsung Rejoice! <comment><USER2> Some procedural observations:

1\. The rejection was signed by a primary examiner (i.e., someone who has been at the USPTO for awhile and not a rookie) and was approved by a supervisory primary examiner who oversees reexamination proceedings.

2\. The rejection is not final (see the unchecked box b near the top of the first page), therefore Apple can and will try to get the examiner to withdraw the rejection.

3\. The rejection states that the _next_ "Office action" is expected to be final. I would guess that unless Apple can make a compelling case for patentability OR amend claim 19 --- the only claim at issue in the _Apple v. Samsung_ lawsuit --- to get around the prior-art rejection, the rejection of claim 19 will be made final.

4\. If the examiner does make the rejection of claim 19 final, Apple can appeal to a three-person board of senior USPTO officials, nearly all of whom will be long-time patent examiners. If the board affirms the rejection, Apple can appeal to the courts.

5\. On the merits, it's helpful to think of claim 19 as an infringement checklist: For that claim to be infringed, _every element_ recited in _that_ claim must be present in the accused product or process [1].

(Infringement analysis treats each patent claim as a multi-part AND statement [2]; the statement must return TRUE for infringement to exist.)

6\. Claim 19 was rejected as being "anticipated." This means that in the examiner's view, every single element of claim 19 can be found in a single prior-art reference --- in this case a patent publication by Lira, and, separately, a patent issued to Ording --- and therefore the claim is unpatentable under 35 USC 102 [3].

(If claim 19 is thought of as an AND statement, then in the examiner's view, the AND statement returns TRUE when applied to the Lira reference, and also when applied to the Ording patent [4], and therefore claim 19 is unpatentable.)

7\. Perhaps importantly, the examiner's rejections over Lira and Ording were made under subsection (b) of 35 USC 102; that is, the "effective dates" of these two prior-art references were more than one year before the effective filing date of the Apple patent in question. This means that Apple won't be able to try to "swear behind" the references, that is, prove that its invention was invented before the effective dates of the Lira and Ording references [5].

NOTES:

[1] Infringement of a claim can exist even if one or more claim elements are not literally present, as long as the accused product or process has a substantial equivalent of the missing element(s). Note: The doctrine of equivalents is tricky to assert, to prove, and to defend against. See generally <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_equivalents>.

[2] See generally [http://www.oncontracts.com/how-patent-claims-work-a- variety-...](http://www.oncontracts.com/how-patent-claims-work-a-variety-of- different-and-statements-all-ord-together/)

[3] <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/35/102>.

[4] See generally [http://www.oncontracts.com/patent-validity-the-claims-and- st...](http://www.oncontracts.com/patent-validity-the-claims-and-statements- cannot-return-true-when-applied-to-prior-art/)

[5] See <http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s715.html> \--- scroll down to part II.A.

<comment><USER3> So can Apple now sue the USPTO because they successfully defended it in court costing millions of dollars and now a YEAR later the USPTO invalidates it? I hope so.

<comment><USER4> If they can (and do) I fear that this will discourage the USPTO from invalidating any other patent review cases for fear of being sued out the yang.

If there is a plus side, this _may_ affect the passability of future patent requests but I figure this will be less likely to occur and more likely that the USPTO will simply stop invalidating patent review cases. For the good of the country (world) I hope I'm wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This just helps illustrate the absurdity of the US patent system. Samsung and Apple have already been at this for over a year and a half (longer if you count their pre-lawsuit discussions).

Now, after we've been through lawsuit filings, discovery, back-and-forth over injunctions and a trial and gotten a verdict... The patent office turns around and says: "On second thought, we shouldn't have issued that patent in the first place.", which itself will be reexamined and appealed and ... adding onto the existing pile of appeals.

I happen to think that the patent office's invalidation is correct, but even if you don't... this is no way to run a railroad. Successful reexaminations should be a rare, exceptional case in a properly functioning patent system. Instead, we have case after case turning on them (Oracle v Google, the Lodys reexamination requests, ...).

Here's a radical idea: Maybe the patent office should work harder to not grant patents it is likely to invalidate later.

<comment><USER6> > The USPTO does not receive any funding from general taxation sources. > Rather, the agency is fully funded by the fees paid by patent applicants and > patent owners.

This is probably a big part of why the USPTO sucks. If they had the resources to hire dozens and dozens of industry experts, and pay them aggressively competitive wages, they could probably fix most of the problems most of us have with the system as a whole.

<comment><USER7> This is why I like the idea (from someone around here I think) that patent owners should state a value of the patent when filing, and fees should be a percent of that value. Then value of patent limits maximum damage for infringement. So the amount of damages that can be sued for depends on the amount of funded attention at USPTO on checking the patent is valid (and patent owners could have the option of increasing stated value later, in which case extra fees would be used to revalidate patent). But I guess the whole culture that the number of patents = amount of innovation in economy = success of USPTO would have to be battled.

<comment><USER8> That also completely screws the little guy, which is one of the big reasons the USPTO is said to exist.

<comment><USER9> I would also love to have 1 sq mile of land in downtown Manhattan on which to develop a high-rise.

But I'm just a little guy. The darn property tax system is set out to screw me.

This is really the whole reason that corporations were invented: so that people could pool their resources together to achieve things that a single person could not achieve. In fact, they used to just be temporary and when the original stated project on the charter was complete then the corporation disbanded.

If a little guy company wants to own a patent under this scheme either a) they have to file the patent with a lower value so they can make the annual "property tax" but that may cap their wins in the future if it's infringed on. or b) get funding from investors to make the property tax payments. Or c) sell or license the patent to a larger entity that could benefit from it. In the case of (c) if it's truly as valuable as they say it is to the patent office then they should be able to find a suitable buyer.

Flat capped taxes on things produce market inefficiencies such as you see in the domain name arena: It costs very little to hold onto things that might be valuable one day. If instead there was a sliding scale to renew a domain based on it's value then you wouldn't really see domain squatters. They'd be forced to sell their domains to someone that could make more productive use out of the resource. Same with land and property taxes. And maybe the same for patents? I kind of like this idea.

<comment><USER9> @andrewcooke: There is an analogous situation to property taxes though -- Rezoning a property. If you can acquire land zoned for something cheaper like residential or agriculture and get the city to re-zone it to commercial it's almost always worth a lot more. Overnight the property is worth a lot more and the property taxes will jump, so you'll either need to get the money to develop it yourself or sell it off to a developer who can do so.

And as far as the cost of entry, there are countless fields where patents could only conceivably be filed by someone with a lot of capital: auto, aerospace, medical, pharma, etc. There are certainly lone inventors working in these spaces trying to file patents but it's unlikely they're working on stuff where you need access to enormous wind tunnels or a medical testing population.

EDIT TO ADD: And aren't we as software developers going on and on about how software patents are worth anything? The cost of entry isn't very high at all and therefore they'd be worthless. Patents were supposed to protect the little guy from losing his large up-front research and development costs to the big established guys.

<comment><USER10> _Patents were supposed to protect the little guy from losing his large up- front research and development costs to the big established guys._

I always understood the purpose of patents was to provide incentive to bring trade secrets out into the documented open for the long-term benefit of society by having a great body of knowledge that anyone can use. So understanding of great inventions didn't disappear with the inventor. A short- term exclusivity on using the technology was the way to provide renumeration for being willing to share your discoveries with the public.

Rubber band scrolling is a cute, even useful, discovery, but it seems like it could be duplicated by just about anyone without any knowledge of what would otherwise be trade secrets. Is that worth documenting for future generations in this way given the high social costs of taking such documentation?

<comment><USER9> Hmm, my comments don't really reflect this, but I agree with you. I think the end result of a system like this would be that software patents would be next- to-nothing worthless and people just wouldn't bother, except perhaps in the cases of truly innovative works of software (I can't even think of any worth patenting right now...).

Would Apple really file their rubber-band scrolling patent at a value of $1bil, then pay some multiple of that per year when it's so easily avoided by their competitors? Probably not.

And if they do then more power to them. But it would put an upper bound of the amount of silly patents that a single large company could file and maintain (think IBM, MSFT, Apple, etc). Right now it costs a company hardly nothing to file all these and maintain them but they have a huge potential upside if your competitor steps on that patent landmine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The rubber-band patent was also the patent asserted to make Motorola Mobility recall their phones in Germany. I don't know how these things work, is the patent invalid in Europe now, or must it be investigated separately? Either way I'm guessing this will help their appeal.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/sep/14/motorola- mo...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/sep/14/motorola-mobility- recall-android-tablets-smartphones)

<comment><USER12> Makes no difference in the EU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, one of the patents that was claimed to invalidate this patent is another patent from Apple; does that patent not have any of the same ramifications? (I guess the key claim was #19, and that was also invalidated by the other prior patent?)

> ...U.S. Patent No. 7,786,975 on a "continuous scrolling list with > acceleration," with named inventors Bas Ording, Scott Forstall, Greg > Christie, Stephen O. Lemay and Imran Chaudhri.

Assignee: Apple Inc. (Cupertino, CA) Filed: December 23, 2005

<comment><USER14> Why should the courts let them have another bite at the apple, though? Apple ought to have known that one of their patents was likely to invalidate the one they'd sued over because they wrote and filed both of them. In fact, in a sensible world the courts ought to take a closer look at why they were trying to patent something for which they themselves had prior art.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is seriously good news for everyone. What this means to me as a start-up guy is that I can tomorrow start a phone company based on an Open Source OS like Android and still not worry about getting sued for trivial BS patents like these. I hope more of such patents are invalidated.

<comment><USER16> The patent is still being "prosecuted" by the USPTO. The actions aren't final on this patent yet.

<comment><USER15> Thanks, the title is kind of misleading then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What if when prior art was found for a patent, the real inventor got the patent, free, starting from the date of the invention, not the filing. This would both reward and protect the innovator and punish the copy cat.

NOTE: Let us assume a patent is not obvious and too general, which many seem to be.

</comment><comment><USER18> Today was a good day.

</comment><comment><USER19> It seems like maybe they should have looked at this before when the issued the patent, or maybe just maybe before they Apple Vs. Samsung lawsuit about this patent….

</comment><comment><USER3> "tentatively"

That doesn't sound like a sure thing to me.

<comment><USER20> Indeed. And until it gets overturned completely, you'll still need a team of lawyers ten times the size of your engineering department before you are allowed to innovate.

At least if you operate within US borders. Guess how sexy that is looking these days?

(1 billion dollar sexy, if anyone was wondering)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> They should invalidate all patents which are "obvious", let everybody move on to making great products and not waste all those resources in the courtrooms.

</comment><comment><USER22> The original blog post that broke the story is here: [http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/10/patent-office- tentatively...](http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/10/patent-office-tentatively- invalidates.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> I should have been a lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER24> Good news for Android scrolling if this sticks. This is probably whats keeping Google from implementing the "glass tilt" effect from the stock 4.0/4.1 home screen system wide.

<comment><USER25> Or they could just do their own thing.

<comment><USER26> I'd argue that Apple is the one needing to do its own thing now. Their patent is being invalidated, that means that what they though it was original is not.

<comment><USER27> The prior art is also an Apple patent. The judge found that there was no "inventive step" between the prior patent and the new one. That doesn't mean Apple didn't "do its own thing", just that its incremental improvement was not worthy of a new patent.

<comment><USER26> Oh yes, i read that now. I (kinda) apologize to the parent post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems like maybe they should have looked at this before when the issued the patent, or maybe just maybe before the Apple Vs. Samsung lawsuit about this patent….

</comment><comment><USER28> Sad. This is not a generic patent. It only seemed obvious now. Its not something that will stop innovation (as people scream about). A scrollbar implemented without rubber-band effect will do just fine. And why was this never implemented before anyways.

There is all this hype that "Apple is Bad because they sued Samsung". But considering everything, they had no other choice legally. They had to make a case on some grounds, and these 5-6 patents were the only patents they can sue on. What would've you done to protect ideas you spent years refining?

<comment><USER29> > But considering everything, they had no other choice legally.

Patents are not Trademarks. Patents are valid and legal even if you don't enforce them (where trademarks become invalid if you don't enforce them).

So no, they did have a choice. In fact, they had 3:

1\. They could have not gotten the patent at all. This could open them up to legal liability if someone else got it and sued them.

2\. They could have kept it for defensive purposes only. Using it if they were sued for patent abuse (and to prevent others from suing on this idea).

3\. They could use it offensively.

They chose #3. So yes, they did have a choice.

Additionally, I love your choice of words for the final sentence:

> What would've you done to protect ideas you spent years refining?

I think it hits the key point. They didn't invent the vast majority of what they are suing over. They just refined it. They didn't invent multi-touch, they just polished it. Now, whether that polish is worth a patent is one thing, but the concept is not.

And that's the absurdity of it all. This is not about protecting invention. This is not about protecting innovation. It's about protecting market position.

And if there's a clearer abuse of the patent system than this, I'd love to see it...

<comment><USER28> Thanks for clearing things up. What I am trying to say is, they had no other choice to send the message across that stop ripping off apple products. The patent they sued samsung over can be considered silly but what choice they had? I bet if this verdict was not given, next galaxy series would've been like iPhone 5. It was not about money, it was more about market position because what samsung was basically doing was placing ripped off versions of apple products in market. And i don't think this is a generic patent.

and this is what I call abuse of system. Just look at the patents mentioned in the link. Something that paul or its company was not even remotely associated. [http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/27/microsoft-co-founder- paul...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/27/microsoft-co-founder-paul-allen- sues-apple-google-facebook-ao/)

<comment><USER29> > The patent they sued samsung over can be considered silly but what choice > they had? I bet if this verdict was not given, next galaxy series would've > been like iPhone 5.

You mean the way that iOS 3, 4, 5 and 6 have stolen things from Android? Hell, the Book position sync thing that they introduced today copies from Android (and likely the Kindle).

Stop it with the FUD about this. The two phones are rectangular with rounded corners. Since when is that protected design? Look at the automobile market. Models are not distinguished by a generic look and feel, but by very very specific design details. None of which were copied between the devices.

Show me ONE major Apple feature that wasn't copied from someone else. The entire product is a culmination of ideas and innovation from others. Multi- touch? Done before. Large screen? Done. Icons? Done. Multi-Tasking? Don't even kid yourself. Notifications? Really?

What they did, and where their value is, is not in the concepts or innovation. It's in the level of polish that they apply. That's their competitive advantage.

And their legal battles are proof that they cannot compete on any other front other than polish. And since Android has been making leaps and bounds of improvements over the years, it's been threatening Apple's competitive advantage. And that's why Apple is suing.

It's the ultimate instance of the pot calling the kettle black.

<comment><USER28> There is no end to this debate. We both can write tons of explaination about each platform, but it doesn't matter. Both companies are here to make profits and they resolve their legal disputes like this. There is no other way.

And about this very article, it is just not correct. Invalidating patents take years. Article like this surface the internet just before any big apple event.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk's growing empire is fueled by $4.9B in government subsidies - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html <comment><USER2> Wasn't that the point of the subsidies? To foster innovation, and kickstart green energy / transportation?

Sounds like it's working....

<comment><USER3> Indeed...

From the article: "He definitely goes where there is government money".

In other words, he definitely goes where we wish more people would go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A two year old bs hit piece that's been repeatedly debunked gets resurfaced on hn after two years...why am I not surprised

<comment><USER5> It might help alter people's viewpoints more efffectively if you linked to debunking.

<comment><USER6> Probably the most effective way to debunk these types of stories is to point out the hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies we've put into fossil- fuel energy over the years. A few billion more or less for Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity hardly seems worth complaining about in comparison.

It's been argued that most of the US defense budget is a "subsidy" of our appetite for oil. I usually find such arguments facile, but in that particular instance, I'll be darned if I can come up with any good rejoinders.

<comment><USER7> Reminds me of people who complain about the cost of 1-mile of lightrail but don't know the cost of 1-mile of freeway.

<comment><USER6> I'd probably be guilty of that one myself. Energy can be converted from one form to another when/where needed, and wheeled vehicles can go wherever there's a road, but fixed rail is stuck in one place forever. A rant for a different thread...

<comment><USER7> Wheeled vehicles can go wherever we build roads... each road costs the taxpayer X / mile / year ... if we knew these costs we could make some rational decisions. The basic urbanism thesis posited by Charles Marohn and others, which I subscribe to, is that suburbs are not dense enough to maintain themselves (maintain roads, sewer, etc.) with the tax base

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Needs a "(2015)" label.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow. Hold on. I need to find a piece of furniture to lean up against, I'm in such shock.

Musk speaks out against Trump and then this banal piece about public subsidies reappears? Yeah. It's just such shocking timing I'm going to need to lie down.

<comment><USER10> As others have already noted, this was written before the election (2015).

<comment><USER9> I did say "re".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems the subsidies are accomplishing their purpose. They attracted private businesses to compete in the industry, and that competition and experience is bringing costs down to self-sustaining levels.

</comment><comment><USER12> Live by the subsidy, die by the subsidy.

</comment><comment><USER13> Tesla Inc TSLA (NASDAQ) 339.85USDPrice decrease0.52 (0.15%) Closed: Jun 2, 7:59 PM EDT - Disclaimer After-hours: 339.65Price decrease

</comment><comment><USER14> 1) US Army needs MANY batteries and 2) NSA needs many - especially small - batteries to do their job. Can you imagine how surveillance would spread everywhere if just batteries would be small enough? 3) Germany car industry is HUGE. Why not take some business away from them?</comment>


Rocket Internet is going Public - <AUTHOR> https://ipo.rocket-internet.com/

<comment><USER2> Took them 2 years but they finally made it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5016242](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5016242)</comment>


Engineers develop precision injection system for plants - <AUTHOR> https://news.mit.edu/2020/plant-precision-injection-orange-olive-banana-0427 <comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr...

"...there are several ongoing epidemics that affect crops and put global food production at risk. Oranges, olives, and bananas are already under threat in many areas due to diseases that affect plants' circulatory systems and that cannot be treated by applying pesticides."

"The method uses an array of microneedles made of a silk-based biomaterial to deliver nutrients, drugs, or other molecules to specific parts of the plant."

"The microneedles, which the researchers call phytoinjectors, can be made in a variety of sizes and shapes, and can deliver material specifically to a plant's roots, stems, or leaves, or into its xylem (the vascular tissue involved in water transportation from roots to canopy) or phloem (the vascular tissue that circulates metabolites throughout the plant). In lab tests, the team used tomato and tobacco plants, but the system could be adapted to almost any crop, they say. The microneedles can not only deliver targeted payloads of molecules into the plant, but they can also be used to take samples from the plants for lab analysis."</comment>