Agreed - this is fantastic. Although the getbootstrap docs have some neat things in there - it's sometimes hard to differentiate what comes built-in vs. what has been customized for the docs (and to extract the doc-specific functionality can be tricky).
I would favour a first-party device like the surface pro in this case rather than one of these as my perception is that something is likely to "just work" if hardware and software are from the same vendor (see: apple).
Should be interesting to see how the likes of asus can compete in the long run (I am guessing price and slightly garish features will most likely differentiate); having an actual product on the shelves surely gives you a head-start.
For me, it's exactly the opposite. If I'm ever going to find an x86 machine designed to not run Linux reliably, it's sure going to have Microsoft's logo on it.
What I took away from reading this article is that because the umbrella of "software development" is so wide; everything from a static html page for your local charity up to curiosity/ mars rover - it's not practical to define a single set of methodologies, tools and techniques that will work, be pragmatic or make sense for all situations.
Do what you think is best for whatever it is you're building :)
If the Surface is like the Xbox, Microsoft has a problem. The Xbox did cost billions and took years until it made a profit. When the Surface costs billions for years and at the same time Microsoft pisses off the hardware producers they will focus on Ubuntu/Android/ChromeOS devices. This would hurt the big cash cow Windows licenses and make Microsoft weaker than ever.
Xbox did lose Microsoft billion(s) and take years to become profitable. But now it is profitable and one of their key products. They could lose billions on the Surface but they can also afford to lose billions. They have lost billions on terrible acquisitions in the last decade. I think it is better to spend the money on products that could help them be competitive.
The Xbox 360 also had significant hardware problems that weren't alleviated until price did not become an issue for MS which is how it's always been on consoles.
Linux/Android/Chromium are not economically viable alternatives to Windows for hardware manufacturers on a large enough scale.
On the consumer side it's "Not only is it not a Mac, it doesn't even come with Windows."
On the commercial side it's, "Can it run Excel" - some things never change and Visicalc is still the killer application, so to speak.
It is, in my opinion, a mistake to expect corporations to operate on the principles which drive persons. So long as Windows remains a profitable operating system for Acer, Acer will continue to install it. And that will continue to be the case unless Best Buy starts hiring Linux gurus for its sales floor.
That's an entirely different level though. A game console is a far different beast (with arguably a different customer base with wildly different expectations) than a general purpose computer.
As it stands, the only company to have been successful in the consumer sector with that formula has been Apple. It'll be interesting to see if Microsoft can pull it off.
z in the US is pronounced zee, in the UK zed, so certainly not an example of onomatopoeia for Brits, or a particularly good example for Americans. It's certainly a stretch to attribute it this way.
I don't know about in American, but in the UK it's not that "zed" is onomatopoeic, it's "zzz" which is just the sound a z makes in a word, not "zedzedzed" or "zeezeezee". And that's why it comes from snoring.
It seems to me that facebook has all their eggs in one basket whereas google is extremely diverse (even though many of googles' ventures inevitability feed back into search).
I think facebook haven't used their huge cash reserves wisely which is why faltering in a single area (aka. advertising) puts them in a very precarious position.
What has google done (just off the top of my head)?
android, gmail, google maps, search, self-driving cars, glass, hardware (I know the nexus/q are manu. by asus but google do have their name on it)
Just had a browse through and although these particular patent examiners are obviously smart, software is not their area.
If you are looking for answers as to how some of the ridiculous patents manage to get through the patent office (including patents for software concepts that engineers are likely to consider "obvious" or for which there is likely "prior art"), you are unlikely to find the answers here.
Whenever someone defends software patents, I bring up Amazon's one-click patent. It's so obvious! I use the one-click-checkout feature on Amazon all the time and dearly miss it on every other website out there. Imagine if Pizza Delivery sites or Flower Delivery sites had that feature. People would order things a lot more if they didn't have to go through extra screens to confirm things every single time. The funnel gets smaller as the number of steps rise. And now one company has a patent on short funnels.
"a plurality of heuristic modules, wherein: each heuristic module corresponds to a respective area of search and employs a different, predetermined heuristic algorithm"
and
"searching different sources of data wherein you search each with a method that makes sense for its contents"
But the replies from random commenters and vote totals would have you believe the opposite.
I wonder how important the actual wording is vs what appears to be the intent on what the patent covers.
To me (and I know I'm simplifying just like the random commenters you speak of), the patent is _intended_ to cover 1. performing heuristic searches on multiple areas (modules)
2. using a different search on each area
However, it uses the word "predetermined" when defining the heuristic algorithm to use for each area. If my code randomly picks between two slightly different heuristics (even with a very low probability), would it still be covered under the patent?
Also it says "heuristic algorithm" meaning singular algorithm. If I ran 2 algorithms in parallel (even one that always returns no results) and then chose the "better" of the two, would that get around the patent too?
Are patents vulnerable to this sort of work-around due to subtle interpretations of wording, or is it really the intent of the patent that matters?
How important is the wording: You can't normally just claim an obvious extension without evidence. We have to provide prior art for every limitation in a claim, and every word must be considered within a claim.
It seem every last adjective counts.
"In order to jump to an obvious argument, you'd have to prove this device reads on all the limitations minus the unlock image that is slid. Then you'd have to show something else that uses an image to unlock something. Then you'd have to provide rationale why the combination between the two things would have been obvious at the time of the invention, in this case 2005."
In other words, obviousness might seem, uh obvious as a defense for most this stuff. But actuality it's categorically dismissed with the "you can't prove it" argument. Plus the "but was it obvious in 2005, with phone!" (lovely to see those so-and-so's trying to wiggle out of that one but essentially coming back to it).
I can think of very few algorithms that don't have sub-algorithms. Isn't any composition of existing algorithms also an algorithm? I can't think of any restriction that algorithm (singular) makes relative to the plural.
I'm not sure if you remember the whole thing where John Carmack had to change some 3D shader code in Doom 3 because of a patent dispute. The change was adding four lines of code and changing two.[0] So I would say choosing between two similar algorithms, running two algorithms in parallel, or running an additional algorithm that always returned empty would be a valid workaround.
Strictly speaking those statements are indeed different as you've pointed out. The former has additional stipulations in that there must be multiple heuristic search algorithms used and they need to be organized in some modular fashion.
What I believe the commenters were getting at is that those aren't very meaningful limitations. One of the most straightforward implementations of a system where a user can search multiple orthogonal sources of information would be to define separate algorithms in a pluggable modular form. I also imagine most search algorithms could be described as having heuristic components, probably especially those tailored for a particular type of information.
Are you saying Amazon actually enforces that patent? I doubt the Flower Delivery sites are purposely adding clicks to the process because of the Amazon patent.
On Steam, you click add to cart (which takes you to a checkout page), and then you have to check an "I agree..." box before hitting the actual purchase button.
The problems, according to them (and I have no reason not to believe them), is that right now the burden of proof of the obviousness of a patent application is on the patent office, not the other way around. And that this obviousness can only be proved by either citing an older patent or a certain type of publication, or a combination of those, not what the examiner "just knows" - or what it looks obvious to him/her or any other technically skilled practitioner, as the basic law says.
According to them this "presumption of patentability" (as I would call it) was a policy change that happened not very long ago, as before the policy was to reject as many patents as possible.
I would also make a wild guess: That this change was lobbied for by the IP law firms, because they are the only ones which really benefit from it.
I'm curious as to whether this general trend is a new one or if I'm just getting old:
1) user creates semi-controversial post (see: PHP sucks, nosql sucks, node sucks, semi-colons suck, time-is-money, ideas are worth nothing etc)
2) debated ad-nauseum with good points on both sides
3) within 24 hours, blog posts turn up which say almost the opposite of whatever was said in a) PHP works for me, time is worth nothing, nodejs/mysql is webscale, ideas are everything.
I can't help but feel that - much like this comment - it doesn't add much that hasn't already been said better elsewhere and is purely for linkbait purposes.
First, it is far easier to reply to an existing conversation than it is to start a conversation. Expanding on or contradicting an existing idea is easier than having an original idea.
The second is that you are more likely to notice a conversation that has multiple replies so it appears most topics take that form. This is a form of survivorship bias, in that you rarely see the topics that don't start the threads.
While I'm sure there are some responses of this nature that are true linkbait, I think the vast majority are not. Most of them are just people wanting to give their opinion, especially if they think somebody else is wrong.
This is swombat, one of the biggest tech bloggers in the UK, not some random linkbaiter trying to build his Klout score.
He's been around for years, and his blog has always been a repository for interesting links he finds online, along with his own commentary. IIRC he started it because he realised he spent way too much time reading content without remembering any of it; by taking the time to write about the good stuff, it stuck with him.
Heh, I think you're just getting old. This is the new normal of public discussion in the blogosphere. I think it's a drastic improvement over the walled-garden editorials in major periodicals.
I found this article in particular insightful, even if the "hook" feels a little cheap.
It does seem like that is happening more lately. I'm sure the original post inspired the present author as soon as they read it, but it does take a little while to put together a blog post, vs a reply on HN.
What I personally don't like so much is the blog posts that seem to be targeting HN. I'm not sure why it bothers me...I guess it just seems cloistered and almost incestuous.
I'm also not a fan of blog posts critiquing other blog posts. The blow-by-blow he-said/she-said format doesn't appeal to me at all. It seems to me the author in this case could have formulated his opinion into a post that didn't rely someone else's post at all.
Actually, it took about half an hour from the point where I finished reading Jack's post to when I posted this up.
Swombat.com started partly as a place to aggregate my commentary on articles that I think worthy of extra attention and comments.
Worth noting that I didn't submit this to HN. Others did, and they upvoted it, so clearly some people are disagreeing with your view. If you don't like it, just read something else and don't upvote.
As for formulating it without mentioning Jack's article, sure, I could have done that, but that would have been dishonest and lame, since the article was indeed inspired by Jack's writings.
This is HN. It's grown massively over the past few years and it's increasingly getting targeted with more linkbait content. To your point, I spend a lot less time on here now.
I completely agree. What's worse is that the article doesn't even really present the opposite view, instead just agreeing with the general point of the original and stating it's attention instead of time, essentially arguing semantics. This is pretty aggravating.
I disagree, it's not semantics. It's nuance. Which is important. I think he is saying its about focus. I often take the financially non optimum choice because I know what truly needs my attention. It's essentially opportunity cost.
Is it worth a blog post? No answer to this question is meaningful as I'm sure is a matter of preference.
Also, so what? Unless its your favorite blog author and you thought he wasted time with this one as a content consumer you don't lose anything.
It started a bit slow but I ended up watching the whole thing.
Not sure I agree with the comparison at the end to asp.net mvc and "waiting for a database to complete the request" - with mvc4 async controllers, .net 4.0 tasks and the new mvc 4.5 await keyword, async processing of web requests is pretty much a solved problem in the ms stack.
Not that node doesn't look like fun-as-hell to code-in - for that alone I would be willing to give it a go.
Async controllers don't solve this problem, they actually create 10 more. Same with tasks - you have thread locking issues, race conditions and other fun async stuff at the thread level. Node is single threaded, (basically) single process.
I get your point - that it's possible (it's always been) - it just isn't the way 99.99999% of the people use it.
Eh, that's a little bit of a FUDdy statement. You don't instantly have "locking issues" and/or "race conditions" to worry about just because you use an async controller with the TPL (async keyword in .NET 4.5). The only time you have to deal with locking and race conditions is if the work you're doing is trying to cooperate and/or touching a shared resource (e.g. a static field). In the most common/basic case of receive a web request, fire off a call to a database/remote service asynchronously and wait for it to come back before you continue processing the original request you don't have to worry about anything because you're not sharing any local state and I would hope the database/remote service you're talking to has its own locking.
That's not to say that there aren't merits to node's single threaded execution model in that, _when you do_ need to access a shared resource, you don't have to worry about locking/coordination, but that's a whole other debate. :)
I always find it a bit insulting when a company tries to offer me a discount to stay; like I wasn't good enough to qualify for a discount when I was a loyal customer.
This seems a lot like the situation where an employee threatens to leave and the company offers more money to keep them for which I almost always give the advice: "just say no".
I guess if price is really the only thing making someone leave, then lowering the price might make a difference but price and value are intrinsically linked: if they thought the price was too high, then they considered the value to be too low and it's probably just a matter of time before they decide to leave anyway.
I always find it a bit insulting when a company tries to offer me a discount to stay; like I wasn't good enough to qualify for a discount when I was a loyal customer.
Lots of people think that lots of business will treat them better if they are "loyal" and stay with a company for a long time. If you're a bog standard residental customer and it's a large company with thousands or millions of customers, this doesn't hold. Usually those customers get some of the worst deals.
Forget loyalty. This isn't a marriage or an army, this is business and economics.
It also creates a mess if your other customers find out about it. In general, offering different prices to different customers is playing with fire unless you have a way to justify it when your non-discounted customers call.
Not to mention, shouldn't every Fancy Hands customer that reads this go in and pretend to cancel to get the discount?
offering different prices to different customers is playing with fire
This is a falsehood believed by engineers for nebulous reasons largely founded in naivety about business. Businesses routinely offer the same service at multiple price points. Virtually every input in your business is offered at multiple price points, from paper to telephone service to your Internet connection to your VPSes to... you get the general drift. Variable pricing is an observable and unremarkable fact of life. It causes virtually no drama.
Not to mention, shouldn't every Fancy Hands customer that reads this go in and pretend to cancel to get the discount?
Want to get a free shake from McDonalds? Buy a shake. Consume it. Take a napkin from the napkins, put it in the shake cup, bring it up to the counter, and say "I am dissatisfied with my shake, because it has napkins in it. I want a new shake." You will get a new shake. Why does every customer at McDonalds ever not scam McDonalds for free everything? Partially because they have principles, partially because they fear social opprobrium, partially because they are unaware of the opportunity, partially because they just can't even conceive of why any sane person would scam McDonalds for free shakes, but it is an observable fact that McDonalds collects revenue for nearly all shakes despite there being (numerous) pathways to stealing them.
You laugh, but my friend Tom more than once got free ice cream by ordering cookie dough ice cream, eating most of it, and then complaining to the staff "this cookie dough is raw!".
As I discovered last week, even if you throw your half-full drink on the floor thanks to shaky-handed incompetence, walking up to the counter apologising profusely and asking for a mop will achieve the same result. Along someone else for you to apologise to when they arrive to mop up your mess.
"Now, when a user wants to cancel, we give them two buttons front and center.... If it’s because of price, we’ll give them an instant, lifetime discount..."
Ah, the credit card company gambit. Then you can charge more for default accounts, to allow the subset that fail to see the game being played to pay for the those that do know the trick.
