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Comment by optimiz3 | Hacker News Reader

Seriously - what the fuck Google?

It's only a matter of time until a patent troll writes a for loop on the store index to send out infringement suits DMCA-takedown style.

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> It's only a matter of time until a patent troll writes a for loop on the store index to send out infringement suits DMCA-takedown style.

Perhaps a competing troll owns the iteration patent.

No, iteration is fair game, but `for` is an API name patented by Oracle. Legally, a patent troll would have to write a `whenceforth`, `do...thither`, or `oft` loop.

The next time I'm forced to write C code...

#define whenceforth for

#define supposing if

#define whereas else

I know nothing about C. You can alias keywords like that?

#define is part of the preprocessor, which does very basic string substitution on the code before compiling. Useful in small doses, but also regularly abused.

An old classic --- pascal.h:

http://thedailywtf.com/articles/_0x23_include__0x22_pascal_0...

Boost has macro header libs that allow pretty much anything within the macros system limits to be computed. Lookup Boost preproccessor and youll be even more impressed.

My dad used to tell idiots that he was very impressed with their ideas; one day, he pointed out to me that the impression was not always a positive one.

Edit: Not saying Boost is idiotic; just that you may not be positively impressed with their use of preprocessor magic.

Pretty funny. I have to use that "impressed" fib one day and silently chuckle. Ive actually used Boost preprocessor macros in C for huge benefits to compute variadic functions at compile time. You may not like boost templates or libs but the preproccessor stuff is merely just a turing complete arithmetic language that includes arrays, tuples, lists, and a whole slew of other great things. Its actually quite marvelous how its implemented all from standard macros. A treatise in limited functional programming. I would not want to produce those macros myself..they are insanely clever, just take a look at the source. They use something similar to Church encoding for representing numbers. You can use it without any of the other boost libs or headers. Repetitive code sucks and the BOOST_PP macros are godsend. Im pretty sure you are referring to other 'magic' most likely C++ template stuff. All boost PP does is give you data structures, loop, and arithmetic at compile time. [1]

[1] http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_61_0/libs/preprocessor/doc/i...

The same goes for "quality". It may be a quality product but a poor quality product. If 'quality' is the best word marketing can come up with, maybe marketing isn't of very high quality!

In C, #define basically does string substitution, so absolutely.

You can also do even more weird things with it, like X macros

You can even do evil like

    #define true false

Along the same lines, for added (and undefined) fun:

    #define static thread_local
    #define if(X) if((X) ^ (rand() < 1000))
    #define private public
    #define while if

*copyrighted, not patented

They can use dogescript. In dogescript it's a much loop.

https://github.com/dogescript/dogescript/blob/master/LANGUAG...

I'm just waiting for one of these languages to catch on, gain traction, and become a real respected language used in business settings.

Not respected maybe but lolcode is functional, complete, and extensible.

This is Javascript.

I am hoping for INTERCAL. "COME FROM" is very much needed now that GOTO is considered harmful.

Simple, you instead just write

    totalMoney = googlePlayAuthors.reduce((money, author) => money + abusePatentSystem(author), 0)

Google offers pretty handcuffs that developers mistake for bracelets.

Consider how Google is helping the OEMs get Android updates out. Consider how easy it is to call google customer care.

The real question should be: what the fuck developers? Why do you keep hitching yourself to such an unreliable partner? When is it enough?

Good question. What's the alternative for delivering software to a consumer market? Many people have Android phones.

It would be interesting to offer a curated App store with patent indemnification and malware scanning on Android. Do the whole thing, the APIs the eco-system. Without a particular vendor lock in (like amazon fire for example) you might be able to capture the Chinese OEM market which would be a lot of devices.

Very hard road to travel though.

Speaking of app stores for Android, there’s also F-Droid¹, although admittedly, it’s not much of a 'store' considering it only lists FOSS (Free and Open Source Software).

――――――

¹ — https://f-droid.org/

Webapps...

Web does not and will never have the same quality of experience as a native application.

What is missing in your estimation?

WebAssembly and efficient arrays bounds checks.

Do you use slack? Is that a "web" app or "native"? I think the lines are blurring.

It is like using all web apps in native wrapper and the telling that all web apps looks like native apps.

Slack desktop is a webapp packed in native wrapper.

I use the Slack web app, but others heavily prefer the "native" aka "fat" client. The fat client isn't much more than a wrapper for the web, but both are more than just an interface for the API, which can be a bit laggy.

Amazon have their own app store for Fire devices and Androids. It requires installing Amazon's apk though, which also requires changing a security setting.

That would almost assuredly force Google to get involved. I think it's more likely that they will continue to sue just a few small time developers here and there to try and keep things under the radar.

Absolutely. At least Apple pledged nominal, vocal support when their developers were being similarly threatened.

As the video mentions, people have been sued for App Store and Steam as well.

Google, and Apple and Valve, can send their own lawyers to defend these clients, but since there are dozens of cases, it will be quite expensive. They can maybe sue these trolls for tortous interference, but that may not stick.

So they can't do much.

If the same plaintiff is suing the a bunch of different developers over the same alleged infringement then I believe the defendants could request that the cases be combined?

Those three companies all have tonnes of cash on hand! Its the right thing for them to do, also!

A couple million dollars would bankrupt the average freelance developer, some many times over. A couple million dollars to any of those companies is negligible. I'm not saying that money is no object, but on the other hand, that Google or apple or whomever allows patrons of their store to be bullied like this is, in my opinion, an embarrassment. It not only shows a lack of concern, but it also loses them money because the apps in question probably have to be pulled from the store. I might be off base but I absolutely think that any of those companies could sue these trolls for their behavior. Instead they seem to be showing that they only care about number one.

If they systematically defended these clients it would not take long for the patent trolls to seek greener pastures. After all, patent trolls are in it to get a settlement or payout. If there's a class of lawsuits where they have no hope of seeing any money, they would steer clear.

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