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Comment by Steko | Hacker News Reader

It's sad that namecalling posts like this get upvoted because they echo the "general sentiment" of HN. Herd mentality != right.

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This is illuminating in a way regarding HN. Regardless of the arguments on patents, there are 2 large contingents on HN, Apple supporters and Google supporters. Thus if this were Google Vs. MS or Apple Vs.MS(with the same arguments like patents(, the arguments and modding would be too predictable... just bash MS regardless(they can't innovte so they sue) and move on with the upvotes for pro-Apple/Google comments and downvotes or no votes for proMS comments(been there, done that).

Now that this issue is Apple vs. Google, the discussion has turned into a huge number of namecalling arguments with conflicting upvotes vs. downvotes.

My take:

Patents need a MUCH higher bar than what's currently out there. Eg. RSA patent = VALID and the Apple patent of using accelerometer to rotate a display, but-on-a-mobile-phone-instead-of-camera = LAME & INVALID.

Kind of going off on a tangent, but Android didn't bring nothing much new to the UI(except maybe notifications?), it's mostly a pale imitation of iOS. WP7 on the other hand, atleast has an innovative mobile UI in the form of metro.

http://www.riagenic.com/archives/487

Some android apps are copying it verbatim...

Agree with most here here but I think we should break people out into 5 categories for these threads:

Apple zealots

Mostly rational people who prefer iOS

Mostly rational people who like both

Mostly rational people who prefer Google

Android zealots

There should be some way algorithmically to determine the people who are in the extreme categories, say...

extremism quotient:= (|upv| + |dwnv|) / max (1,|net score|)

Then if that exceeds some threshold over a certain period the person's votes could be ignored or diluted.

In my experience people tend to be zealots only in certain very specific areas and quite reasonable everywhere else. I.e. your proposal's running the serious risk of muting and awful loot of folks here on hn just because the might get a bit hot-tempered on specific subjects.

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