Hacker News Reader

bandushrewon LulzSec releases trove of AZ law enforcement documents

Personal responsibility applies even to police officers.

If they cannot square their actions with their morals, then they are in the wrong job.

bandushrewon LulzSec releases trove of AZ law enforcement documents

The enforcers of the law are just as responsible for their own actions as the law makers are for theirs.

Separately, I personally would have redacted some of that data.

bandushrewon Eben Moglen: The alternate net we need, and how we can build it ourselves

If you really want to make the argument that nuclear weapons haven't been a hugely destructive force, you need to wait until the game has ended. They are still there, and the opportunity for them to generate a lot of dead people to prove you wrong may still arise. That game isn't over yet.

bandushrewon Supreme Court rules against Microsoft in major patent case

huh? they contain data. unless you are claiming that the presence of this:

struct twiggle { int t; }

somehow makes patenting the code that uses it a sensible idea?

bandushrewon Supreme Court rules against Microsoft in major patent case

computer code is 'just' an algorithm. that is simply true. if algorithms cannot be patented then neither can computer code.

bandushrewon Hands Off Our Houses (follow up on the $300 house idea)

Those who like their current homes will stay in them. Those who think the 300$ house is a good idea will use them.

Whats the problem? name any product and I can find an argument on the side of nobody choosing to use it.

I, for one, have a use for a 300$ house. I have a piece of land on which I would love to be able to place a few smaller cabins. Currently doing so would run me around 15-50k per building.

bandushrewon GitHub: Block the Bullies

You are an interesting thing.

I read your post and pretty much all I hear is a vaguely undirected bitterness and some jealous whining, and I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY.

Seriously, Dont worry yourself on their behalf.

If Github didn't want to implement that feature, they wouldn't have done it.

Zed has about as much power over them as I do over you.

Whatever other characteristics he may have, Zed certainly has a knack for bringing forth the shrieking sister in a certain type of personality.

bandushrewon GitHub: Block the Bullies

I am pretty sure that you are overplaying the 'poor github bullied by Zed' angle.

bandushrewon GitHub: Block the Bullies

what made you so angry that you reverted to behaving childishly? that seems like an oddly strong reaction to this thread?

Given that you responded in such a dramatic fashion to something that genuinely didn't involve you in any way whatsoever, why are you criticizing Zed for reacting strongly to a far greater provocation?

bandushrewon Propellerhead Software - Application Programmer Test

They weren't testing minutia, they were testing depth of understanding and experience. I thought they did a decent job, too.

I would have preferred to be able to get a result without actually applying for the job though...

bandushrewon Apple to support reps: 'Don't confirm Mac infections'

'but lately how are these drive-by installations happening? Mostly through holes in third-party software'

nope. by the user running an installer when requested by a browser ad popup.

bandushrewon Apple to support reps: 'Don't confirm Mac infections'

LOL

...and to me, that sounded kind of silly...

bandushrewon Apple to support reps: 'Don't confirm Mac infections'

There isn't much apple can do in a practical sense.

People clueless enough to run an Installer based on an web ad popup are unlikely to be reading Apple's PR posts.

Aside from OS specific code that refuses to install anything called Mac Defender, Apple has no power over this problem.

bandushrewon Apple Store employees trying to unionize

Some Unions can demand special rights. A union may poison the relationship.

Mike Rowe nails it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs61lfhqeNg&feature=playe...

bandushrewon Twitter’s Shit Sandwich

Quite right. I was momentarily blinded by the idea of being able to grant specific access rights to specific applications without giving them password access, but clearly if they control they web view you are doing this by, not much has been gained.

bandushrewon Twitter’s Shit Sandwich

It is a security win (and Im pretty sure gruber sees that).

His point is that the interface is a usability loss, and a big one.

bandushrewon Twitter’s Shit Sandwich

The trouble with OAuth is it presents a broken/oddly decoupled interface at the most delicate moment - when the user has only just chosen to use the application.

For tech people it is not seamless,

For non-tech people it is worse than 'not seamless', it is entirely confusing.

bandushrewon This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C

it was fairly inappropriate, and for the most part pragmatic web designers ignored it until it become realistic.

OTOH, it was the early adopters that were driving it, and I dont really have a problem with that. That is what early adopters do.

bandushrewon I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count

I am very sorry, but that is just wrong.

Votes are not a reliable indication of whether or not a post is correct.

They are a reliable indication of whether or not a post is popular.

It does sometimes happen that a post is both correct and popular, but that is not something it is ever safe to rely on.

'Social Proof' is a fantasy that does not exist.

bandushrewon The Guantanamo Files

"If you're a real honest-to-Allah member of Al Qaeda"

what process do you suggest for proving that?

Without a court trial, how can your membership in Al Qaeda reasonably be established?

Also, membership of what other clubs or groups also allows the government to imprison you indefinitely without trial and torture you? who decides that?

bandushrewon The unilateral removal of comments by Jeff Atwood

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Joel, news.ycombinator has somewhat higher standards for civilized discussion than you are exhibiting here.

Please either participate in a constructive fashion or confine your postings to the roughnecks in the stack overflow forums.

bandushrewon Craigslist has been disrupted

This graph:

http://d2o7bfz2il9cb7.cloudfront.net/main-qimg-c18ef2d8f8bd7...

is showing exactly the reason Craigslist is doing well.

Each of the alternatives displayed represents a specialized, vertical solution for just one (or a couple) of the categories offered by Craigslist, There is no way that Craigslist could compete head to head with every one of them anyway, at best they could choose a couple of categories and build new products focused on them.

Instead they are choosing to be a general platform.

Nothing lasts forever, and no doubt Craigslist will fade away over time, as will facebook, myspace and Windows itself, but in the meantime they are pretty well positioned, providing a 'good enough' solution for a wide range of categories is just as reasonable as providing a targetted solution to a specific category.

What they would absolutely fail to do is provide an excellent vertical solution for every category they offer,

Which means those competitors on that graph would still exist even if Craigslist improved its site, and probably they would still be doing well.

bandushrewon Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 and new Galaxy Tab 10.1 hands-on

I think he is suggesting that they dont even exist in a usable form yet.

If they did, surely they would have been delivered to the reviewer in a usable form?

bandushrewon Why the Nitro JavaScript Engine Isn’t Available to Other iOS Apps

yes, I think it was.

It makes a heap of assumptions though, and feels kind of like a non-techie person saying "why dont you just whip up a GUI app to trace my IP". Enabling Nitro JIT for UIWebView for some applications without enabling it for every app in the app store is probably more difficult than toggling a switch.

bandushrewon Why the Nitro JavaScript Engine Isn’t Available to Other iOS Apps

I find the fact that Web.app behaves exactly like every other application that uses a UIWebView to be very compelling evidence that Web.app is an application uses UIWebView.

The alternative appears to be that to create Web.app they went to all the trouble of reusing the Mobile Safari code, and then methodically went through and broke things such that it behaves exactly like every other application that uses UIWebView.

This would seem like an unreasonable way to get an application that behaves exactly like an application that uses UIWebView.

bandushrewon Why the Nitro JavaScript Engine Isn’t Available to Other iOS Apps

really? It seems to me that there are clear technical differences.

Im interested in your thoughts though, how would you allow one arbitarily large set of applications with arbitary names to use the Nitro Javascript engine via UIWebView, and still ensure that no third party developer could enable the ability on their own applications?

The way I would do it for a single application is enable a special case for it in the underlying OS....

bandushrewon Why the Nitro JavaScript Engine Isn’t Available to Other iOS Apps

You seem to be missing a key point.

The way Apple implemented Home-Screen Web Apps was by placing a thin wrapper around a UIWebView.

Hence, Home-Screen Web Apps are not like Mobile Safari at all in actual implementation.

They are, instead, exactly like an iOS application developed by a third party developer who put a thin wrapper around a UIWebView.

Hence, they do not get the same special privileges as Safari Mobile.

That is a fact of their implementation.

bandushrewon Why the Nitro JavaScript Engine Isn’t Available to Other iOS Apps

From Gruber:

"Web apps that are saved to the home screen do not run within Mobile Safari. They’re effectively saved as discrete apps — thin wrappers around the UIWebView control."

bandushrewon Why the Nitro JavaScript Engine Isn’t Available to Other iOS Apps

From Gruber:

"Web apps that are saved to the home screen do not run within Mobile Safari. They’re effectively saved as discrete apps — thin wrappers around the UIWebView control."

Apple clearly believes that there are important security risks associated with their Nitro Javascript Engine.

I have no trouble at all believing that they have been able to mitigate those concerns for Safari Mobile by using a solution that is not appropriate when applied to any arbitary App that may choose to include a UIWebView.

bandushrewon Why the Nitro JavaScript Engine Isn’t Available to Other iOS Apps

You are entering the discussion of native apps running UIWebView because (according to Gruber) that is exactly how home-screen web apps are implemented.

"My only comment is on home-screen web apps, which are 100% equivalent to opening the page on your browser."

From Gruber:

"Web apps that are saved to the home screen do not run within Mobile Safari. They’re effectively saved as discrete apps — thin wrappers around the UIWebView control."

"I'm just telling it like it is when people make nonsensical arguments."

Your failure to read and understand his arguments have made them sound nonsensical to you. This is not his fault.