kprobst

Wow, I remember reading memepool as a complement to the content that Slashdot used to feature.

One of the problems with Reddit in my experience is the spam filter. What happens is in the bigger subreddits (say, /r/pics or /r/funny) is that there seem to be people around who downvote stuff regardless of content, presumably to give their own posts a better chance. When your submissions consistently end up with -1 or -2 scores, the spam filter then decides that you are a spammer and you should be punished. Except in this case it's not for submitting spam, but because other people want their own submissions to have more visibility.

(As an aside, I obviously wouldn't be complaining about this if I had actually tried to spam reddit, my few submissions to date match the typical fare there)

Once the spam filter 'hates' you (as they put it) then subsequent submissions are 'ghosted' in the sense that you see them, but they don't appear in the /new section of the subreddit. Assuming you get wind of this (no downvotes, no comments, nothing) then you get to message the moderators, who may or may not respond in good time and restore your submission. By that time your obvious reaction is to delete and re-submit (because by now the post has drifted down the submission sort order), which apparently makes the spam filter hate you even more.

The problem I have with this is that by no fault of my own I ended up submitting things that were flagged as spam and hidden from view without any indication to me. You can see your posts, but no one else can. This might be a clever solution to deal with systemic spammers, but it's really annoying to normal users like me.

Karma games are fun and internet drama is lame of course; I don't lose sleep over this. But it's unfair to people who want to share something with the community. Of course you see reposts of lame memes that hit the front page and wonder why the picture of your cute hedgehog submitted in good faith ends up in the spam void.

There's supposed to be a user flag that tells the filter you're an approved submitter for a given subreddit; good luck getting that, I guess. So ultimately this makes me not want to submit anything. Right now reddit might not care about that because it has such a large user base, but I would remind them that Slashdot and Digg also thought they were invincible once.

Social seems to be to Google what mobile is to Microsoft... they might have good stuff here and there, but nobody's ringing the bell.

Probably because it didn't have dedicated arrow keys. Many older terminal keyboards didn't.

Coverage from MSNBC with details

http://www.gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com/technology/gadgetbox/live...

Not that they were a monopoly, that's not illegal per se. The charges brought against them were related to the abuse of said monopoly.

My wife's computer LCD monitor is a Samsung that uses this resolution natively (I think), so maybe it isn't that rare.

Yes, exactly. We've gone from buying stuff at WalMart or BestBuy or whatever (with the associated marginal costs of gas, taxes, etc) to basically getting just about everything from Amazon. Small electronics, appliances, office supplies, etc. For anything over $50 or so I do compare prices with other online places, but more often than not Prime usually wins out simply based on the free shipping. For niche-ish things for example Monoprice will usually beat Amazon, but for most smaller purchases that are not immediately required, Prime has paid for itself many times over, especially considering my consumption of their member videos over my Roku.

Actually both IE and Firefox now (I think) insert tabs to the left. I don't know why it became a 'thing' at some point, I dislike it enormously as well.

Tools -> Options -> Documents

Check "Insert documents to the right of existing tabs".

But then you can also say that everything is a remix and a synthesis of prior innovation, and if that's the case then Apple's position is still indefensible.

We all stand in the shoulders of someone else.

> Microsoft, through the Mono project, has been aggressive about patents.

Can you please point out something that backs this statement? Not to dismiss the fact that Microsoft uses patents offensively, because they do, but specifically related to, or in the context of, the Mono project.

Mono is Free Software [1]. You might be confusing licensing with potential patent encumbrance, perhaps on purpose since one of your activities here seems to involve spreading disinformation about that project [2]. Which perhaps is not surprising considering you also seem to be one of the regulars at techrights. [3]

[1] http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_Licensing

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3347529

[3] http://goo.gl/8Xb4R

Wouldn't it be easier for all these companies to pool together, pay these people off, and then come to some sort of agreement with the patent office and the judicial folks to stop giving trolls wings and venues? It seems that would be far simpler than to try to reform the patent system, which will probably happen as soon as pigs start flying.

Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I was on HN but it seems I wondered into Reddit or Slashdot. Let me amend my point of view: "I loooove Richard Stallman and I totally dig his choice of computing platform. I would never dare to say otherwise"

Not a very appealing setup, period.

I don't understand why people thought that somehow a publicly traded corporation was going to behave forever in the same way as a garage startup. Once Google reached a certain size, a certain revenue level, and became beholden to institutional shareholders plus (in this case) found itself in a position of largely uncontested market control, I think it was inevitable that it would turn into the all too familiar caricature of a corporation.

I'd like to see proof that this is some kind of systemic problem at Google. Otherwise it's just the usual bombastic drama from Dave, including projecting other people's problems on himself to score pity points.

I was sure that Amazon had acquired broad patent licensing from Microsoft vis-a-vis their use of Linux in general, but interestingly those licenses apparently DO NOT cover Android [1], which of course includes the Kindle Fire. it will be interesting to see how that turns out, but I would guess that if they already licensed X they'll be much more amenable to licensing Y from MS.

[1] http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/09/30/kindle.fire.is...

When your money is in PayPal's hands, it's technically theirs because they are not a financial institution. Your money is not insured or protected in any way other than how PayPal deems appropriate. They are not liable for anything, unlike a bank. So it's not only illegal at all (perhaps immoral but hey), it's also perfectly OK because _you_ agreed to their terms of use when you opened an account with them.

The 'bota' (boot) is a leather/skin bag filled with wine that's very common in Spain. It's basically used the same way.

I thought EMP affected electronics regardless of whether they are powered at the time of the burst or not?

Interesting but a good example of how Google+ is made for geeks, by geeks. Social is about mom and dad and my sister, not me. I get this, it's cool, but it's confusing and useless to them. It seems to me Google keeps missing the point and as long as that happens they simply won't be able to pull people off Facebook.

I've been staring at monitors for close to 16 years now... mostly perfect vision except in very low light.

Lowballing quarterly earnings seems to have been a Jobs thing. With Cook on the saddle I'm guessing this will be the pattern going forward.

That being different from using wget or curl in bash or easy_install how again?

> Steve was known for acting cruelly to people; apparently acted like a sociopath

Stallman is also a sociopath by your definition then; remember his comments in some mailing list when someone announced they had had a child. There are plenty of other examples. Richard Stallman is an asshole. A brilliant and useful asshole, but an asocial asshole incapable of basic empathy nonetheless.

I don't admire either of them (though I'd give more credit to Stallman for fighting the good and difficult fight all these years), but it seems to me that Stallman's supporters behave exactly the way they claim Jobs' supporters do - by eulogizing and finding excuses for the ugly sides of their heroes and claiming "the others" are a cult.

History is full of brilliant and useful assholes. both Jobs and Stallman should be given their rightful due and called on their failings. But neither of them should be casting aspersions about the other (not that Jobs can do that anymore). At some level they are fundamentally the same.

Tools -> Folder options -> View tab -> Launch folder windows in a separate process

Intellectual property and patents are not the problem, the problem is the broken system around them that allows these types of abuses.

For someone who tends to be dismissive of Microsoft, Gruber sure seems to be writing about them a lot lately.