

A Google Patent mentions my prior art - cmdrtaco
http://cmdrtaco.net/2011/11/google-patent-mentions-my-prior-art/

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jcr
It's a bit funny to notice how the folks on HN generally haven't studied the
site they are using. Sure, there is source code available for the forum
through arclanguage.org, but it does not include all of the secret sauce that
PG is actually running on HN.

If you believe that you have unlimited voting on HN, you are mistaken. Some
votes and flags don't count, or better said, count less. There are thresholds
in place to prevent excessive voting, up or down, and excessive flagging. How
you vote/flag is weighted in a number of ways. For example, if you flag
submissions that are heavily up-voted by others, your flags might count less,
but if you flag submissions that are heavily flagged by others (till [dead]),
your flags might count more.

Can I "prove" the above with actual code running on HN? --NO. The most I can
do is point out posts where PG has (vaguely) explained how things work, and of
course, things may have changed since he posted his explanations. Also,
there's probably tons of other secret sauce that he has very intentionally
never mentioned.

The meaning of "up" and "down" votes has never been defined. Some might use
votes to indicate agreement or disagreement. Others might use votes to
indicate appreciation, contribution, or other personally defined metrics.

I'll flag spam submissions and posts, but I'll only down-vote when someone is
clearly and intentionally being an ass. Though it might seem odd compared to
other forums, I often up-vote people I disagree with (or who disagree with me
-- same thing) because I appreciate the time they took to share their views
and opinions with me and everyone else. None of us have a monopoly on
knowledge, so finding other ways to look at something is always beneficial.
Agreeing or disagreeing with another point of view is less important than
appreciating and learning from other ways of looking at things.

~~~
Anechoic
_How you vote/flag is weighted in a number of ways._

I've certainly noticed that my own karma isn't strictly related to the number
of upvotes/downvotes I get in a certain time period, (a day for example).
Moreover is seems that posts that are heavily upvoted may not reflect on my
karma for a day or two - in fact my karma seemed to be increasing due to a
post I made about a week ago, even though I hadn't posted in the meantime.

I always figured that was some sort of anti-spam fuzzing (similar to what
Reddit does) in calculating karma, but it's even better (IMO) if what you
wrote is correct.

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NelsonMinar
I don't believe Daniel Hillis or Bran Ferren work at Google; they are the
principles of Applied Minds, a consulting/R&D firm. Applied Minds spun out
Metaweb which Google bought in 2010, I wonder if this patent was part of the
acquisition?

Both Hillis and Ferren are also listed as "Our Inventors" on notorious patent
firm Intellectual Ventures' website:
<http://www.intellectualventures.com/whoweare/Inventors.aspx>

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Anechoic
_I found that the most significant factor in diminished reliability was simply
to let people have infinite moderation powers all the time._

Interesting observation since, IMO, unlimited "moderation powers" has been the
biggest problem with Digg and (as of late) Reddit. I'm hopeful that HN can
avoid this fate (no downvotes until the karma threshold is reached seems to
help somewhat).

~~~
dboyd
Personally I see HN's fate as worse than that of Digg and Reddit. HN's karma
rating system reinforces an exclusive community. If someone who 'goes against
the grain' tries to add diversity to the HN community, they will never get any
karma, which means they will never have any power.

IMHO, the worst part about HN is the extreme homogeneity, and the system is
designed to reinforce this. The recent discussion about display points is an
example of this. Removing points is said to "reduce arguments" ... which is
really just another way of "reducing disagreement".

~~~
Anechoic
I disagree - I don't fit in perfectly with the typical HN demographic (I'm
black and I'm not a programmer), and I've made comments that disagree with
consensus, and so long as I've been able to back up those comments, I've
gotten upvotes.

Contrast that with Reddit where I can link to all kinds of supporting studies
but if it's contrary to the hivemind's opinion, I'll get downvoted to oblivion
while someone with a differing opinion based on something he heard from his
best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend will get an upvote for
an unsupported opinion that aligns with the group.

Of course that's just anecdotal experience on my part, so perhaps you're
correct and this comment should be downvoted :)

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6ren
> just seeing the Slashdot mention in such a document is awesome.

I think this is the right attitude towards patents, if they do what they're
supposed to: advance the state of the art, be inventive/non-
obvious/clever/original and so on. (IMO) cmdrtaco is saying that he's happy
that an advance in the state of the art builds on his inventiveness - google
is standing on the shoulders of him. If only software patents really _were_
what they're supposed to be.

I wish patents were a celebration of inventiveness, as they are in other
fields, instead of often obvious and consequentially hated in ours.
Inventiveness is the highest ideal of our field; and patents, really, _should_
be about that.

A secondary problem is that the description isn't intelligible to him - who
invented prior art for it. One of the requirements of a patent is that someone
skilled in the art is able to construct the invention. If the originator of
slashdot, who is cited as prior art isn't "skilled in the art", who is?
Software patents have truly lost their way.

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notatoad
wait, i'm confused. google is essentially patenting the /. moderation system,
and you're happy about it?

~~~
cmdrtaco
That's not really my reading of the patent, although there is overlap in the
ideas.

~~~
recoiledsnake
The abstract:

>The invention provides an evaluation system for reliably evaluating large
amounts of content. The evaluation system is managed by a primary authority
that designates one or more contributing authorities by delegating to each a
specific quantity of authority. Each contributing authority may in turn
designate and delegate authority to one or more additional contributing
authorities, subject to the restriction that the total quantity of authority
delegated does not exceed the quantity of authority the contributing authority
was itself delegated. Each contributing authority, and optionally the primary
authority itself, may evaluate one or more portions of content by associating
a rating with each evaluated portion of content. A composite rating for a
particular portion of content may then be determined based upon the ratings
associated with the portion of content. Preferably, the ratings are combined
in a manner that affords a higher priority to the ratings provided by
contributing authorities to which a greater quantity of authority was
delegated.

Isn't that more or less exactly how the Slashdot moderation system was
initially seeded?

~~~
cmdrtaco
This is more or less how the Slashdot _tagging_ system works, but more
advanced than how the moderation system works. But still, abstracts in patent
filings are generally oversimplifications.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I think one could argue that the Google system foretold by your tagging and
moderation system and thus should fail the novelty test.

To your question about bonuses though, when I worked there they were
aggressive at getting things filed and just filing was a bonus (didn't have to
issue, if it issued that was another (bigger) bonus). Someone once pointed out
the not so strange correlation between patent filings and needing a bit of
extra money for Christmas shopping :-) So not to worry the Googlers in
question were well compensated, enough for many many beers.

~~~
jsnell
That correlation doesn't sound plausible, given the long and unpredictable
lead times in the process.

I did an IDF for something June 2010 or so, the patent application was
eventually filed in April 2011, and I just got the bonus this week. (And to
top it off, I'd left Google in the meanwhile, so getting that bonus at all was
a bit of a surprise).

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joshu
I find it hilarious that Malda doesn't know who Danny Hillis is.

