It sucks that your hosting is down, but this is a pretty malicious use of HN considering you paid $200 over 6 years ago for lifetime hosting. Less than $3 per month by now. What SLA were you guaranteed?
The lesson for service hosts, NEVER offer lifetime anything.
No offense, but I find the humor in this reference far more insightful than the majority of the other offhand comments in this thread (that have many up-votes). The satire here is relevant and appropriate in my opinion, not tangential. I understand HN tends to frown on offhand comments (as it generally should), but knee-jerk downvoting humor without considering the context will make HN a dull boy. Voting up or down shouldn't be based on whether you agree or disagree with the comment, but whether the comment has merit. downvotes welcome
I've always found putting the * next to the type instead of the variable, like this, more intuitive. Does anyone know why the other way is used more often? Is it just historic, or is there a more practical reason?
What if he said prioritize instead of kill? Often the number of good ideas and resources required to realize them far exceeds what is available, practical, or realistic. Killing is effectively setting the priority to zero. I don't think it discourages innovation if thought about in this context because it encourages innovation on the critical path.
Is anyone else mildly depressed by the inequality between money raised and reality here?
It's great that these guys are raising money, I'm all for it. They should take what they can get. But, what about all the brilliant open source projects out there, that people are actually enjoying and using today, not sponsored by large organizations that accept donations from the community. I'm willing to bet that _none_ of them have raised even close to this much money. It saddens me that society is more willing to financially support a statement than something actually useful and real.
Perhaps this turn of events was destined to happen eventually and these lucky guys hit the media jackpot. I still can't be happy about it.
The claims merely need to be specific enough to not conflict with other patents (excluding the so called "obvious" and vague notion of "been there, done that"). Design patterns in the general sense are patentable, unfortunately.
I think if you are asking yourself and others this question then you aren't ready for either. My advice for anyone who is confused about this is to get a job in your field of study first, then after a time you will know what the answer is.