Calling this "abuse" communicates to me that you think when it comes to software, people should be able to copy whatever they want.
If by "copy" you mean "create products with similar functionality without copying code", then essentially yes. Otherwise we'd end up with one spreadsheet, one browser, one touchscreen phone, and we'd still be on Friendster.
The first iPhone was announced on January 9, 2007. The LG was announced on December 12, 2006. Your timeline seems to be a bit off.
> I made a good, rational argument, but since I'm not in agreement with the hive mind, it is currently sitting at -1.
So two people downvoted you. Let me explain how voting works on HN: A comment which the initial readers dislike will be downvoted, because they tend to express their opinions through downvoting rather than argument. Then, over the next few hours, the rest of the people on HN will show up, read your comment, and vote on it based on whether they think it presents a "good, rational argument". This happens all the time - comments drop down to -1 or -2, the submitter freaks out about hiveminds, and then when the rest of the people on HN get around it reading it it gets upvoted. Calm down.
Also, due to UI issues, it's aggravatingly easy for iPhone users to accidentally vote on a comment. I've become incredibly paranoid when reading HN on my phone these days just because I've accidentally driven so many commenters ballistic with random downvotes. Getting mad over one or two votes just doesn't make sense, even less than getting mad over HN votes in general makes sense.
(Incidentally, and ironically given the subject matter, this problem doesn't seem to exist on Android. I wonder if Apple has a patent on forum rage.)
Comments
There were no touch screen phones prior to the iPhone announcement.
Nope: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada_%28KE850%29, among several others. Apple took an existing idea and executed it well. By your standards, they should be sued out of existence.
Calling this "abuse" communicates to me that you think when it comes to software, people should be able to copy whatever they want.
If by "copy" you mean "create products with similar functionality without copying code", then essentially yes. Otherwise we'd end up with one spreadsheet, one browser, one touchscreen phone, and we'd still be on Friendster.
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> which was announced after the iPhone
The first iPhone was announced on January 9, 2007. The LG was announced on December 12, 2006. Your timeline seems to be a bit off.
> I made a good, rational argument, but since I'm not in agreement with the hive mind, it is currently sitting at -1.
So two people downvoted you. Let me explain how voting works on HN: A comment which the initial readers dislike will be downvoted, because they tend to express their opinions through downvoting rather than argument. Then, over the next few hours, the rest of the people on HN will show up, read your comment, and vote on it based on whether they think it presents a "good, rational argument". This happens all the time - comments drop down to -1 or -2, the submitter freaks out about hiveminds, and then when the rest of the people on HN get around it reading it it gets upvoted. Calm down.
Also, due to UI issues, it's aggravatingly easy for iPhone users to accidentally vote on a comment. I've become incredibly paranoid when reading HN on my phone these days just because I've accidentally driven so many commenters ballistic with random downvotes. Getting mad over one or two votes just doesn't make sense, even less than getting mad over HN votes in general makes sense.
(Incidentally, and ironically given the subject matter, this problem doesn't seem to exist on Android. I wonder if Apple has a patent on forum rage.)