21–30 of 57 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some of us (where "us"="me") come to the HN comments first, because they load very quickly and can help us decide whether to read the article at all. Especially since many of the headlines are pretty opaque due to reuse of ordinary words in computing contexts.
You are of course free to approach HN any way you want. But if you choose not to read the article and end up asking a stupid question as a result you should not be surprised when you get called out for asking a stupid question. The signal to noise ratio here is extraordinarily high in no small measure because people are expected to do their homework. You may not realize it, but I'm doing you and lucb1e a favor by tel…
I can see two rules that would help immensely with trolls: 1. There should be an absolute maximum on the litigation that can be brought against any organization for any reason in a given time period (say, a year), and that total cost should not be able to exceed some tiny fraction of its total operating costs for that period (parent companies included, to avoid hiding actual illegal activities in subsidiaries). In ot…
I can see two rules that would help immensely with trolls: 1. There should be an absolute maximum on the litigation that can be brought against any organization for any reason in a given time period (say, a year), and that total cost should not be able to exceed some tiny fraction of its total operating costs for that period (parent companies included, to avoid hiding actual illegal activities in subsidiaries). In ot…
So... what is Alice?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Intern...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, the linked page does not adequately explain what Alice is. To me it was clear that it was some important court case and they just want to call it "Alice". But I can understand why it might be hard to understand for some.
The first sentence of the article is: > In Alice v. CLS Bank, the Supreme Court ruled ... That introduces the context pretty early and clearly.
This is meta, but I it would be awesome they'd add a slight margin to the text on mobile, it's very difficult to read if the text starts on the border of the page.
So... what is Alice?
> Alice Corp.'s patent claimed a form of escrowing that was well known. Called an “intermediated settlement,” it allowed a third party to act as an intermediary by creating “shadow accounts” for parties, and only allowing transactions to go through if the “shadow account” showed the party had enough money. Oh—and it was done with a computer.