inklesspen

Before discussion starts, I just want to emphasize that I recognize I'm not a crypto professional and I welcome corrections and contributions.

You were probably voted down because your analogy is insane. A drug dealer doesn't use his own product for two very simple reasons: he doesn't want to stand out (through abnormal behavior) and he doesn't want his judgment to be affected. Neither of these apply to a phone, even a magical and revolutionary phone.

Also, it turns out he never said the "it's just a phone", so that's not really two-faced, is it?

No, you'll never get VLC because there's no point in it; the phone isn't powerful enough to decode videos in realtime unless (a) you use hardware decryption support or (b) they're the size of a postage stamp. The built-in video player supports all the codecs the hardware supports. I really can't think of any benefit to having VLC on a phone.

Your local webserver will likely also respond on 0.0.0.0; if you bind to a port on 0.0.0.0, you listen on all interfaces, which is the default in apache.

Certainly; if you wrote the code and still hold copyright, you can license it under whatever terms you wish. You can GPL it, but then turn around and release a proprietary version. You have this right _if_ you're the copyright holder.

From what I can tell, the person who put this app on the App Store is not the copyright holder of GNU Go. (The FSF holds copyright to most of GNU Go's code, and they'd hardly offer an app on the App Store; and if they had, they could take it down without going through this mess.)

So what we have here is someone who took someone else's code (which was made available under GPL) and then released a DRMed version of it. The FSF is saying you don't get to do that.

Agh, syntax!

Another proprietary web framework sigh

Please, he's not just "writer Peter Watts". He's "Dr. Peter Watts, Ph.D".

Why is this ad "ideal for a budding startup"? I'm sure mixpanel is a nice place to work, but there doesn't seem to be anything unique about this ad, so I'm not sure why it's being held up as a model to emulate.

making it impossible to resell them

I have no idea what you're trying to ask.

Eeeagh, silverlight. Is there no other option?

He suggests to give only 30% to the guy who's going to build the entire product? Sounds cheap.

It could use some more detail for the mere Blub programmers, showing what these macros expand to.

Will you be doing it the right way or the wrong way? http://www.matasano.com/log/958/enough-with-the-rainbow-tabl... is a good basics guide.

GPLv3 explicitly says that you can link to the source being available elsewhere ("may be on a different server (operated by you or a third party)"), but if that server goes down, you have to come up with a new link. And of course, that only works if you're using the package unmodified; the source you link to has to be the source you compiled.

So it's not as if the FSF isn't trying to make things reasonable.

Wait, what? Wait, WHAT?

You're aware that HTTP cookies are not sent to DNS servers, yes?

Yeah, I've read that. Also "The Man who Came Early" by Poul Anderson and a lot of similar stories.

Sure. Plenty of people thought of it earlier. Just not in the West. In China, they used wooden movable type as early as 1040 CE. Shortly thereafter, they developed ceramic movable type. In 1234, Korea developed metal type through a variant on sand casting.

Gutenberg's breakthrough was his method for making metal type. That's why I gave tips for that transition. But even without it, you can use wooden type to start a society on the road to literacy.

At its most basic, you need a couple of alphabets worth of letters and a rack to set them on. These can be carved out of wood -- they'll need replacing fairly often, but if you get a couple of apprentices to carve out more, you can get a decent start with printing. Don't worry about books at first; start with smaller texts.

Of course, to truly make it scalable you'll need metal type. If you're not lucky enough to remember how to make a hand mould or invent lost-wax casting, you'll want to make friends with the nearest goldsmith and see if you can adapt some of his methods.

Around this time, if you're lucky, you might remember enough of mechanics to invent the escapement and the sun and planet gear, to kickstart the clockmaking industry. Sailors will thank you, as will the merchants they supply. And if you live long enough, you might be able to combine these two inventions to form the world's first Linotype machine.

Like you, I'm concerned for the future of Cappuccino. I realize that 280 North has to make rent somehow, but dividing the platform into a free software component and a commercial proprietary component necessarily gives them incentive to focus on the proprietary component more. This is the sort of thing that can prevent the platform from ever gaining critical mass among developers.

You are aware that Algol predates C, yes? This would make it hard for Algol to "just [be] C with some features tacked on", according to any reasonable interpretation of those words.

About a year ago; I'm no longer with the company. It was http://chi.mp/

I used to work for a social network that wanted to let users get their own photos out of Facebook and into our network. We built a Facebook app that expressly served this purpose; users only enabled it after knowing what it would do and desiring that consequence.

A few weeks after we added this feature, Facebook told us if we kept doing this -- if we kept letting users import their own photos -- our API access would be terminated.

So, yeah, walled garden.

I don't think it's reasonable to construe a software default as a conscious choice. Yes, people ought to know enough about technology to know what these defaults are. But the world is large and busy, and people don't have time for every possible choice; that's why we have defaults.

Presumably because gemcutter was doing a better job?

The Kindle DRM is trivially broken. Kindle ebooks are basically just Mobipocket ebooks.

Does Microsoft take liability for any of their software?

The Windows XP EULA states "Except for any refund elected by Microsoft, YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO ANY DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, if the Software does not meet Microsoft's Limited Warranty, and, to the maximum extent allowed by applicable law, even if any remedy fails of its essential purpose."

It goes on to state that the only remedy offered is your money back. Mozilla also offers your money back, all $0 of it.

Like you, I also read PG's list of startups he'd like to fund. The "dating" item ends with this: "So if you want to do a dating startup, don't focus on the novel take on dating that you're going to offer. That's the easy half. Focus on novel ways to get around the chicken and egg problem."

I'm not seeing your solution to the chicken and egg problem here.