gustavo_duarte's comments

gpg can do symmetric encryption:

http://www.gnupg.org/documentation/manuals/gnupg/Operational...

There are a few algorithms to choose from.

But only for a very small value of impact.

What percentage of Google queries do you think might eventually become WA queries? I'd say easily < 1%. I see the two as very complementary, not really competing.

I think you underestimate his ego. What you describe is true, but it's not all. For example, he's also smarter than all physicists:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=690

Oy! For relief, I suggest his epic spanking in the Linux Kernel Mailing List:

http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0202.1/1909.h...

Which is actually a good thread to understand kernel development.

Historically, our job security beats the Papacy hands down. Even excluding the early Popes who were martyred in quick succession, the average papal tenure is under 8 years, with a fair number of murders and alleged murders. Check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_popes. So I think you're right about the Pope's envy :)

Regarding the job market, I do contract work in Colorado and have had no problems either. My programmer friends in the US, Europe, and Brazil are all gainfully employed. I think there's a chronic shortage of good programming talent that's not going away anytime soon.

I wouldn't make personal assumptions like this. I might be a DJ myself. ;)

Regarding the study, the results are in line with my expectations. Several of my friends are DJs and other art-loving people, who all download and buy massive amounts of stuff. The correlation between P2P downloads and buying strikes me as natural.

There's no doubt the major labels have played a pretty rotten game and also got the Internet completely wrong.

I want to see services that allow us to sample and listen to music without paying for it, allowing people to sample a large number of tracks and hopefully buy a fraction of those. I'd love to see decentralized distribution in such a way as to pay artists more and encourage creativity.

But I don't think piracy is the answer.

I also have hope for more independent creation, especially since I prefer indie / weird art to blockbuster stuff. But as much as I like your scenario, copyright still plays an important role in it to enable creators to live doing this.

I wonder if people's attitudes will change when The Pirate Bay is ripping off these independent artists, as opposed to the Big Evil Cos.

You mean 'just wants to listen to some music' _without paying for it_.

Regarding the DMCA and fair use restrictions, I agree it's something we must fight against, but I don't think piracy is an effective way to go about it.

Can you give examples? I'm genuinely interested. Rosalind Franklin and DNA is about the only 'greatest discovery' I know of where I think credit wasn't given where it was due.

Also, SW hasn't gotten anywhere near a 'greatest discovery', so I'm not sure the comparison is valid.

81 here.

The (consumer) Internet came at the absolute perfect time for me.

I had started programming pretty young, dabbled in electronics and other stuff, but had nobody around to share the passion with. So I abandoned computers and went to play the guitar for a couple of years (I sucked).

Then at around 14 the Internet kicked in. I ordered TCP/IP Illustrated Vol. 1 and Practical Unix & Internet Security from Amazon. I started to learn Unix and network programming, made lifelong friends online, and had a magical time learning together and escaping the boredom and banality of high school back in Brazil.

I loved that time. It made a huge difference in my life. As much as I like Star Wars, I'd rather have the Internet in my adolescence.

Not to mention, you know, the bit about 'education' and 'refining your mind', which is supposed to be the purpose of the whole thing.

If you have never read it, I recommend checking out "The Psychology of Persuasion":

http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Busine...

It's a fascinating examination of persuasion. It covers selling, business, cults, authority - a great and practical intro to some of the research and results in the field.

Mathematica itself has a rich plugin (packages) model that extends it to particular domains. It's a very important part of the system, sort of like extensions make Firefox.

Perhaps they'll open Alpha up in a similar way to help make it comprehensive. Can you imagine how powerful this thing could become if third parties are also developing for it?

He mentions that simply putting items in a series would generate comparisons, so I think you'd get what you want by taking out the / operator.

(edited, no need for "vs.", just series seems to do the trick)

Whoah! I've used Mathematica a lot and I had high expectations for Wolfram Alpha, but this... was just incredible. Thank you so much for posting it.

I wonder if they'd consider opening the system up for others to develop 'plug-ins' covering more knowledge areas.

Guaranteeing profit is not why patents exist in the first place. They exist "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."

It is not about profit, but rather about overall progress and benefits for society at large. I think there's a good argument to be made that the current system now falls short of this goal and new rules are required.

I think skmurphy understands the theory behind fractional art ownership but is simply skeptical such a market exists in practice.

Is there an established market for shared art ownership (besides fractional donations for tax purposes)?

If not, then I think there's a more direct and simple lesson from the failure: if there's no existing market for your idea, the most likely reason is that people don't want to buy it or use it. Thus you better have solid evidence there really exists unmet demand, probably via experiments in the earliest stages of the venture.

Seconded. Is there a list of local HN meetups anywhere? Or an informal process for announcing or setting one up?

The guy was slammed with 3 counts: for soliciting prostitution (misdemeanor), stealing time from work (felony), and 'unauthorized computer/network' use (ie, 'hacking', also felony). They thoroughly nailed him with a misdemeanor and a felony which are arguably reasonable, hence there's no need to apply a computer hacking law in a plainly unreasonable way.

As applied here it means that any use of a computer "beyond the scope of the express consent" is a felony. Twitter and ebay use at work could be felonies under the same reasoning. I understand juries are a safeguard against unreasonable laws (go founding fathers), but I'd sooner have reasonable laws to begin with.

It's not, and nobody has claimed it is, but I don't expect every city employee to behave sanely.

I do have an expectation of sanity from the law however, which is broken when porn surfing becomes a felony under a law aimed at computer breakins.

His stolen time is under a separate charge of 'theft in office'. So this $500, afaics, is specifically for the computer/network.