lynx -dump http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_tra... |sed '/The right of the people to be secure/,/be seized./s/ \[ Redacted \]/'

You could even say that using bash as /bin/sh "is specific to Linux."

How to fix: /#!\/bin\/bash/s/bash/sh/

Missing: How much did this cost? Did the government (taxpayers) overpay?

Consider the alternatives: a large under educated part of the population who will/will not have a very hard time finding a job.

An educated population makes for a better society, irrespective of what "the economy" may or may not have to offer[1]. Economies can change on relatively short timeframes, while the character of societies[2] change much more slowly, if at all[3].

1. Author's opinion.

2. Substitute "character of society" with "culture" if you wish.

3. Another author opinion.

"Over educated" is interesting terminology. What exactly does that mean? Do we define education only in economic terms? Why did wealthy classes historically seek to become educated, even when "economically speaking" they already had society's best resource allocation?

But it sounds like this code was receiving "love", only the "love" was coming from run-of-the-mill "just get it to work" C++ programmers.

I guess we need context to understand Fitzpatrick's statement. Perhaps he just means code at Google.

Are there any examples of code that has survived for many years without "constant love"? Netcat has not received "constant love" over the years. It hasn't turned to shit. Neither has the original awk. I can think of many other examples. These programs have proven to need very little maintenance.

I posit that simple programs that are well written do not need "constant love". They only need love when there's a bug. And there are plenty of programs that are in constant use where no bug has been discovered for many years. The bugs were vetted and fixed early on, decades ago.

Hence I disagree with Fitzpatrick.

0. How important is simplicity (modularity) to the project?

1. Will Tox work for user "idontrungentoo"? Will it compile on Solaris, BSD, etc.

2. Will the GUI be optional? If not, why is it mandatory?

3. Can Tox work without DHT? What if two users just want to call each other without connecting to tens, hundreds or thousands of strangers? If there are problems with the DHT, are they SOL?

It would be good to have competing teams all working on some similar system (a Skype alternative) and then have an open bake off, instead of just idle criticism in forums like this one. This way we could see which system actually works the best instead of just theorizing about design choices and taking random anecdotes from alleged users in forums on faith.

0: it's a lib, and there are at least 2 client being developed (ncurse and qt)

1: it currently compile on linux/os x/window

2: see 0.

3: no, but you could potentially host a "private" boostrap node and have a separate network.

Today, with the explosion of online video, the copyright-clearance step could be administered by companies (as it already is, e.g., YouTube), but the servers providing distribution to the users at the network edge do not have to be run by companies.

1. Recall that storage is quite inexpensive and users are today quite capable of providing their own at home or on-the-go storage for terabytes or gigabytes of video.

2. Recall the "content-centric" networking idea Van Jacobsen has presented to Googlers. Does it really matter where the user gets the content? No. What is important is that it is authentic (and copyright-cleared).

http://cpudb.stanford.edu/cpudb.1333574285.tar.gz

This may be the problem. Change the economics, solve the problem. Specifically, do away with the idea of "backbones" for ordinary users. Leave the backbones to research and military networks. That's what they were originally designed for.

Make the (people's) internet more like Baran's original idea. His diagrams did not have backbones. They looked more like "mesh".

A true mesh internet might mean slower speeds for its users, but that design will also reduce latency compared to our current "backboned" internet because there will be fewer "fast to slow" transitions (assuming users all have more or less the same capacity for moving packets).

Lackner: Mr. Schaffer, are you a lawyer? Please elaborate on why you consider Snaphax to be unlawful circumvention. I will assess the merits of your argument and then make a decision.

While people in this thread all give the customary knee-jerk "get a lawyer" response, consider that:

1. The request did not come from Snapchat's lawyers, if they have any retained for the purpose of DMCA claims. Surely they must, right?

2. It does not state what happens if Lackner does not comply. There's no threat of legal action. It just asks Lackner to remove the code from Github.

As such, there's no reason not to ask Schaffer to clarify why he thinks there is a problem.

If lawyers are not involved yet, then asking questions is free.

If this was a clear DMCA violation, then why didn't Schaffer send this to Snapchat's lawyers to handle?

Maybe because he might not get the answer he wanted: that it's a clear DMCA violation and an easy win for Snapchat.

Any lawyer can be asked to send a threatening DMCA violation letter. They will almost always say, "Yes, we can do that for you."

But sending a threatening letter does not mean it's a slam dunk win if the recipient does not comply with the demands in the letter. Sometimes threats are hollow. The sender may have no intention of pursuing litigation any further than sending demand letters. It simply might not be worth the money to pursue litigation over something like Snaphax. If this bit of PHP was that big of a deal to Snapchat, why didn't the request to remove it from Github come from Snapchat's lawyers? Where's the line about purusing all legal remedies?

Not to mention that by sending a threatening letter with no details on why the sender thinks the code at issue is a DMCA violation, there's a risk that the recipient might post a link to the code on HN and set off a "Github fork bomb". Ouch.