PeerJS — True peer-to-peer data in the browser - <AUTHOR> http://peerjs.com/ <comment><USER2> > _Note that no peer-to-peer data goes through the server; The server acts > only to broker connections._

Q1. Does this support connecting to a peer behind a NAT device?

Q2. Does this support connecting two peers each behind its own NAT?

Because a vast majority of real world cases will fall into either of these two categories.

<comment><USER3> It uses SDP to exchange ICE candidates. At the moment the SDP tries to multiplex video/audio and SCTP (data channel).

<comment><USER4> Does WebRTC have any sort of extension mechanism whereby I can drop in my own version of NAT traversal logic?

Speaking from past experience, STUN and ICE are OK, but they got the whole process fundamentally wrong. They let the clients drive the traversal process. This is substantially inferior to letting a dedicated mediating server do that instead. I did that with one of my past projects and it helped with connecting peers in a large number of obscure scenarios.

<comment><USER5> You should hack the Chromium webkit for this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks like a nice little library, and very relevant to my interests. My personal "dream scenario" is to have true multisource P2P video streaming in the browser with no extensions required - with WebRTC, this seems quite feasible as implementations mature.

<comment><USER7> Check out Holla.js for that: <https://github.com/wearefractal/holla>

<comment><USER8> Any video streaming demo?

<comment><USER9> See the demo at <http://holla.jit.su/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks like a really nice abstraction of the API. Will have to have a play with it over the weekend and see what ideas I come up with....

You can play with their chat demo here: <http://cdn.peerjs.com/demo/chat.html>

(Google Chrome 26.0.1403.0 or above is required)

</comment><comment><USER11> Is a torrent client for iOS finally possible with that? One that runs in the browser and will piss off apple.

<comment><USER12> Kind of hard when you can't store to the filesystem.

<comment><USER11> Direct torrents no, but you can rename the pieces *.fll and download them and send them to registered app for that extension that combines them ... you will have problem with seeding though, but that is also something that can be solved with a little tweaking of the protocol. I think the hacker community has shown that they can scare you with their inventiveness when they work in (stupidly and unnecessarily in that case) constrained environment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Any reason not to offer support for the video side of things? A lot of the issues in terms of client IDs and whatnot are the same. It would be nice to have a single library that can establish a connection and then send either video ir data or both...

<comment><USER5> Is it totally possible to do both with the same library.Problem is: You need that?

I mean, video rendering kills the performance of your browser I guess is better just to show the possibility of data transferring and then you build it by using the desired specs. Many ongoing video demos are avaliable too :)

<http://webp2p.org/>

Those guys are also in the same ship with the browser P2P using WebRTC.</comment></comment>


Sniff browser history for improved user experience - <AUTHOR> http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2008/02/browser-history-sniff.html <comment><USER2> I think the only thing I got out of this was to reinstall SafeHistory and SafeCache for Firefox.

Even though I'm all for optimal layout of options I don't think that any website should try and go parading through my history to do so...at least not without my explicit permission.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, this is great idea for a startup. Is someone already doing/done this?

Peer-to-peer user tracking. Like those crappy toolbars of yore, but all server side. Sign up, put our random-URL-sampler-JS block in your page, and you get access to all our mined data.</comment>


Bitcoin above $1100 again - <AUTHOR> http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/ <comment><USER2> phenomenal, i bought 1 btc back in apr 2015 for about 1000 rmb, now we're talking about close to 8100 rmb!

i didn't buy for the investment obviously, i was just playing around with the technology at the time, but what type of actual investment gives you this type of return? perhaps venture capital or hedge funds during their height?</comment>


Can a city really ban cars from its streets? (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140204-can-a-city-really-go-car-free? <comment><USER2> When you total up the amount of land that we dedicate to cars, it's absolutely staggering. I read a stat a while back (can't find it right now), that something like 33% of the land area of Seattle is paved vehicle surface. I'm sure Seattle isn't more paved-over than most other cities. Then, when you realize how this staggering amount of land is used to separate living, working, and other activity space, you begin to feel that we're living in little islands surrounded by fast-moving rivers of lethal steel--lethal steel that results in toxic gas and water runoff that sickens the remaining population that isn't directly killed at a rate of tens-of-thousands per year.

Gosh I hope we can figure this out in my lifetime.

<comment><USER3> Travel is the driver of all human progress and development.

What, you think the amount of roads we have now is a lot? We've always had roads, they were for carts, or horses, or anything else. There is nothing special about cars here.

> Gosh I hope we can figure this out in my lifetime.

We did. We made travel cheap and easy and it has benefited us massively.

<comment><USER4> We didn't have roads 4 lanes wide (which is a huge amount of additional land lost), and we didn't have the insane amount of parking space.

Even a not particularly car friendly city like Amsterdam would look dramatically different if you removed the parking space, because it would free up such an insane amount of space.

Cars have multiplied the amount of space dedicated to transport, without actually adding much to human progress and development, what with most of it being used to carry individuals short distances from A to B and back again.

I don't see the massive benefit here. It's a pointless habit we shaped a life/work culture around with a mostly negative impact on the quality of life.

<comment><USER5> >without adding much to human progress and development

I am opposed to vehicles being the priority, but their prevalence is directly related to their usefulness within the economic regions they occur in. If you ever go to the developing world, you will see vehicles used to grow and maintain society. It is easy to forget, living in the suburbs as i do, that most of the world does not joy ride over-produced SUVs.

The ability to move freely is a magical thing. Living in a place with bad roads is a reality to itself that i think every westerner should experience. The problem is what we use to take advantage of the roads.

Roads are society's rivers.

<comment><USER6> Roads are great. The argument is against personal cars. You can have most of those gains with a vastly smaller number of automobiles, and remove many of the negatives like parking lots.

<comment><USER5> I completely agree. I was only responding to the assertion that roads and vehicles are fairly useless.

I hope i live to see the day when city centers are car free, and all cars on the road are automated and distributed. Imagine leaving your domicile, hitting a widget on your device, and in a short time a vehicle approaches near silently, its bay door opening. you step in and you are off to work at a consistent 60kph. Each day, you see the same people on their commutes, so you naturally strike up conversations and friendships. With the steering column as well as ~90% of other standard car interaction gack gone, the interior is free to be redesigned to suit whatever purpose one may have. Vehicles could link up, breakfast could be enjoyed over whatever amount of data you choose to view on your way, and there would be no traffic that the passenger is accountable for. And in the afternoon you do it all again, only now beverage quads flit back and forth between mothership and car swarm, possibly making the commute the high point of the day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Driverless car could take us (almost) there. The coordination would allow traffic to flow incredibly smoothly, meaning a single one-way lane would be enough for most streets. They could more easily be shared, significantly lowering the need for parking. Even privately-owned cars could find their parking spot in i. e. an underground garage a few blocks away. Therefore: no need for parking spaces along the road.

So you go from four lanes (2 driving, 2 parking) to just a single one. Sidewalk area increases from "two-lane width" to four and one lane is free for bicycles.

It's going two be a revolution comparable to the invention of the internet, completely changing the quality of living in cities. And I get to see it, yeah. (Unless I end up being one of the world's last traffic fatalities)

<comment><USER8> I think that driverless cars would make up for it by increasing the total amount of traffic. If driving has little cost as an activity, people will drive much more and be ok with much longer commutes.

<comment><USER9> Right now much of the true cost of commuting is spread out in periodic costs like vehicle purchase, maintenance, licensing fees, paying for parking/storage, etc. But all anybody looks at is the time and gas.

If you're taking a car service of some sort, all the other stuff will getg figured into the per-mile cost and presented for payment each day when you get to work. I'm guessing once people are hit in the face with the full cost, they will make different (and arguably more rational) decisions.

<comment><USER10> There may be some truth to that but look at a city which has a large number of taxis and car services like Manhattan. It's not exactly a car-less paradise.

This is one of the things I find somewhat strange about how so many people go gaga whenever optimistic dates for self-driving cars get thrown out. If you live in a city, you already have a "self-driving" option. Maybe someday it will be possible to create autonomous cars (that can put all those drivers out of a job). But basically the only thing that you're doing that you can't do today is dropping the price by, I don't know, $10/hr?

<comment><USER9> It's not exactly carless, but IIRC the article mentioned 56% of Manhattanites don't own a car. Plus they have a massive influx of work commuters, of whom I'm guessing a vast majority don't drive. So it definitely does work, at least to some extent and when the conditions are right.

I thought cabbies made more than that when you count in tips, but you might be right. Living in a city that's not very well served by cabs, I don't use them much because when I call for one they only show up 50% of the time, and give very poor information about time-to-pickup. I like to imagine that the "car cloud" would be much better about both of those, and hence more useful. But that may just be wishful thinking.

<comment><USER10> Absolutely, Manhattan simply couldn't function if most people owned cars and tried to drive. But no visitor to Manhattan is going to even remotely think "Oh, this is such a wonderful place for pedestrians" :-) Of course, Manhattan is very densely populated but auto/truck traffic is pretty horrible for large parts of the day in many areas.

Manhattan taxis are readily hail-able on the street. And they're supplemented by both Uber/Lyft and private car services. So, as a city, it's probably the definition of well-served by third-party cars and it's very much a part of the city's fabric. Just good luck getting either a cab or Uber (at a reasonable rate) if it's pouring rain.

Maybe $10 should be $15 but who knows about vehicle costs in some hypothetical future or what human support would be needed. My basic point was that, to a first approximation, we already have what amount to self-driving cars within larger and denser cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This report is false. While Hamburg does plan for a "Green Network", there are no plans to ban cars or become "car free".

Official statement from the city of Hamburg (in German): [http://www.hamburg.de/pressearchiv- fhh/4257482/2014-01-24-bs...](http://www.hamburg.de/pressearchiv- fhh/4257482/2014-01-24-bsu-keine-autofreie-stadt/)

</comment><comment><USER12> We didn't seem to have any trouble banishing people from the streets, so I hardly see the problem.

<comment><USER13> Adding to that insight, I've gone hiking in the backcountry and I've seen the vibrant economy that results from an absence of mobility. (note, the above is extreme sarcasm)

<comment><USER14> You're saying that there aren't any photo sharing startups in that backwards backcountry? Gosh darn.

<comment><USER15> Those poor people!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cars are a huge waste of space:

[https://geppbloggt.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/gehzeug1.jpg](https://geppbloggt.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/gehzeug1.jpg) [https://diskussionsgruppespartacus.files.wordpress.com/2012/...](https://diskussionsgruppespartacus.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/gehzeug.jpg)

<comment><USER17> Huge _use_ of space. Waste is an opinion.

<comment><USER16> Yes that is my opinion. Allowing this waste is the opposite of a smart city.

Using 1,5 t of mass to transport on average 100 kg is also a massive waste of energy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If this were actually doing as the title suggests, it would demolish the possibility for any personal DIY projects that require heavy equipment/materials. Indeed, bulk home goods and appliance sales companies should be up in arms.

Luckily, they're just trying to make it _possible_ to get around without cars, not illegal to use cars, which is likely to dramatically increase the possibility for lightweight cooperative social interactions.

<comment><USER19> In Berlin (where not everybody owns a car), it's quite common to see people walking out of the hardware store with large planks of wood balanced over their shoulder, or sometimes in a bike trailer. People manage.

And yes, obviously you still need to allow commercial delivery vehicles. There's really no alternative to that.

<comment><USER20> A plank of wood or two is fine to carry, but what if you need to move something heavier like a refrigerator or a piece of furniture? It's ridiculous to think that people should have to carry that stuff by hand or on bicycles over distances of multiple miles.

I think it's more feasible that we ban personal vehicles in cities while still allowing commercial and emergency vehicles. Even allowing these vehicles, we'd probably be able to reduce most roads to single lane one way streets.

<comment><USER21> I don't know how often you buy new refrigerators, but I would rather hire a delivery company every time I change my refrigerator if that means living in a clean city.

On the other car, the ban for private cars usually has only effect during a period of the day. In Barcelona, at least, you can access most streets in the city center after 20:00.

<comment><USER22> > hire a delivery company

As usual, this plan is OK for the more affluent and makes life more difficult for the poor.

<comment><USER23> Poor people are probably using public transit, not driving in the first place. Investment in public transportation would be good for them. Investment in roads (automobile infrastructure) benefits only those who can afford cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Clickbait to the max.

"The city's proposed Grünes Netz, or "Green Network" will create pedestrian and cycle paths to connect the city's existing, substantial green spaces, and provide safe, car-free commuter routes for all residents."

That is awesome, but it has nothing to do with banning vehicles.

<comment><USER25> Of course it does. Their intention is to convert the roads to those paths, which is something they can't possibly do while still supporting cars.

<comment><USER24> Some roads, not all roads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hamburg's mentioned plan reminds me of Daniel Burnham's 1905 plan for San Francsico, which would have created Panhandle-like parks running all over the city as well as diagonal avenues connecting major points of interest a-la Paris or Washington DC. The 1906 earthquake would've been the perfect opportunity to make it a reality, but unfortunately it never went anywhere.

Map: [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fe/Burnham_San_Fr...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fe/Burnham_San_Francisco.jpg)

<comment><USER27> Such a huge lost opportunity. Many cities (Boston, Minneapolis) have very beautiful parks connected by chains of greenways. San Francisco could have built that, but didn't, and the lack of parks in the Eastern part of the city has a major negative effect on livability. Consider how nice South Park seems compared to the rest of SOMA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> you can: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louvain-la- Neuve](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louvain-la-Neuve)

<comment><USER29> I am surprised nobody mentioned Venice, the largest car-free city in Europe.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice#In_the_historical_city](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice#In_the_historical_city)

<comment><USER30> People often forget to mention that Venice is car-less. It was one of the most relaxing and unique things about the city to me and not a single person mentioned it to me before I visited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It is amazing how ambitious and progressive Germany has been over the last two decades. It has always been very public transportation and self-locomotion focused, but this is quite impressive. They have curtailed nuclear energy; funded alternative energy production, research, and socialization; curtailed fossil fuel energy production and use; and now are moving towards the future of in this manner. In a way, they are also setting up the city, and maybe even the country, for autonomous vehicles.

As I have been spending significant time on evaluating and analyzing the ramifications of autonomous vehicles, one thing has always been a bit of a challenge, how to make a transition. It's actually relatively easy in Germany and not that much of a leap since a lot of the foundational work had been done and the trajectory has been in a complementary direction. The real challenge will be how the USA makes the transition and doesn't simply sabotage itself out of spite for itself as it has an established reputation for now.

<comment><USER32> There's nothing "progressive" about eliminating nuclear energy. Especially when the goal is more electrical transportation, not less.

<comment><USER15> If we can replace nuclear with other clean sources, such as solar and wind, until the time that we can safely dispose of nuclear waste, then yes, I'd say that's progressive.

<comment><USER33> What about thorium and the liftr reactor? it uses 90%+ of its fuel.

<comment><USER15> Are those actually in production yet?

(Not trying to be snarky, just though those were still not really ready yet)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is actually a misunderstanding - while Hamburg does plan to connect its green spaces, it does not plan to ban all cars.

See their official statement (in German): [http://www.hamburg.de/pressearchiv- fhh/4257482/2014-01-24-bs...](http://www.hamburg.de/pressearchiv- fhh/4257482/2014-01-24-bsu-keine-autofreie-stadt/)

<comment><USER35> As a resident of Hamburg I can assure you it will not become a car-free city within the next 20 years. So far, we don't even have an "Umweltzone" (green or environmental friendly zone) where only cars maintaining certain filtering and mileage standards are allowed to drive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> _The goal of Hamburg's project is to replace roads with a "gruenes netz" or a green network of interconnected open areas covering 40% of the city. According to the official website, parks, playgrounds, sports fields, allotments and cemeteries will be connected to form a network, which will allow people to navigate through the city without the use of cars._

Why not just let people walk on the roads? Places like cemeteries and parks can be quite creepy to walk through, especially at night. Roads next to buildings with people in them are a more comfortable place to walk.

<comment><USER37> Is that just because that isn't the norm? If it was quite normal to walk through a cemetery or park at night, would it still be as creepy or is it just because of the proliferation of ghost and paranormal stories...?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Im surprised so few of the comments deal with disabled people or old people or people who cant walk much for injury or other reason. We cant make elitist cities. As I get older and my knees worse I really appreciate those who have to struggle. I love walking but its getting harder and harder. Saying that Id love to get rid of most cars or make em all electric. I train to work and its nicer than driving and Id bike if it was remotely safe but its psycho to bike in Australia.

<comment><USER39> Electric bikes seem popular with the elderly in Japan. The British prefer golf carts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Probably not if the headline has to be phrased as a question. :)

Instead of (or perhaps in addition to) the greenspaces Hamburg is proposing, I have an even cooler idea: turn them into lazy rivers[0]. I'd be totally down with commutes involving calm, aimless drifting on flotation devices.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_river](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_river)

</comment><comment><USER41> > It is an ambitious idea, but city officials obviously feel that the personal > motorcar does not fulfill a function that walking, biking and taking public > transport cannot.

Except fucking over the people who actually live there for the benefit of people who exist there transiently.

<comment><USER42> 'easytiger, when HN voters can't comprehend your writing, they downvote. While it's pretty clear to this somewhat-experienced reader of English-language online fora that "fucking over the people" is an action you ascribe to "the personal motorcar" rather than to "walking, biking and taking public transport", most respondents (thus, presumably, most voters) seem to have _whooshed_. Often we must be more verbose than we'd like, to communicate with those who are not in the habit of thinking while reading.

<comment><USER43> or you could just not mind the downvotes whether they are misunderstood, accidental, or random.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Something I would love to see in NYC. Not as new of an idea as it might seem either, here's an old pamplet from the 60s about it

[http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/goodman- cars.htm](http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/goodman-cars.htm)

</comment><comment><USER45> A few years ago the EU proposed banning cars in all major European cities by 2050. And they wanted to restrict 50% of all trabel over 186 miles to trains. The plan was rejected by the UK and was criticized as draconian.

</comment><comment><USER46> In California, zoning specifies _minimum_ numbers of parking spaces. In UK/Ireland, zoning specifies _maximum_ number of spaces.

</comment><comment><USER47> Zermatt, Switzerland. Car free city.

<comment><USER48> From the photos and Wikipedia description, I'm in love. I want to move there.

<comment><USER49> There are a few villages in the Swiss alps with no cars or very limited use of cars. In one I visited, a hotel owner picked up guests and their luggage from the gondola using something like a golf cart. It worked well - low speed, smaller, less dangerous, quieter, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> British Thermal Units? Surely that's an obsolete unit.</comment>


Try Ruby (in your browser, now with 1.9) - <AUTHOR> http://tryruby.org/

<comment><USER2> _why's version of this site was my first exposure to Ruby. I was a convert (from Java) as soon as I got to map.

%w{apple pear banana}.map {|f| puts "#{f} is a fruit."}

This experience shows one of the fundamental truths of software marketing, incidentally: anything you can do to reduce the barriers to trying the software out increases uptake _dramatically_. Eliminating the install is powerful, powerful stuff.

<comment><USER3> It was useful for me in an opposite way :)

It showed me why I hate Ruby syntax. The above just looks horribly ugly. A mishmash of special characters. Not to mention special characters in _strings_ (eugh).

The probability of an undetectable typo in the code you paste is pretty high.

Sure, it's not quite up there with regexp syntax, but it's getting close.

<comment><USER4> FWIW, I've been coding Ruby going on 7 years now (well over 100,000 lines of Ruby across all projects, I'd wager), and my memory estimates fewer than 5 instances of "undetectable typo". Generally, the typos I made and tried to run produced very obvious, visible and traceable symptoms (i.e. a precise and accurate stack trace).

I was asked in an interview once (by a skeptic that didn't know Ruby) if it weren't a problem that mistyping a variable name could produce a bug that would be difficult to detect and debug. I informed him that, in practice, it is essentially a non-issue.

There are two aspects of Ruby (among others, I'm sure) that help protect against the sort of hidden bugs you're worried about:

1) You cannot reference a variable that has not been defined yet. Example:

        % ruby
        supercalifragilisticexpialidocious = "something quite attrocious"
        puts "I'm thinking of #{supercalifragilisticexpialodocious}."
        ^D
        -:2: undefined local variable or method `supercalifragilisticexpialodocious' for main:Object (NameError)

2) Ruby will not silently or automatically convert or cast data types. (Where it seems to do so, in actual fact underlying library code is explicitly calling the conversion methods (#to_s, #to_i, #to_f, etc.)) Example:

        % ruby
        count_str = "8"
        count = count_str.to_i
        puts count < 9
        puts count_str < 9
        ^D
        true
        -:4:in `<': comparison of String with 9 failed (ArgumentError)

Contrast that with, say, Perl:

        % perl
        use strict;
        my $count_str = "8";
        my $count = 0 + $count_str;
        print $count < 9; print "\n";
        print $count_str < 9; print "\n";
        ^D
        1
        1

Combine all of the above with good testing practices, and your bugs turn out to be quite detectable on the whole.

<comment><USER3> It's not just about potential bugs though. It's readability, maintainability etc. For me, the original code pasted is horrible in terms of readability. Sure, it's concise, but it's lots of small characters that you could misread etc.

<comment><USER5> "Sure, it's concise, but it's lots of small characters that you could misread etc."

To each his own, but have you spent much time coding Ruby and encountering this problem?

I ask because it's not a problem I've had or hear from people who have been using the language. It seems to be be an issue expected by people who have not yet spent much time using Ruby (much like concerns over the lack of static typing).

From a distance it may seems as though things would get confusing, but in actual practice this seems not to be the case.

Could be a selection bias, but I would like to hear from people who have truly used Ruby in earnest and stopped because of repeated annoyances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not being able to backspace (at least on my MacBook with 10.6) is a deal breaker here. As much as I'd like to be, I'm not a perfect typist.

<comment><USER7> Backspace works here on my 10.6 Macbook in both Safari and Firefox. Though, Command-w to close it doesn't work for me.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, for whatever reason the command key doesn't register on the page

<comment><USER6> The javascript key handlers are absorbing them. Outlook Web Access does this too (and it drives me crazy there).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've got to admit that the 1.9 sticker and the "BETA" text don't really blend in with the existing look of the site.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, too many fonts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Clever! But in all honesty, I was a little disappointed when I discovered that Ruby was not being emulated in JavaScript or something similar. Just bouncing the entered text back to a server-side instance of IRB instead...

<comment><USER12> Well, an official spec for Ruby is in the works and there's already one for JavaScript (ECMAScript). Someone is bound to build a Ruby VM in JS at some point and then it'll be trivial to build a site like this.

The performance will be horrible, of course, but once that happens some other person will come along and run a subset of Rails (or some other Ruby web framework) with an evented db backend on it (for async callbacks to the server over HTTP) to run an app in the browser.

Which would be pretty cool, though not useful. (But don't let that stop you, whoever you are!)

<comment><USER13> I believe a Ruby VM is already in the works, but my cold addled brain can't google fu right now.

<comment><USER14> That would be HotRuby, <http://hotruby.yukoba.jp>.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interface acts odd on Debian+Webkit+Chrome4.

</comment><comment><USER15> way too slow.. i'd rather just fire up irb

<comment><USER16> That is not the point AT ALL. This isn't about knocking out one-off scripts to do useful things, it's about trying out the language to see if it's worth installing at all.

_why the lucky stiff did a lot for Ruby evangelism. This site combined with the Poignant Guide turned a lot of curious folks into converts.

I know this stuff despite being a Python fanatic. I have great respect for what _why did for the Ruby and programming communities in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I read somewhere that the problem of "syntax design", that is choosing how a language requires you to write it, is regarded as "solved", that is we don't need any more constructs or abilities in languages. Whoever it was said that the real problems remaining are speed and size and the other stuff.

I agree that this is the case, but only because Ruby exists. If you haven't tried it then really, please do, I think you'll like it.

<comment><USER18> Language design isn't a solved problem until we have a language that enables the average programmer to add any syntax they need. Lisp only comes close by punting and rubbing everyone's nose in the raw parse tree, and the average programmer ritually shuns it anyway.

Ruby doesn't even attempt to solve this problem. You can tell because if it didn't already have try/catch or begin/rescue or case/when, adding them yourself would be impossible.</comment></comment>


India's copyright proposal: DRM circumvention OK if no intent to infringe - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/indias-copyright-proposals-are-un-american-and-thats-bad.ars <comment><USER2> I applaud this move. It should force the IIPA to show its true colors, since it's not really "anti-piracy" or "copyright enforcement" that could be motivating their objections. India's offer already covers those issues sufficiently.

No, instead what they are after is further restriction on fair use and preventing threats to their business model from open source software and domestic procurement policies. What a surprise.

</comment><comment><USER3> From Wikipedia: "Andres Guadamuz, a lecturer in law at the University of Edinburgh discovered that the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) representing the U.S. media industry is urging the United States government to consider countries like Indonesia, Brazil and India to be put on the Special 301 watchlist because of them mandating or suggesting the use of open source software, somehow considering it as a harmful act roughly equivalent to not combating piracy, and not taking into account that also many of the U.S. companies that the IIPA represents depend on using open source software in their own business" I hope that India will always stay on top of 301 list

<comment><AUTHOR> IIPA equating open source with piracy is among their most outrageous positions, previously discussed in this thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1148079>

Recall that in February IIPA requested that Canada be placed on the 301 watchlist as well: [http://www.zeropaid.com/news/88127/iipa-demands-canada-be- pu...](http://www.zeropaid.com/news/88127/iipa-demands-canada-be-put- on-301-priority-watch-list/)

<comment><USER4> That seems like an unwise gambit for them. People are probably willing to believe whatever you tell them about Indonesia, but Canada's generally well- liked, and considered an orderly first-world country (if anything, the stereotype is of this absurdly polite and well-behaved place), so there's a decent risk of losing credibility from being too hyperbolic about Canada as some sort of hotbed of lawlessness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To the unsung Indian bureaucrat(s) behind this proposal: Shabash!

</comment><comment><USER6> This is pretty sensible. If India passed any draconion law, then it would be a trouble for the citizens who are already pissed off by high-prices of content that is pirated.

e.g. The price of buying a track is pretty high. $0.90 for a track in US is acceptable, but not in India where standard of living is not like other countries.

The chief reason piracy is a hit in India is due to stupid pricing. If a book costs $10, then it will surely be pirated by a lot number of people. Classical example was "Harry Potter" books. It was priced at 700INR IIRC. Not everyone can buy it. Pirated books were available at 150-200INR and sold like hot cakes.

Moral of the story: Fix your damn price and see the sales shoot up.

<comment><USER7> The same is with music. The T-Series cassettes were prices @ 25INR and sold like hot cakes without a trace of piracy. Then the CD-DVD MP3s came and the stupid pricing started. Who'll buy a CD for 100-200INR if u get free MP3s without any hassles?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well done, India. It's not bad at all.

</comment><comment><USER9> India cannot comply with western copyright schemes, there are so many poor people that when you seclude them from music and software you'd have a civil war on your hands.

Besides, the western way is plain wrong, it's a big bet of them to gamble their employ-ability on IP, and it will go sour on them, no matter how many military efforts used.

</comment><comment><USER10> wow. this actually makes sense. i'm shocked.

</comment><comment><USER11> In México there are pirate DVD operations on busy street corners and ads on teevee trying to embarrass infringers. The government doesn't care. MPAA wants to charge one full week's wages at the legal minimum wage _before taxes_ for each single copy of a movie and the state is just not going to make people pay that.

The IPAA people have to jail every digital device in China, India, Mexico, and the like to close their content, overturn the doctrine of first sale, and permanently deny all fair use. They won't be able to.

Instead what happens is that technology development gets blocked in the countries IPAA runs. It's illegal to jailbreak, unlock, and otherwise innovate with cheap mass market technology in the USA. And that just means the Congress is sending the future to China. Or México. Or India. Or Canada, apparently, if this article is right.

<comment><USER12> The anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA have been extremely damaging to innovation and research in the US. There was a great lecture at defcon 17 about the specifics of the laws regarding jailbreaking and reverse engineering (when reverse engineering actually is legal, usually only to create/implement interoperability).

[https://media.defcon.org/dc-17/audio/DEFCON%2017%20Hacking%2...](https://media.defcon.org/dc-17/audio/DEFCON%2017%20Hacking%20Conference%20Presentation%20By%20Fred%20Von%20Lohman%20and%20Jennifer%20Granick%20-%20Jailbreaking%20and%20the%20Law%20of%20Reversing%20-%20Audio.m4b)</comment></comment>