Lord Crc,

We've just about completed our backlog and have started taking new projects. You should expect an invitation by the end of the year. Conservancy has been very careful not to accept new projects until we're absolutely sure we have the resources to take care of them.

I asked the Slashdot folks to make the video available in a format viewable with Free Software. I've sent an email to ask to make sure that happens. Unlike RMS, I don't necessarily object to videos of me being available in proprietary formats, as long as they are *also* available in a format viewable with Free Software.

I suspect this was just a communication problem between me and the interviewer. It should get resolved.

'the harm to consumers that Microsoft's decision could create.'" The only harm is to these business' pocketbooks.. For once I'm on MS side in this matter...

Then you are failing to think this through. The only effect of this will be to give advertisers an excuse to ignore "do not track". How does undermining "do not track" help anyone?

For once I agree with Microsoft that WE DO NOT BENEFIT FROM TRACKING.

Are you stupid, or can you just not read? Microsoft is UNDERMINING "do not track" by turning it on by default, because that only gives advertisers an excuse to ignore it. "Do not track" is entirely voluntary on the part of advertisers.

Because it renders "Do Not Track" useless. Apache is already ignoring Do Not Track if it detects that you are using IE10. It's a boneheaded move on Microsoft's part.

The Tahrir Project is trying to create an anonymous microblogging platform, similar to Twitter or Facebook. Google was sponsoring development on it over the summer so with any luck it won't prove to be vaporware like Diaspora.

I'd be unimpressed with the business acumen of both the entrepreneur and the programmer. An entrepreneur who relates confidential information without an NDA has created difficulties at the very outset of his enterprise, which may or may not be costly later. (Consider the nonsense of the Facebook litigations.) A programmer who refuses work because he won't sign an agreement that merely binds him to refrain from doing something he would never want to do anyway, has refused work for no reason at all.

Of course, an overreaching and overbearing NDA is unsignable, and of course one with other provisions (noncompetes, etc.) raise different issues. But a routine NDA should be a non-problem for an honest programmer who doesn't intend to steal anything. And the failure to sign, at least for me, is a big red flag that another programmer would be a better solution.

Get over yourself. Most of us are fungible. No reason, other than inexperience, naiveté or reserving the right to cheat can be given to refuse, all of which make the programmer unsuitable for the task. As far as the moralistic argument about starting the relationship on the wrong foot, welcome to the twenty-first century, refusal to sign an NDA is precisely that, starting the relationship on the wrong foot -- it assures suspicion. And don't think refusal to sign puts you at a legal advantage, there are plenty of common-law and statutory ways to reach someone who has misappropriated, PARTICULARLY if it is explained to the judge that the refusal to sign was simply for some moralistic, idealistic handshakey kind of deal.

Tl;dr -> Refusing on that basis is a silly idea. Don't be silly.

I call shotgun seat.

You can just type:

X nm = (X*10) angstroms

The plan is that people will be able to define lots of functions like this, along with much more complicated ones, and then share them. The best of them will become part of the default vocabulary.

Please sign up for the mailing list if you'd like to keep up with developments (or, if you can code Java, perhaps you could help?!)

Or somehow silence grammar nazis...

Yeah, it kinda is. Did you ask that when Slashdot opened their codebase many years ago? How about when Reddit did it? What about Google with their various open source projects?

You should be glad that people open source things.

Nah, just wanton irresponsibility :-)

Soulver was actually what inspired LastCalc, but I wanted to bring it to the web, and make it programmable.

OpalCalc looks neat, unlike Soulver it supports functions, and I'm sure it has a few features that LastCalc currently lacks.

However LastCalc has a few features that OpalCalc lacks too, such as support for higher-level datastructures like lists and maps, pattern matching (like Haskell), and the ability to pull data from the web to use in calculations.

So I'm not sure that I would describe OpalCalc as "LastCalc on steroids" by any stretch.