I'm very happy for you, Rob, and wish you the very best in your future endeavors. Try not to give in to the siren call of wanting to work on another "small project." Enjoy your family time! That's stuff that matters!

P.S. It's been great seeing all the old farts chiming in here. It's like an old-timey convention. I wish they could have put the original UI back for slashdot for this story. :-)

My thoughts exactly. Akamai will be pretty threatened by this, but I'm not sure what they can do about it other than offer superior service.

I wonder if Google will try to buy them out, though -- Akamai has lost about half of its stock value over the past three quarters for some reason.

Such a move would definitely cause alarm, though. I personally would not feel comfortable concentrating so much of the internet in one company. Single points of failure are bad.

Oh, but it will have one, provided the tyrannosaurs are ready by then. :-)

While I have no wish to demean their efforts, this approach still seems somewhat brutal to me. I'm no neurologist, but isn't this still a rather macro-level view of things, with the cutting process still causing damage to the fine structures they want to study?

It seems likely to me that future scientists will look back at this in not too long with stifled laugher and perhaps a little shock at the approach.

I read that and my inner monologue immediately thought, "Now I'm on a horse."

Or possibly, that they are smart enough to recognize that having "something" to show possible investors (and more importantly, current investors) is worth a great deal more than a framework that can't be demonstrated.

Don't get me wrong -- I really, *really* hope that the security model gets implemented well in Diaspora, and they don't get destracted by "ooh, shiny!" syndrome. But expecting them to go to folks who have given them money -- people who likely know even less about security than these college students -- and say, "This mystery code will work, it's really better, we just can't demonstrate it," is unreasonable.

Prototype first, then refine. Bugs happen, just fix them and move on. It looks like they're on their way to me. If you (or others) think you can fix these bugs or fundamental flaws in their security model, talk to them. You might just find yourself a job at a potentially big startup.

I'd have modded you up, had you not posted AC. That was a perfectly applicable reference! For those not familiar, here is a quick explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concepts_in_the_Ender's_Game_series#Fantasy_Game

Easy -- just put two peltiers together, hot sides facing each other. Problem solved! ;-)

Yes, you're absolutely right. But I thought it was important to note the effort to document the "bad" art, however small.

Negative examples are powerful, whether they be in art, history, programming, or any other branch of human endeavor or record keeping. If we "forget it and remember the stuff worth remembering", then we are doomed to repeat it.