Lawyers can't tell you you can't do something. They can warn you about risks, and in extreme cases tell you that something is such a bad idea you'll need to get someone other than them to do it but the judgment call of whether the risk is worth it is the entrepreneur's.

A good way to have good ideas is by being unoriginal.

Technology is not a panacea. I refuse to work on technology to track users, analyze usage patterns, watermark information, censor, detect drug use, or eavesdrop. I am not naive enough to think any of those technologies could enable a 'compromise'.

My father taught me Basic and rudimentary C, I learned everything else on my own, including studying computational complexity on my own. That's more a function of my age than anything else though - back when I was in school there were hardly any programming classes.

With BitTorrent, the cat's out of the bag.

My favorite language for maintainability is Python. It has simple, clean syntax, object encapsulation, good library support, and optional named parameters.

The mark of a mature programmer is willingness to throw out code you spent time on when you realize it's pointless