Lessig comes up all the time here - or at least, he did until he switched "causes" away from copyrights.
Not so. He was pretty clear about the fact that he feels copyright is a symptom, and the corruption disease must be tackled in order to advance rational copyright law which balances the needs of creators and consumers. He has not turned his back on copyright reform, but taken what he sees as the only viable path to the goal.
Google and Yahoo, perhaps, but methinks that Steve Jobs' position at Disney could be a real influence on Apple.
Haha - well noted. I actually originally composed my post to say "companies that feel strongly about rational technology law." Then realized the mistake and changed it to employees.:)
I doubt he'd be electable in a state which contains a large percentage (if not the largest) of content providers.
Perhaps not in the Senate, but this is the House, and he's a Bay Area resident. We have a few little companies here that are full of employees who feel pretty strongly about rational technology law; you know, Google, Apple, Yahoo, and about seventy-three thousand startups. House elections are local.
This is why law school is all case law and precedent. What do we have, other than production, in which to test laws? What in software development would be done with a test or UAT platform, must in law, either be considered before hand in requirements gathering or after in production.
That is indeed the current state of affairs in law. There was a time (and there are still places) where that is also the current state of software development. What the original poster is proposing is that it may be possible to change that.
Consider this: When the next version of the DMCA is being drafted, have Larry Lessig argue a hypothetical case on the side of the copyright holder. Have argue that same hypothetical case on the side of the infringer. Both lawyers would be motivated to present the most extreme attempts to invalidate the law, because they want it to work in their favor once passed.
Cost? What is the cost of a poorly written law making it into production? Surely it is vastly greater than the cost of hiring a few lawyers and a judge for a month or two.
It might not work at all. And it would surely not cover all cases, just as unit and integration tests do not cover all cases in software. It does not make perfect software, but it makes software better. It might do the same for law; law and software have many things in common.
You seem quite familiar with both law and software development. I think you could make a significant contribution to the idea (which may never come to fruition but is at least an interesting mental exercise). Why not take a spin on the positive side, see what you can come up with?
The main thing I'd want lawmakers to borrow from software development is a content management system. For every sneaky loophole or badly written clause, I want to know exactly which person checked it in and when. No hiding garbage in monster bills and then denying responsibility - every word, every revision, all clearly identifiable by editor.
DKIM is designed to not require a root of trust for its certificates. Most DKIM installations simply use a free RSA private/public key pair generated using openssl. The private key goes on the SMTP server, and signs all the outgoing messages. The public key is placed on the DNS server servicing the domain.
I hope neither you nor the OP are developers or lawyers. Shouldn't the first step be deciding what the goal of the code (or law) is? You know, requirements gathering?
Obviously you can't write tests without knowing the business requirements. But this isn't a discussion about the entire development cycle, only about how to advance a portion of it. I rather thought that was apparent.
As it is, the system isn't far from what is being proposed. Lawmakers (legislators or corporate lobbyists) write the laws. Trial lawyers come up with the test cases. Judges are QA executing the tests and ruling whether the law passes the test.
OK, now it's my turn to be aghast. You're suggesting testing code in production? That's quite risky. Wouldn't an approach that attempts to test before production be preferable?
First, have lawmakers (analogous to "developers") write drafts of the laws. Then a second group (the "test case writers") would try to come up with situations that would be interpreted ambiguously under the law. Then a third group, the "testers", would read the proposed law, read the test case situations, and try to determine how the law should be applied to those cases, without communicating with the law writers, the test case writers, or each other.
I like the idea (though I admit I haven't had the chance to read the entire article yet) - it is a captivating notion.
One revision I might suggest; consider test-first legislation. If you write unit tests first, and then write legislation only to satisfy the unit tests, it reduces the risk of adding "we might need this someday" functionality. That hypothetically needed functionality could be the source of maintenance problems and unintended side-effects.
What kind of certs are being used, and are they relevant? I'm wondering if they're using business certificates which require verification of the business that owns a domain, instead of something akin to a domain cert, which only verifies that the recipient controls the domain.
I ask because I run my own mail server, and if DKIM is only for people with articles of organization, and who can afford a $700 cert, then I think it would be contradictory to the decentralized objective of the Internet.
"An OS should never have been something that people (in general) really care about: it should be completely invisible and nobody should give a flying [expletive] about it except the technical people." [Torvalds said]
Sure, that statement makes some sense, but in the grand scheme of things, it's the design and usability factor that makes the operating system much easier to use. And while both Mac OS X and Windows have their issues, for the average person, it makes more sense to use those than Linux.
This quickly summarizes the fundamental misunderstanding of the article's author. He is confusing an OS with the total package of OS, windowing environment, application bundle, installer, and more. Linux is just the kernel. As I understand it, the GNU/Linux OS is the kernel plus the GNU toolkit. There is neither windowing nor applications - and hence no user friendliness - in the GNU/Linux OS, because the GNU/Linux OS is below all that. It is down at the level that only technical people give a crap about it. And at that level, Linux really is significantly more beautiful than OS X or Windows. It is above that level where there is still much room to improve. (which is not to discount the significant advances that Ubuntu and others have made - just that there is still more to be done to reach the intuitiveness and automagic of OS X or Windows)
Why you ask? Because although Torvalds has his own belief about what Linux is and should be going forward, the vast majority of its users disagree. Let's face it -- if it were up to Torvalds, beauty and intuition would take a backseat to functionality. But when you look at distributions like Ubuntu or OpenSuse, it looks like no one is paying attention.
The author did manage to use the correct term for Ubuntu and OpenSuse - "distribution." But then he seems to miss the fact that the two different terms, OS and distribution, imply that they are two different things. A distribution is not the OS. The OS is one of the core components of a distribution, but all that extra stuff (installer, application bundle, package manager, windowing system) is not part of the OS itself.
I guess his confusion springs from the fact that Apple and Microsoft both misleadingly refer to their entire distribution as an OS. But, then, who cares? The public has never understood (nor needed to understand) the distinction in the past, corporations don't benefit from making the distinction clear, and Linux is still quietly marching the world toward the inevitable point where OSs become a commodity good. And Ubuntu and friends are doing the same for distributions - though that part is going to take longer.
Moderate Muslims have no particular objection to these images. It's the crazy fundamentalist Muslims that kill people over stuff like this and try to get laws passed requiring women to wear burquas all the time
Very agreed. See, for example, Morocco for a Muslim nation which is very compatible with Western culture. They are also one of the US's oldest allies - dating back to being one of the first nations to recognize our independence, and saving our asses from The Barbary Corsairs. Muslims aren't bad - xenophobes and authoritarians are. If you want to fight the real enemy, you don't need to look for a temple, mosque, or church - and you don't need to look outside your own borders. The real enemy is arrogant ignorance.
I'd like to believe the US isn't behind it for any number of reasons. One of those many reasons that occurs to me is the precedent it sets: if we declare that cutting cables is a valid way of pursuing foreign policy, what implications does that have for the US
Not that I think we're doing this, and I do believe you have a valid point. But... that's the same reason we used to have a hard-line stance against torture. I don't think we've been doing particularly well lately at considering the consequences of our actions. It seems like the powers that be are so utterly convinced that they are right that they cannot grasp the possibility that something bad may come of their actions.
Interesting, so on the tails of 15 years of technically ignorant Internet legislation having unintended consequences prohibiting various legitimate behavior, there is one law that might pass in one country on the face of the Earth where they might accidentally reduce the scope of executive power in a technical field depending on the court's interpretation of "degraded". Fascinating.
I think it serves best as the exception that proves the rule; ignorance in the legislative, executive, and judicial processes tends to lead to oligarchy designed by moneyed (or otherwise potent) special interests.
With underage kids able to post whatever photos they want without moderation, it needs to be [high security], though.
No, it does not. It is the job of the parents to provide moderation. It is not my job, my company's job (though I don't work for MySpace), nor my government's job to parent someone else's children. If we can have cars traveling down streets at high speed without child restraint systems to keep children from walking into traffic, we can damned well expect parents to keep their kids safe online.
something like this that is potentially damaging should have had much better security measures against it.
Ummm, if you store potentially damaging photos on a third-party web site that is not intended to be a secure repository, why would you expect high security?
Because this has huge implications for online security.
Really? I think it just shows that MySpace is not (nor is it intended to be) a high security repository.
Congratulations on your well-earned success, Paul. I am delighted that, in the sometimes scary new world of digital media, you have received your well-earned compensation for your artistic endeavor without resorting to market-damaging tactics. Hoorah!
Mind you, I code in PHP5 for a living. It gets the job done, but it has to be called on its limitations, and you gotta be honest and tell programmers who want OOP from PHP5 that it has limits, and how to work around them. None of this "robust object model" stuff.
As a long-time OO programmer who has been baptized by fire over the past two months in PHP, I strongly concur with your sentiment. PHP is another good tool to have in the tool box, and the OO is decent but a little short of full-blown. Your suggestion that people be prepared for the reasonable limitations in PHP OO is a sound one. Well said.
While it is true that many articles about DRM focus on whether the attempt to create workable DRM is good or evil, the more fundamental issue is that DRM is not possible (at least using the accepted common definition of DRM).
Information security has been around a lot longer than DRM, and there is one unavoidable fact: You must choose between default accept and default deny. If you choose default accept, the DRM will be broken. If you choose default deny, legitimate use will be denied. And the latter will be broken anyway without dramatically changing the nature of computer workstations.
There are solutions, suggested in this commentary, which work great in specific circumstances. If you are using the documents in a controlled environment you can have a secure network with no physical capability to export bits (combined with physical security to avoid modification of the network). If the legitimate users are not considered release vectors you can use plain old encryption. But these are not DRM in the common sense, which would involve allowing restricted access to a set of bits on an untrusted computer by an untrusted operator. That part is not possible.
Most of the articles on DRM focus on whether it is good or evil. That is because those who argue that it is good do not understand that it is not possible, and so think they are engaging in a rational debate about its merits. Those who argue it is evil are either similarly mislead and arguing against its existence, or are aware that it is impossible and are arguing that the attempt is causing harm with no possible associated reward.
DRM is not possible. Scientifically speaking it is as silly as arguing the pros and cons of moving the Earth into a square orbit around the Sun.
While I'm glad someone wrote a book on refactoring methodology, in my experience what we need is a book which describes how to write "simple" code: code that is just as complicated as it needs to be, and no more.
Your point has much merit. Bear in mind, though, that refactoring is intended to facilitate the redesign of active code. While the book you mention would have value, it doesn't mean refactoring is somehow less valuable. Refactoring teaches a good designer how to steer poorly designed code, it would be a different book that would teach good design.
It's easy to add complexity. It's hard to simplify.
And that's the key to the refactoring book. In my eyes (and apparently yours), good design often implies reducing complexity. And good design is hard. But even assuming you see a truly better design option, it is also hard to shift existing code with reasonable cost and risk. This book deals with the latter issue.
Method and outcome can sometimes be separate problems, treated separately. Refactoring is a method which does not necessarily imply that the outcome will be good.
Why does copyright have to have a single fixed period of validity? Why not implement tiered pricing? Have copyrights registered, and allow them to be extended, but charge a greater amount each time to reflect the increasing cost to society of limiting cultural extension. Something like the following (pick whatever times and dollars make you happy):
First 5 years: Free 2nd 5 years: 1,000 dollars 3rd 5 years: 10,000 dollars 4th 5 years: 100,000 dollars... and so on.
The idea being that everyone should get an initial shot at capitalizing on their ideas. After that, you have to either start turning a profit (and sending a piece of the action back to the public coffers), or you let it go. As time goes by, the cost to society of not being allowed to draw on their cultural history increases - and so the cost to the rights holder of maintaining their monopoly should increase. But if they are doing a good job of capitalizing and/or if it is a really valuable idea, they should have the option to continue to renew their monopoly grant.
I think this seems a bit on the cover-your-assocracy side, and I'm just starting to learn about high-power low-weight portable DC (so check my facts before taking the following as gospel):
300 watt hours (the approximate power of a LiPo with 25 grams of lithium - the limit for carry-on) is a lot. It's up around the power used for a decent sized electric scooter, and is a lot more than most RC helicopters pack (the real monsters are around 100 watt hours - about 8 grams of lithium).
These whoppers (DeWalt DC9360), which are being used to power electric vehicles (admittedly usually in packs of three or more for small to moderate trikes) are only 86.4 watt hours.
If you need more than 300 watt hours, I'm think you're up at the level where you already think about shipping your gear ahead.
Here's a suggestion: Don't shop Circuit City even if it is convenient. Find a nice mom & pop electronics store. They're harder to find, but worth the effort.
So torn. Mod "Insightful" or respond? Alas, my apologies to your karma (though given your ID, I'm guessing that was not an issue long ago). But I digress.
I wholeheartedly concur. Mom & Pops have a shorter feedback loop from the customer to the decision maker, so they are more customer oriented. They generally pay their employees better. They are, virtually by definition, run by independent entrepreneurs who believe in The American Dream, which is effectively nonexistent in giant corporations.
And, perhaps most importantly, psychopaths don't get all the money and promotions at Mom & Pops. At a Mom & Pop, being a psychopath is almost always bad for business. At major corporations, it is rapidly becoming (or maybe always was) the only effective means of advancement. It troubles me every time I buy from a major corporation and think of the deeply disturbed people to whom I am giving my hard earned money.
Or maybe I'm just jealous of those with the good sense to lack a conscience.
5) fanboi bigots; these weak ego'd miscreants are so insecure that the mere mention of a competing technology will drive them into brutal defensive postures.
Boy can I relate to that. I can't count the number of times I've gotten this blind, dogmatic reaction from Vi users when I explain to them, in the simplest possible terms, why Emacs is The One True Editor.
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Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua...
Lessig comes up all the time here - or at least, he did until he switched "causes" away from copyrights.
Not so. He was pretty clear about the fact that he feels copyright is a symptom, and the corruption disease must be tackled in order to advance rational copyright law which balances the needs of creators and consumers. He has not turned his back on copyright reform, but taken what he sees as the only viable path to the goal.
Google and Yahoo, perhaps, but methinks that Steve Jobs' position at Disney could be a real influence on Apple.
:)
Haha - well noted. I actually originally composed my post to say "companies that feel strongly about rational technology law." Then realized the mistake and changed it to employees.
I doubt he'd be electable in a state which contains a large percentage (if not the largest) of content providers.
Perhaps not in the Senate, but this is the House, and he's a Bay Area resident. We have a few little companies here that are full of employees who feel pretty strongly about rational technology law; you know, Google, Apple, Yahoo, and about seventy-three thousand startups. House elections are local.
This is why law school is all case law and precedent. What do we have, other than production, in which to test laws? What in software development would be done with a test or UAT platform, must in law, either be considered before hand in requirements gathering or after in production.
That is indeed the current state of affairs in law. There was a time (and there are still places) where that is also the current state of software development. What the original poster is proposing is that it may be possible to change that.
Consider this: When the next version of the DMCA is being drafted, have Larry Lessig argue a hypothetical case on the side of the copyright holder. Have argue that same hypothetical case on the side of the infringer. Both lawyers would be motivated to present the most extreme attempts to invalidate the law, because they want it to work in their favor once passed.
Cost? What is the cost of a poorly written law making it into production? Surely it is vastly greater than the cost of hiring a few lawyers and a judge for a month or two.
It might not work at all. And it would surely not cover all cases, just as unit and integration tests do not cover all cases in software. It does not make perfect software, but it makes software better. It might do the same for law; law and software have many things in common.
You seem quite familiar with both law and software development. I think you could make a significant contribution to the idea (which may never come to fruition but is at least an interesting mental exercise). Why not take a spin on the positive side, see what you can come up with?
The main thing I'd want lawmakers to borrow from software development is a content management system. For every sneaky loophole or badly written clause, I want to know exactly which person checked it in and when. No hiding garbage in monster bills and then denying responsibility - every word, every revision, all clearly identifiable by editor.
Brilliant.
DKIM is designed to not require a root of trust for its certificates. Most DKIM installations simply use a free RSA private/public key pair generated using openssl. The private key goes on the SMTP server, and signs all the outgoing messages. The public key is placed on the DNS server servicing the domain.
Nice - thanks for the info!
I hope neither you nor the OP are developers or lawyers. Shouldn't the first step be deciding what the goal of the code (or law) is? You know, requirements gathering?
Obviously you can't write tests without knowing the business requirements. But this isn't a discussion about the entire development cycle, only about how to advance a portion of it. I rather thought that was apparent.
As it is, the system isn't far from what is being proposed. Lawmakers (legislators or corporate lobbyists) write the laws. Trial lawyers come up with the test cases. Judges are QA executing the tests and ruling whether the law passes the test.
OK, now it's my turn to be aghast. You're suggesting testing code in production? That's quite risky. Wouldn't an approach that attempts to test before production be preferable?
How can we assume the way we interpret things will be (A) consistant (somewhat addressed in the TFA, but not very well) and (B) not change over time?
We cannot. And we should not. Just as in programming we should not assume that business requirements will not change over time.
So we should toss in refactoring of laws. And perhaps work on a set of "Law Smells" that would help us recognize laws that need to be refactored.
Yeah. I really dig this analogy (though I still haven't read the elaboration). Kudos to the poster!
First, have lawmakers (analogous to "developers") write drafts of the laws. Then a second group (the "test case writers") would try to come up with situations that would be interpreted ambiguously under the law. Then a third group, the "testers", would read the proposed law, read the test case situations, and try to determine how the law should be applied to those cases, without communicating with the law writers, the test case writers, or each other.
I like the idea (though I admit I haven't had the chance to read the entire article yet) - it is a captivating notion.
One revision I might suggest; consider test-first legislation. If you write unit tests first, and then write legislation only to satisfy the unit tests, it reduces the risk of adding "we might need this someday" functionality. That hypothetically needed functionality could be the source of maintenance problems and unintended side-effects.
Yeah - I really like your analogy. Well done!
What kind of certs are being used, and are they relevant? I'm wondering if they're using business certificates which require verification of the business that owns a domain, instead of something akin to a domain cert, which only verifies that the recipient controls the domain.
I ask because I run my own mail server, and if DKIM is only for people with articles of organization, and who can afford a $700 cert, then I think it would be contradictory to the decentralized objective of the Internet.
"An OS should never have been something that people (in general) really care about: it should be completely invisible and nobody should give a flying [expletive] about it except the technical people." [Torvalds said]
Sure, that statement makes some sense, but in the grand scheme of things, it's the design and usability factor that makes the operating system much easier to use. And while both Mac OS X and Windows have their issues, for the average person, it makes more sense to use those than Linux.
This quickly summarizes the fundamental misunderstanding of the article's author. He is confusing an OS with the total package of OS, windowing environment, application bundle, installer, and more. Linux is just the kernel. As I understand it, the GNU/Linux OS is the kernel plus the GNU toolkit. There is neither windowing nor applications - and hence no user friendliness - in the GNU/Linux OS, because the GNU/Linux OS is below all that. It is down at the level that only technical people give a crap about it. And at that level, Linux really is significantly more beautiful than OS X or Windows. It is above that level where there is still much room to improve. (which is not to discount the significant advances that Ubuntu and others have made - just that there is still more to be done to reach the intuitiveness and automagic of OS X or Windows)
Why you ask? Because although Torvalds has his own belief about what Linux is and should be going forward, the vast majority of its users disagree. Let's face it -- if it were up to Torvalds, beauty and intuition would take a backseat to functionality. But when you look at distributions like Ubuntu or OpenSuse, it looks like no one is paying attention.
The author did manage to use the correct term for Ubuntu and OpenSuse - "distribution." But then he seems to miss the fact that the two different terms, OS and distribution, imply that they are two different things. A distribution is not the OS. The OS is one of the core components of a distribution, but all that extra stuff (installer, application bundle, package manager, windowing system) is not part of the OS itself.
I guess his confusion springs from the fact that Apple and Microsoft both misleadingly refer to their entire distribution as an OS. But, then, who cares? The public has never understood (nor needed to understand) the distinction in the past, corporations don't benefit from making the distinction clear, and Linux is still quietly marching the world toward the inevitable point where OSs become a commodity good. And Ubuntu and friends are doing the same for distributions - though that part is going to take longer.
Moderate Muslims have no particular objection to these images. It's the crazy fundamentalist Muslims that kill people over stuff like this and try to get laws passed requiring women to wear burquas all the time
Very agreed. See, for example, Morocco for a Muslim nation which is very compatible with Western culture. They are also one of the US's oldest allies - dating back to being one of the first nations to recognize our independence, and saving our asses from The Barbary Corsairs. Muslims aren't bad - xenophobes and authoritarians are. If you want to fight the real enemy, you don't need to look for a temple, mosque, or church - and you don't need to look outside your own borders. The real enemy is arrogant ignorance.
I'd like to believe the US isn't behind it for any number of reasons. One of those many reasons that occurs to me is the precedent it sets: if we declare that cutting cables is a valid way of pursuing foreign policy, what implications does that have for the US
Not that I think we're doing this, and I do believe you have a valid point. But... that's the same reason we used to have a hard-line stance against torture. I don't think we've been doing particularly well lately at considering the consequences of our actions. It seems like the powers that be are so utterly convinced that they are right that they cannot grasp the possibility that something bad may come of their actions.
Interesting, so on the tails of 15 years of technically ignorant Internet legislation having unintended consequences prohibiting various legitimate behavior, there is one law that might pass in one country on the face of the Earth where they might accidentally reduce the scope of executive power in a technical field depending on the court's interpretation of "degraded". Fascinating.
I think it serves best as the exception that proves the rule; ignorance in the legislative, executive, and judicial processes tends to lead to oligarchy designed by moneyed (or otherwise potent) special interests.
With underage kids able to post whatever photos they want without moderation, it needs to be [high security], though.
No, it does not. It is the job of the parents to provide moderation. It is not my job, my company's job (though I don't work for MySpace), nor my government's job to parent someone else's children. If we can have cars traveling down streets at high speed without child restraint systems to keep children from walking into traffic, we can damned well expect parents to keep their kids safe online.
something like this that is potentially damaging should have had much better security measures against it.
Ummm, if you store potentially damaging photos on a third-party web site that is not intended to be a secure repository, why would you expect high security?
Because this has huge implications for online security.
Really? I think it just shows that MySpace is not (nor is it intended to be) a high security repository.
Congratulations on your well-earned success, Paul. I am delighted that, in the sometimes scary new world of digital media, you have received your well-earned compensation for your artistic endeavor without resorting to market-damaging tactics. Hoorah!
Mind you, I code in PHP5 for a living. It gets the job done, but it has to be called on its limitations, and you gotta be honest and tell programmers who want OOP from PHP5 that it has limits, and how to work around them. None of this "robust object model" stuff.
As a long-time OO programmer who has been baptized by fire over the past two months in PHP, I strongly concur with your sentiment. PHP is another good tool to have in the tool box, and the OO is decent but a little short of full-blown. Your suggestion that people be prepared for the reasonable limitations in PHP OO is a sound one. Well said.
While it is true that many articles about DRM focus on whether the attempt to create workable DRM is good or evil, the more fundamental issue is that DRM is not possible (at least using the accepted common definition of DRM).
Information security has been around a lot longer than DRM, and there is one unavoidable fact: You must choose between default accept and default deny. If you choose default accept, the DRM will be broken. If you choose default deny, legitimate use will be denied. And the latter will be broken anyway without dramatically changing the nature of computer workstations.
There are solutions, suggested in this commentary, which work great in specific circumstances. If you are using the documents in a controlled environment you can have a secure network with no physical capability to export bits (combined with physical security to avoid modification of the network). If the legitimate users are not considered release vectors you can use plain old encryption. But these are not DRM in the common sense, which would involve allowing restricted access to a set of bits on an untrusted computer by an untrusted operator. That part is not possible.
Most of the articles on DRM focus on whether it is good or evil. That is because those who argue that it is good do not understand that it is not possible, and so think they are engaging in a rational debate about its merits. Those who argue it is evil are either similarly mislead and arguing against its existence, or are aware that it is impossible and are arguing that the attempt is causing harm with no possible associated reward.
DRM is not possible. Scientifically speaking it is as silly as arguing the pros and cons of moving the Earth into a square orbit around the Sun.
While I'm glad someone wrote a book on refactoring methodology, in my experience what we need is a book which describes how to write "simple" code: code that is just as complicated as it needs to be, and no more.
Your point has much merit. Bear in mind, though, that refactoring is intended to facilitate the redesign of active code. While the book you mention would have value, it doesn't mean refactoring is somehow less valuable. Refactoring teaches a good designer how to steer poorly designed code, it would be a different book that would teach good design.
It's easy to add complexity. It's hard to simplify.
And that's the key to the refactoring book. In my eyes (and apparently yours), good design often implies reducing complexity. And good design is hard. But even assuming you see a truly better design option, it is also hard to shift existing code with reasonable cost and risk. This book deals with the latter issue.
Method and outcome can sometimes be separate problems, treated separately. Refactoring is a method which does not necessarily imply that the outcome will be good.
Why does copyright have to have a single fixed period of validity? Why not implement tiered pricing? Have copyrights registered, and allow them to be extended, but charge a greater amount each time to reflect the increasing cost to society of limiting cultural extension. Something like the following (pick whatever times and dollars make you happy):
... and so on.
First 5 years: Free
2nd 5 years: 1,000 dollars
3rd 5 years: 10,000 dollars
4th 5 years: 100,000 dollars
The idea being that everyone should get an initial shot at capitalizing on their ideas. After that, you have to either start turning a profit (and sending a piece of the action back to the public coffers), or you let it go. As time goes by, the cost to society of not being allowed to draw on their cultural history increases - and so the cost to the rights holder of maintaining their monopoly should increase. But if they are doing a good job of capitalizing and/or if it is a really valuable idea, they should have the option to continue to renew their monopoly grant.
I think this seems a bit on the cover-your-assocracy side, and I'm just starting to learn about high-power low-weight portable DC (so check my facts before taking the following as gospel):
300 watt hours (the approximate power of a LiPo with 25 grams of lithium - the limit for carry-on) is a lot. It's up around the power used for a decent sized electric scooter, and is a lot more than most RC helicopters pack (the real monsters are around 100 watt hours - about 8 grams of lithium).
These whoppers (DeWalt DC9360), which are being used to power electric vehicles (admittedly usually in packs of three or more for small to moderate trikes) are only 86.4 watt hours.
If you need more than 300 watt hours, I'm think you're up at the level where you already think about shipping your gear ahead.
Here's a suggestion: Don't shop Circuit City even if it is convenient. Find a nice mom & pop electronics store. They're harder to find, but worth the effort.
So torn. Mod "Insightful" or respond? Alas, my apologies to your karma (though given your ID, I'm guessing that was not an issue long ago). But I digress.
I wholeheartedly concur. Mom & Pops have a shorter feedback loop from the customer to the decision maker, so they are more customer oriented. They generally pay their employees better. They are, virtually by definition, run by independent entrepreneurs who believe in The American Dream, which is effectively nonexistent in giant corporations.
And, perhaps most importantly, psychopaths don't get all the money and promotions at Mom & Pops. At a Mom & Pop, being a psychopath is almost always bad for business. At major corporations, it is rapidly becoming (or maybe always was) the only effective means of advancement. It troubles me every time I buy from a major corporation and think of the deeply disturbed people to whom I am giving my hard earned money.
Or maybe I'm just jealous of those with the good sense to lack a conscience.
5) fanboi bigots; these weak ego'd miscreants are so insecure that the mere mention of a competing technology will drive them into brutal defensive postures.
Boy can I relate to that. I can't count the number of times I've gotten this blind, dogmatic reaction from Vi users when I explain to them, in the simplest possible terms, why Emacs is The One True Editor.