If a type system creates more problems than it is worth, you can certainly use a crash and burn development methodology with a dynamically typed language. Mostly though, the trend in dynamic languages is to add type annotations, not take them away.

Sufficiently large systems (Google: "programming in the large") are rarely developed in unannotated dynamic languages because they are simply too fragile - too many errors cannot be caught before deployment. If it was a net loss, nobody would write programs in statically typed languages, ever.

In Oz we have the same thing. Nissan patrol 88-95 was rebadged as a ford maverick, Holden commodore (GM owned) got rebadged to a toyota lexan or vise versa, Ford courier/ranger was the rebadged mazda (even the ford badges have mazda part numbers and logo's on the back), Holden barina was a rebadged suziki swift and then an opel. with australia most cars that are owned by GM would be rebadged as Holden and those owned by ford would be rebadged as a ford.

I agree that the DMCA is wrong, but if it won't go away, then abusing it (including using it negligently) needs to carry a lot more risk than it does now.

A good start for a copyright reform would be a rollback. Copyright of everything created to date is rolled back to expire when it would have expired under the law as it was at the time of creation. While I'm sure many would complain bitterly, they wouldn't actually have much to hang their complaints on legally or philosophically. They will have exactly the boon that was to encourage the creation of the work in the first place. Their only "loss" would be the ill gotten gains from bribed lawmakers.

The rest can come from there.

I'm a mathematician, and I'm afraid I really don't know what you're talking about.

Mathematics is often pictured as a very isolated practice -- a person sitting alone at a desk. But it's surprisingly social, and while there is a fair amount of desk time, there's a lot of interpersonal relationships (as you put it) in the actual doing of math. Asking questions, explaining your results, mentoring students, even teaching classes -- a lot of math involves other people.

Anyway, I know lots of mathematicians, and I think generally they're pretty happy people.

c'mon, someone mod this funny

All we need is 1000 slashdotters and etherpad!

BTW Moca (cable) is 400mps cap vs 100 eth, Don't know what real world sustained bandwith is .

All the new builds are GPON as well as any expansion in existing offices, Old Stuff is BPON, dont rememember the bandwith offhand. they also switched vendors , tellabs to that French company you might have heard of, Lucent(alcatel) :) and man the OLTs (co end) is incredibly compact 8U ~30k subs!

Mostly because Verizon does not compress, The feeds from the sat farms are exactly what goes to your home, and it's fiber all the way (well, except for the electronics in the distribution equipment :P ), Comcast currently has a last mile bandwith problem ~200-500 homes on the distribution fiber to the nodes and lots of amplifiers/splitters on the last mile coax where verizon runs 32 homes on the last mile fiber 1>32 optical splitter in the field passive network (no electronics in the field) with enough dark fiber in the f1 runs to drop to a 1>16 split if necessary without running more fiber in the field..

Your post is very thoughtful.

You are right about exclusivity, that is a pretty fundamental difference. But even so, it's not the one that necessitates the monopoly institution. The reason is: the first copy still commands a higher price than every subsequent copy. That is how artists can (and, imho, should) make money, and that is a sufficient incentive to create. Copyright is an unnecessary evil; not a great evil, but a somewhat major annoyance and an overhead on all art production.

In practical terms, I totally agree with you: our first priority today should be to take a moderate political position and to reduce terms to sensible levels. We can do so gradually over the next decade or two. In the end, a term of under 2 years would be great, and anything over 5 is just plain overkill. Make that retroactive (apparently, it is OK for extending the term). This will create an entire new world of free culture, while giving big players a cushion as they adjust their business process.