pjbrow

Can't see any contact on your profile, feel free to ping me on pat@codepact.com.

We'd be interested to see how that'd look. Will contact you via email.

Re jQuery: this is an emphasis in our copy for this post to Hacker News only. We've found that it helps technical people (many of our customers are technical) understand what we're doing.

Yes, "compile target" is a very nice way to put it. The key idea is that you only really analyze all the text when there's a problem, which tends to be the job of experts, and that's not often. The wet code that "runs" in a court needs to be part of the doc, but it doesn't mean we need to look at it all the time. :)

Re guarantees, these docs are provided on an informational basis (read: not legal advice). We connect people with lawyers who understand the system and we have some good tech that speeds up their work re the legal sign off they provide. More to come on this.

One of the main ideas behind the system is using simplified language to "call" modules of legalese like software functions. This technique abstracts away a lot of complexity on the top layer of the contract (which makes the document much shorter and easier to understand).

Most of the jurisdictional quirks are contained in legalese, so when you abstract it away, you end up with documents that look the same regardless of jurisdiction (the legalese modules change, obviously).

We often compare this approach to jQuery because it lets us:

- get rid of boilerplate "code" for common mechanics to aid in clarity and brevity (thanks, jQuery); and

- use consistent language between jurisdictions (like jQuery's elimination of cross-browser incompatibilities).

There's more explanation of this technique in the second video on this page:

http://training.codepact.com/

The primary problem with law is the technicality of the language, aka "legalese".

At the moment, expecting someone off the street to properly understand a legal document is broadly equivalent to expecting them to understand what's going on with a command line (assuming they use computers only casually).

Law needs the equivalent of a GUI.

It's possible. Some other lawyers and I are working on an open source system of "defined phrases" that can be used like software functions. Lawyers already define words, there's no reason you can't do the same with phrases.

Each plain english phrase represents a module of legalese that can be manipulated with "arguments" specified in conjunction with the phrase. Like a GUI, a comprehensible representation is there for the user, and the technical legalese still does all the work underneath.

You can take a look at it here http://lawpatch.org. Previous HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10597778

I was considering this out the outset, but one of the benefits of sending responses this way is that other people I work with have started to use it (which they wouldn't if it appeared as a snippet).

Yep - that's how the commercial technical detail is often dealt with. We're stretching (and slightly rejigging) the same concept to legally substantive text.

Hi everyone, I'm a contributor to LawPatch. We started this project because we wanted legal positions that we could call like functions (as if we were coding).

Our aim is to make legal language simple without introducing ambiguity or extra risk.

We think even the most technical legal agreements could look like term sheets using this drafting method. A spectrum of standardised positions also stops lawyers from constantly replicating work.

This is is an open source project by lawyers who are also developers - we'd love to hear from anyone who's got ideas for improvements or would like to contribute language for other areas.

We have patches drafted for the United States, UK and Australia. Happy to hear from people in other countries too! Creating this extra level of abstraction is also an opportunity to standardize documents across jurisdictions.

Agree that foot / end noting is another good way to do it - the important thing is the drafting technique rather than the way it's implemented.

We're using Github permalinks to cover the linking issue for now, but we're discussing more permanent options. Would be interested to hear what other ways people think would work.

There's also the option for users to download the repos and use the commit hash in the document proper for reference.

The doctrines underpinning IP law are flimsy and arbitrary. It's normal for technology to change the balance of power (and the laws that enshrine that balance).

In the current environment, Hollywood's business model is unreasonable, and people know it. Until people think it's reasonable, a lot of them are going to pirate. Technology has changed. Hollywood needs to change.

What should be illegal, is threatening to sue someone for working on code with others.

It would be great if a developer beyond the reach of the Western legal system would take this project up with a self hosted repo. Code is speech. It's a terrible precedent for devs to be afraid to have code (including me after reading this). This is where the myriad of outdated laws and prosecutorial discretion bites: it's impossible to know where the legal line is.

__ Addition: My view on the savvy modus operandi here (I'm a lawyer when I'm not a developer). If you give someone any kind of reason to sue you, you're essentially handing them a stick. It's much worse if they can afford to hit you with it and you can't afford to defend yourself. The people threatening to sue these guys are almost certainly making silence a condition not to sue. This isolates the devs from people who could support them, and has the added effect of intimidating other devs with the unexplained "disappearances".

Thanks, I didn't know that. According to Wikipedia, another of his nicknames amongst Israelis was "The King of Israel". That moniker at least, indicates that he was regarded as a formidable character.

Nope, authored it here and then posted it on worldnews afterwards. That's quite clear from the timestamps.

Will attempt fast responses. Don't want to piss everyone off by getting too far into the weeds on a topic that probably shouldn't even be on HN. Also, I prefer coding to dwelling on a previous life. :)

You say: "My view is that the Israelis viewed him as "the devil they knew", and that he was infinitely preferable (and more controllable) than Hamas."

I say: That's where you're getting it wrong. It wasn't a choice between Arafat and Hamas, it was a choice between Arafat and Abbas. Abbas was clearly preferable (for all the reasons stated above).

You say: "...it's not at all clear to me that there was any Palestinian leader with anything like real power who did want a deal. I mean.. Abbas? Seriously?"

I say: Yes, Abbas, seriously. Sharon was pursuing a strategy that was largely unilateral - in other words, a weaker leader on the other side was fine, as long as they didn't get in the way and kept the PA running. Arafat was in Sharon's way (not a good place to be historically).

You say: "The endorsement is meant for US consumption."

I say: No, I am absolutely sure that the Israelis are deadly serious about a Palestinian state (or something that can be called that). Israelis are terrified of the "demographic bomb", which is what they call the far higher fertility rate of Palestinians. The Palestinian birth rate threatens the Jewish majority even in what is currently agreed to be Israel over the next few decades. Giving away areas of current Israel with high Arab populations to the Palestinian state is often mooted as an option in a final status deal, in exchange for bits of land covered with Israeli settlements (which would be a double win for Israel).

Don't want to write more on this here. If you'd really like to continue the discussion, you can email me on slooge[at]hotmail.com.

All reasonable points, here's why you're wrong, though.

First, I appreciate the acknowledgment that Arafat was indeed involved with Al-Aqusa (a terrorist group bombing Israeli civilians). Not sure why you think that that would make the US and Israel consider him a suitable interlocutor - I still think that stands in favour of my argument that Sharon was done with him and killed him to create the circumstances for a deal.

Arafat may have reduced funding to Al-Aqusa, but that's because they were on the ropes militarily by 2004. He certainly didn't stop funding because he thought terrorism was an unacceptable option. The simple fact was, that he was funding terrorists after the failure of Camp David, which again, makes him a very bad candidate for the next round of grand bargain negotiation.

To claim that Sharon wasn't looking for a deal is just silly (even if he was often inflammatory and arguably quite evil). The fact that Sharon was looking for a deal was widely acknowledged and published in newspapers - here's a quote from wikipedia: "In May 2003, Sharon endorsed the Road Map for Peace put forth by the United States, European Union, and Russia, which opened a dialogue with Mahmud Abbas, and announced his commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state in the future." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Sharon#Founding_of_Kadim... I'd provide more quotes, but this is pretty self evident.

You also seem to suggest that because Sharon was an aggressive guy, he wasn't looking for a deal. That just doesn't follow (especially in the Middle East, where the perception of strength is everything).

You also say "Additionally, Arafat's Fatah group was seen as the one group strong enough to keep Hamas controlled." My response: killing Arafat would / did not prevent Fateh from acting as a counterweight to Hamas. In fact, it's likely that Fateh was ultimately a far better counter-weight to Hamas with Abbas at the helm. Israel was able to work with Fateh to squash Hamas in the West Bank in a way that may well have been impossible with Arafat running the show (supplies of weapons to the Palestinian authority etc).

On an anecdotal note, it was clear on the streets (I was living there at the time), that in many cases, Palestinian policemen went from carrying shitty old AKs to gleaming new M16s within a year after Arafat was out of the picture.

It's simply incorrect to say that Arafat kept the radicals under control - there was clear evidence that he was involved with the militant / terrorist wing of his political party, Fateh (the Al-Aqusa Martyrs Brigades), which carried out a great many suicide bombings. I won't repeat myself (my theory is above), but if you understand the political circumstances at the time, Arafat was in fact the last remaining major road block to a grand bargain that Sharon was moving heaven and earth to get done. There were very compelling reasons to knock him off.

Yes, Arafat was a known quantity to the US and Israel, but I think you've drawn the wrong conclusion. The fact was that Israel and the US viewed Arafat as a road block to a grand bargain. Israel made their best offer in Camp David, and Arafat refused it. I won't repeat myself (my comment above sets out my view), but if you understand the political circumstances at the time, Arafat was in fact the last remaining major road block to a grand bargain that Sharon was moving heaven and earth to get done.

At the risk of getting down voted on what is an emotional issue for a lot of people, here's my (quite realist) view.

I was living in the West Bank when Arafat died, and I knew a bunch of people who worked in his compound. He got very sick, very quickly. The doctors around him were baffled by the steep decline, which is why he was flown to France just before he died.

I acknowledge that my theory on the issue is purely circumstantial, but a good place to start with these things is "qui bono?". Ariel Sharon (and Israel, and in my view, everyone) had a lot to gain by Arafat's death.

Whatever you think of the nastiness that he'd been involved in, Sharon was a remarkable human - Israelis aren't given to overstatement and they called him the "Lion of God".

Sharon was clearly making a dash for a grand bargain, and it's obvious that the "bulldozer" (another of his nicknames) wasn't letting anything get in his way.

By pure force of will, he withdrew Israel from Gaza (an absolutely wrenching move for Israel to make), and then left Likud to establish Kadimah so that he could move forward without blockage from the right wing radicals in his old party. In a very short time frame, Sharon bent a famously fractious Israeli parliament into a position to make a grand bargain that would stick - the last major road block to a bargain was Arafat.

Israel had had a real go at negotiating with Arafat with Bill Clinton at Camp David. It didn't work out. Of course, there are a bunch of conflicting opinions on who's to blame for the breakdown in talks, but the basic, unarguable outcome was that Arafat wasn't willing to take Israel's best offer.

Sharon obviously knew that, and also knew that Arafat's successor was going to be the comparatively mild mannered Abbas, who Sharon was already dealing with constructively. I think Sharon basically decided that, given Arafat's previous form, he was a very high risk as a grand bargain spoiler - Arafat's moral authority with the Palestinian population remained high. So, in the absence of any other option (since Arafat was essentially a dictator), good night Arafat.

If you think that Sharon wasn't capable of something that cold, take a look at his conduct in the massacre at Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre).

Sharon had a stroke shortly thereafter, and with that, arguably the only person capable of cutting the gordian knot in the medium term was out of the picture. Gotta love ash-sharq al-awsat.

Very well said. I agree entirely - there should be a concrete change as a result of this thread. It's impossible for a reasonable person to read the opinions of the well informed people here and continue to think that everything's A-ok. This is an opportunity to prove your ethical bona fides, jdh.

The wording "in connection with" is specifically considered in the article. Also, here is the definition for "Hosted Services" (it's extremely broad):

1.2 What's Included in "Hosted Services". "Hosted Services" include any Atlassian online services products that End User orders, which can include "OnDemand" versions of many Atlassian Software products, the Bitbucket hosting service ("Bitbucket"), and other online services provided by Atlassian. "Hosted Services" always means the version of the Hosted Services as described in Atlassian's then-current product descriptions. End User's detailed rights to use Hosted Services are in Section 3 below.

Yep, the logic text book that I learnt it from. Just google "inductive logic prove negative" to check out a few articles on it.

Agree with the second half of this statement - this idea is too cute by half for the courts. Acts and omissions both have significance under the law, as does the context of acts and omissions. If the warrant canary convention was considered by the court as context for a statement, it is very likely the court would rule that a statement had been made. The only way around this would be to have an evidentiary mechanism by which a company can prove that it has no control over the canary. This gives rise to the old conundrum: it's logically impossible to prove a negative (although you might be able to under various burdens of proof like "balance of probabilities" or some such).

Edit: Ultimately, legality turns on the statutory language of the provision in the Patriot Act that obligates businesses not to disclose (anyone know what it is?). The approach as originally proposed by by Steven Schear (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cypherpunks-lne-archive/m...) was for the ISP to simply not answer a direct inquiry by a customer about whether or not a warrant has been served. The advantage of this approach is that it is far harder to provide evidence to the effect that not responding to the question in that context is a statement. The disadvantage is that a non-response might not provide certainty to the person who asked the question. Effectively, the more that a clear convention is formed around the "canary mechanism", the higher the risk that a court would hold conduct in association with the convention in breach of the statutory obligation not to disclose.

How do you use the 4 screens for workflow? I've been thinking about an eye-finity setup for web development (1 screen for TMUX, 1 screen for text editor and the last screen for browsers) - how does 4 work for you?

Already is. See: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/prop-edcom-article-conte...

It's hard to argue with this article - it's self evident that languages lock us into abstractions that aren't powerful enough to comfortably support the increasingly ambitious applications of code.

Object oriented programming was a big step because it's so heavily modelled on hierarchies - since found to be one of the most important principles in human reasoning.

I'm no expert in the area, but I'd love to hear ideas on other human reasoning principles or models that a language could be influenced by (particularly if you know about neuroscience or AI).

This is a great result for anyone advocating privacy on the Internet (even if you're not Canadian). We're at a critical juncture for establishing legal norms right now - decisions about the laws that govern how we conduct ourselves online are going to echo for decades.

Works fine for me. The URL you've put in is the un-shortened version. HN just shortens the displayed URL.

I like the idea in your Edit. If you manage that, you're on a winner. I'm not technically astute enough to have a serious opinion, but intuitively, it makes sense that a dev environment (particularly using tools like VIM and TMUX) isn't far away from what Heroku is already doing with virtual machines. People are always bunging on about how to develop using an iPad - that's clearly the way to do it.

Don't agree on the plateau so far as dev tools are concerned. Would be surprised if you haven't come across Bret Victor's ideas (http://vimeo.com/36579366). In my view, implementing those principles could really change how things are done. Can't wait to see what he comes up with over the next few years.

As to solving the core problem for now: the only solution is to just be really opinionated so far as beginners are concerned. Reasonable minds can differ on textmate/vim etc, but just showing students how to setup one solid set of tools on windows or mac (and more importantly, explaining it) would be a hell of alot more than is already out there. :)

Title aside, what I really like about this article is the section that talks about teaching terminal and text editors.

I've been learning to code over the last few months, and while I've got a reasonable handle on it now, by far the most difficult thing for me was understanding how the dev tools work together (terminal, git, virtualenv etc.)

There seems to be a tendency for coders to underestimate how steep the learning curve on dev environment is for noobs. I think there's also a reticence to deal with a fiddly topic that depends so much on the settings that the individual has on their computer.

The irony is, you HAVE to understand dev environments before you can actually make code do stuff. I know more than one person who's been turned off by how hard it was to get started.

I know that means they probably didn't have the commitment needed, but for those that do, setting up dev tools as a hazing process still isn't fun.