Effective Thoughts

Yesterday, the social networking site Digg community vehemently refused a cease and desist / take-down order on a user posting an HD-DVD decryption key (granting a very technical user the ability to copy DRM -protected movies) online. Interestingly, Digg management/owners pulled the user post down . However, the community revolted and "forced" the post back online (by repeatedly re-posting the decryption key). This event should prove historic because a social / community uprising "won". The "protesters" may not have been right (as in law-abiding) but I think digital freedom is right (as in morally). This looks a lot like the Boston Tea Party to me. No one likes DRM: it's intrusive and it interferes with my right to use the content. If I paid for Spiderman II on DVD, then it should damn well play on every single DVD player I own--including my laptop. Therefore, these protesters dumped the tea overboard by providing the entire Internet with the keys to...

Joel Spolsky wrote recently on building out additional office space . They're choosing to leverage portable walls instead of drywall construction. They took this direction because permanent space improvements depreciate much slower than office equipment expenses. In this regard, do we really have the IRS to thank for the proliferation of cube farms as opposed to the traditional thinking: mega-corporation? (PS. I'm a firm believer cube farms kill productivity and stifle creativity...I'm not a cow. However, they're much better than a big table housing 11 shoulder-to-shoulder consultants.) Office furniture can be depreciated much faster than leasehold improvements, over 7 years. So for $20 of office furniture you can deduct about $3 a year: better than nothing. Even better, office furniture is a real asset, so you can lease it. Now you're not out any cash, just a convenient monthly payment, which is 100% deductible. This is why companies build cubicle farms instead of...