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Re: Near and Far (Was RE: A parentless elemen t that

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• Subject: Re: Near and Far (Was RE: A parentless elemen t that is not the document node - how?)
• From: Liam Quin <liam@w...>
• Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2003 09:51:44 -0400
• In-reply-to: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EE022DC746@h...>
• References: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EE022DC746@h...>
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Mitch Amiano [mailto:mamiano@n...] wrote:
> Even when the market thinks some old building has value, it is often more
> economical to raze it down to the superstructure, or completely down to the
> ground upon which it stands.

In some countries at least, there is legislation to prevent this.
Both in the UK and here in Canada, buildings considered to be of
architectural or historical importance are "listed" and can't easily
be altered.  I know of several other countries where this is true.

We don't (yet) have a concept of historically or architecturally
important software.  I think we should, and that such software
should be archived, along with a complete build environment and
source, and should become public after a certain time -- say,
50 years.  Such "dark archives" already exist for many things,
including software, but are not legislated by governments: the
curators of the archives decide what to save, and have no special
authority, hence cannot usually save source code.


On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 08:29:22AM -0500, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
> Then there are those projects to renovate buildings that are 
> solid and were built when superior materials and workmanship were 
> cheaper and cannot be duplicated at today's prices, yet can be 
> renovated.

Few people care about the *insides* of buildings.  In the UK there
are splendid and ancient stately homes that have been modernised
inside.  When I lived (briefly) in Italy, there were castles that
were considered too important to modify, so that interior central
heating and plumbing could not be installed.  The danger of that
was that people would rather let the buildings fall to ruin than
live in them.

There were other buildings in the UK that were listed, so that
the only changes allowed were repairs and restorations that were
"in keeping", but where the owners couldn't afford that sort of
work.  The buildings generally fell to ruin.

> I believe there probably are products out there in 
> niches where the technology or standard was ahead 
> of its time that can now be reclaimed.

Yes, or could be reclaimed if we didn't live in a world where
profit came before people's needs.

Best,

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead, liam@w..., http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/
Ankh's list of IRC clients: http://www.valinor.sorcery.net/clients/

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