From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V9 #83 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Saturday, April 1 2000 Volume 09 : Number 083 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Comics and ads [Capuchin ] Re: cdnow [Capuchin ] Re: Comics and ads [Terrence Marks ] Re: cdnow [dmw ] info please .... ["randi..aka..twofangs" ] Re: Virgin [HSatterfld@aol.com] Re: Selling Out [overbury@cn.ca] RE: Selling Out ["Bret" ] Re: ebay posting? ["CORNHOLE ARMAGEDDON" ] Re: Comics and ads [Capuchin ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 17:05:36 -0800 (PST) From: Capuchin Subject: Comics and ads On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Terrence Marks wrote: > I'm making some money with the cartoons. Not enough to justify > $100-a-share stock offerings, but some. Going to be making more soon. > The folks who run the big comics make a lot more. The guy who runs User > Friendly (userfriendly.org. It's like "Cathy" for geeks) is reputedly > making six figures a year. His methodology on readership calculation is a > bit suspect, but presumably he can't be too far off on his personal > salary. Ever see Randal Schwarz' Dilbert Puller script? I assume no, but what he built (and you can download and set up yourself for free and alter to your heart's content to do this sort of thing for really any website, comic or otherwise) is a little tool that runs as a page on his website. It downloads that last week's worth of dilberts and displays them on one page. And since he's just written hyperlinks to their page, he's not really doing anything illegal. He just wrote some image tags describing the location of the comics themselves. Now what that means is that readers don't have to see ads if they don't want to... and every time you access his page to read Dilbert, you're really asking for the comics themselves from the originating site. So Scott Adams (or whatever feature syndicate is his daddy) gets to say "yeah, advertisers... I got your readership right here" because his logs show hits. But those readers aren't seeing the ads at all. This will become more common. (Hmm... geekcomics.org is available... and as long as I don't sell ads, I won't be breaking their rules... hmm... Public services like this are all over the internet; web and otherwise.) The only thing sites like User Friendly and Penny Arcade (much funnier in my opinion... but more spotty, I guess) or whomever can do is rearrange their site every day to maintain impossible to guess links to their comics. This is a bitch. And all it really does is make the non-ad reading public wait one extra day for the comic to be found by the spiders. The administration headache far outweighs the benefits. Also, it's important to note the proliferation of intelligent web proxies these days. I use one here at work that not only keeps my cookies away from my computer and prevents them from any kind of persistence, but rips out all ads and replaces them with images of my choosing. It's very handy and since my pictures aren't animated, I don't have to constantly hit esc to kill the bleedin' things. This will also become more common... especially as things like dsl and cable become common in the home. Banner stripping firewall/web proxy appliances will be sold for very little money (I could make one for less than $80) and ad revenue will dry up pretty fast. Assuming courts don't intervene and make dumb decisions (like software patents and link restrictions and filter bans), the internet will retain (or regain, depending on who you talk to) the freedom it had in 1994 when people would share information and get into contact with other people to make their lives easier. The web will not be a shopping mall dotted with billboards. It will be a vast repository of all public knowledge. It maybe unindexed and impossible to effectively search. But everying anybody knows will out there... and you won't have to give your Visa number to read it. Idealistically yours, J. - -- ______________________________________________ J A Brelin Capuchin ______________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 17:12:50 -0800 (PST) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: cdnow On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Eb wrote: > Jeme: > >And let me introduce you to all the guys saying online retailing will > >change the face of commerce. It hasn't happened. > > It's still way too early to make any permanent conclusions. I agree and so I included my little "prove me wrong and I will rescind like a rescindin' fool" clause. > >Folks with large physical outlet presence (chain stores, I mean) don't > >have the same incentive to build reasonable and good online retail > >outlets. They've got stores to keep open. They don't want you shopping > >online. > > Well, I only brought up this issue because someone else said CDNow was in > trouble, due to retail chains like Tower and Virgin going online and having > more brand-name recognition. Well, I only rebutted it because it was dumb. I just read your response after Doug's and used yours instead because there were a couple of other things that needed rebuttin'. Believe it or not, I don't actually think everything you write is an original, creative thought. J. - -- ______________________________________________ J A Brelin Capuchin ______________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 21:11:46 -0500 (EST) From: Terrence Marks Subject: Re: Comics and ads On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Capuchin wrote: > Ever see Randal Schwarz' Dilbert Puller script? I assume no, No, but I've seen a good number of similar things. This one, the Comic Strip Cornucopia, let you set up your own daily comics page from about 600 strips. Shut down under legal pressure. > really doing anything illegal. He just wrote some image tags describing > the location of the comics themselves. This "are they doing anything illegal" bit was heavily debated. The prevailing answer was "yes". Putting image tags in a page is a lot more like publishing a picture than just writing an abstract computer program. Distributing something like that widely on the Internet can generally cause legal trouble. No test case, though. > So Scott Adams (or whatever feature syndicate is his daddy) gets to say > "yeah, advertisers... I got your readership right here" because his logs > show hits. But those readers aren't seeing the ads at all. That ain't how advertising works. They buy impressions or clicks. They do their own logging. They don't, generally, care what numbers you get. > (Hmm... geekcomics.org is available... and as long as I don't sell ads, > I won't be breaking their rules... hmm... Public services like this are > all over the internet; web and otherwise.) A lot of .org sites sell ads nowadays. > The only thing sites like User Friendly and Penny Arcade (much funnier > in my opinion... but more spotty, I guess) Penny Arcade is better than User Friendly. Hi & Lois is better than User Friendly. It panders something fierce, though. (Hey! You like Quake. We like Quake. Let's have a whole bunch of strips with Quake in them. Punchlines? Who needs punchlines? We've got Quake!) > Assuming courts don't intervene and make dumb decisions (like software > patents and link restrictions and filter bans), the internet will retain > (or regain, depending on who you talk to) the freedom it had in 1994 Hmm? Freedom? Ads are what pay for content. You put in less money, you get less content. When you talk about ads in magazines, is that about freedom? When you talk about ads on the radio, is that about freedom? > dotted with billboards. It will be a vast repository of all public > knowledge. It maybe unindexed and impossible to effectively search. But > everying anybody knows will out there... and you won't have to give your > Visa number to read it. Yeah. File that with "the Internet will bring about a golden age of tolerance" and "information wants to be free". "Big pile unsorted information" isn't a useful medium. Terrence Marks Unlike Minerva (a comic strip) http://www.unlikeminerva.com normal@grove.ufl.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 21:37:52 -0500 (EST) From: dmw Subject: Re: cdnow On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Capuchin wrote: > > Well, I only brought up this issue because someone else said CDNow was in > > trouble, due to retail chains like Tower and Virgin going online and having > > more brand-name recognition. > > Well, I only rebutted it because it was dumb. I just read your response > after Doug's and used yours instead because there were a couple of other > things that needed rebuttin'. Believe it or not, I don't actually think > everything you write is an original, creative thought. well, let me clarify a little bit -- barnes and noble and tower, specifically, ARE hurting cdnow. they already have all of the pie -- the net sales are a tiny fraction of their current market share, no threat whatsoever. their own web storefronts are no threat to their retail empires. on the other hand, cdnow, and amazon, and all the other poor little toeholders, are so precarious that they can afford to lose hardly any market share at all. they are, currently, only surviving because of massive injections of cash from investors who somehow think this will all make money someday. there is an encroaching phenomenon, though, of people who go to a real store, ask questions, fondle the merchandise, etc. -- then go home and order it online, because in many cases it *is* cheaper. it's *only* cheaper because 'net shopping has so many disadvantages -- you can't flip through the book, and while you can listen to audio samples, no one's got a good analogue (or hell, a bad analogue) for flipping through a rack of records. the 'net shops have three things going for 'em: 1) more stuff listed than any one store would ever carry 2) open all night/open from your desk at work 3) price competitive, or cheaper, in most cases, than shopping locally (which is more-or-less possible because all the venture capitalists mean there's no need to operate in the black.) (oh, and 4 - many people don't live somewhere where there is a convenient physical retail outlet) my worry is that these price-gouging strategies will drive a lot of independent retailers outs of business, essentially consolidating into a set of chain retailers both physical and online, with fewer other options available to the consumer than currently exist. ...i agree with many of your points (repeat after me: no online retailer has ever yet posted a single profitable quarter) but in the very long run, i think you're wrong. the online stores are already hell on independent retailers (as are the chain stores, of course). but i think what will make online retail work in the very long run is social, not technological or economic change -- going to the mall is a social activity. clicking a mouse in your living room isn't, for my generation. but that's changing. when you can "go" to amazon (or whatever its successor is) with a bunch of buddies, and when that's the societal norm, i think online shopping will begin to dominate for things that you don't have to try on and that don't spoil. for one thing, retail stores have *massively* more overhead --the cost of bandwidth doesn't begin to compare with physical plant costs, the personnel structure is much more streamlined, non-employee shoplifting is a non-issue, and on and on. and as things go more to bits, the stock/shipping problems are going to go away. there are already a handful of cd retailers (mostly independent artist distribution things) that press cd's on demand. burned cds aren't acceptable to everyone of course, but that's another rant on which we should probably agree to disagree. - -- d. - - oh no, you've just read mail from doug = dmw@radix.net - get yr pathos - - www.pathetic-caverns.com -- books, flicks, tunes, etc. = reviews - - www.fecklessbeast.com -- angst, guilt, fear, betrayal! = guitar pop ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 22:14:15 -0500 From: "randi..aka..twofangs" Subject: info please .... Okay, I still don't know what the __'all over the world'__ topic means. Someone please explain ... I think I want to know ???? And - West Coast Fegs ... Needin' some help planning my trip. Bayard, shouldn't you be helping me too ... I seem to recall you visiting them parts before ... {or I could be hallucinating or something} Here is what *I* know so far... I will be staying with sharkboy and his lovely wife Donna for a couple of weeks to let this Toronto tension flow away into the wonder they call the Pacific Ocean. I will be staying with my most favourite Carole in the whole wide world in Portland for as long as she can handle my presence. The amazingly friendly Chris has given me the opportunity to wreak havoc in his apartment in San Fran for a week ... Sir Bradley may enable that stay to be longer ... I would like to visit Eddie - though not "C" "A" as he's been calling himself. I know I will be flying back to T.O. after another week or two with the Glosters. So - who is in between? I know not which fegs collectively are from the "bay area," I do know I'd like to meet them all - and any accommodation is welcome - I am entertainment rich, but very cash poor ... I want to see wine country - I've sipped California wine - but I've never been to a vineyard. I want to relax, see sights, visit fegs, have lots of welcoming hugs and an all around fun time. I cannot eat fresh veggies or fruit or nuts or bran or anything that can get stuck in my gut ... - - stupidcrohnsdiseasegrrr - - or anything so spicy that tears roll down your face {spice doesn't like me too much - though herbs are yummy} - - but I usually can find stuff to eat anywhere. I am clean and quiet {when told ; } - animal friendly - and really really really really looking forward to, and needing this trip. I love seafood - the Pacific enables a good selection I hope? Among my most favourite foods are creatures of the sea. I can't drink but am *great* at sipping the drinks of others. I am so so sad that I can't see Marcy, unless by a miracle she can visit me at sharkboy's ... And Eb, get your car pointing the San Jose way ... visit! Fegs of the East Coast will hear my demands as soon as I get a job and can actually pay for a trip... ... and fegs of middle America that I am missing - I will miss being able to see you too! .... , but hey, maybe I will win the lottery! I have lots o' love to give - and mucho info needed to help plan around my loose plans. Oh - Karen you *must* make me paella {sp?} - it has seafood yes? So I await email - or - talk to sharkboy - he's the mastermind behind all this .... Okay ... I must take a breath ... but I'll be back. Oh - Susan - I can {and will} hit ya on my east coast-ish trip yes? fading back into trip planning before tomorrow comes, Rand ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 22:28:36 EST From: HSatterfld@aol.com Subject: Re: Virgin > But as for Tower and Virgin, they have neither the cache of indie stores > nor the savvy of a start-up. On a slightly unrelated topic, where can I buy Virgin Cola? Never before have I had to sit through so many commercials for a product that I have never seen in any store. Is it simply not an east coast thing? Or will I find it only if I hang out at the Virgin Megastore, which I never do. (I asked Jeeves this question, BTW, and he confusedly suggested many sites interested in discussing my sexuality and its relation to Cost of Living Adjustments.) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 22:37:00 -0500 From: overbury@cn.ca Subject: Re: Selling Out Date sent: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 17:55:34 -0500 To: fegmaniax@smoe.org From: The Great Quail Subject: Selling Out Send reply to: The Great Quail > Jeme sells out: > > >Sting? > > Oh yeah, I gotta concur on that one. Not nearly to the same degree. The question, folks, was: "has anybody else ever sold out so completely?" and I guess I should qualify that by saying "anybody with that much early potential". Remember Sting burst on the scene as radio-friendly pop, and I can't think of anything he's done that is as offensive as "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?". Phil Collins? Pretty close, except that he sold out the band's potential more than his own. Still, yeah, Phil Collins. > > >U2 is a special case. They sold out completely, but now their whole > >message is hyper-ironic consumerism-as-god. Again, I hold up "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" as the standard. They'd have to become the Village People to outdo Rod. > I would say the Stones definitely sold out; but not as hard as Sting. Yes, they've sold out at times (EG: "Miss You"). I still think Rod wins, because he sold out sooner and harder, and never looked back. > > David Bowie -- a god of mine, so I tread carefully here -- is selling > out in a very matter-of-fact above-board sense, which is something I > really can't get all that angry at him for, as who knows with Bowie > what, exactly, is what. A few months back I heard Bowie in an interview that music has changed: it's consumable, disposable product now more than before. That was probably just as true before, say, Sgt. Pepper. He still does pretty much want he wants, doesn't he? Would anybody be surprised if he gets weird next time around? > > The Moody Blues sold out in a Vegas way, but they really didn't have > much to sell any more. Yeah, like the Stones, but more desperate. I feel more sorry for them than mad, because the world just left them behind. > > --Quail, happy that King Crimson and Neil Young still crankily walk the earth And Pete Townshend, if you ask me. But you didn't. - -- Ross Overbury Montreal, Quebec, Canada ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2000 22:03:09 -0600 From: "Bret" Subject: RE: Selling Out 1 thing while we're on this subject. I thought it was funny, as I just registered isoldout.com i'm not sure what I am going to do with it, but i had to have it.... Anyone have any ideas? - -b NP: Johnny Quest Thinks We're Sellouts - Less Than Jake (ok, not really, but I thought about digging out the cd) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 01 Apr 2000 02:26:33 PST From: "CORNHOLE ARMAGEDDON" Subject: Re: ebay posting? A SOFT BOY NO MORE is definitely taken from the 11/22/85 gig at 688 club: 11/22/85 688 Club, Atlanta RHE A--Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl; Kingdom Of Love; The Cars She Used To Drive; My Wife And My Dead Wife; Only The Stones Remain; Queen Of Eyes; The Man With The Lightbulb Head; Strawberry Mind; I'm Only You; Acid Bird; Where Are The Prawns? B--The President; Brenda's Iron Sledge; Heaven; I Often Dream Of Trains; Uncorrected Personality Traits; Listening To The Higsons; The Bells Of Rhymney (note that A SOFT BOY NO MORE gives Queen Of Eyes as "I Don't Know Why", I'm Only You as "It's Only You", Where Are The Prawns? as "Down By The Sea", and I Often Dream Of Trains as "I Often Dream Of Turtles" [?!].) now, if indeed this particular ebay listing is a cding of A SOFT BOY NO MORE, then, 1. the trackorder is all messed up (not to difficult to imagine). 2. they messed up the names of different songs, or, when they messed up the name of a same song (I'm Only You, for example), they messed it up differently (somewhat odd, you'd think). 3. if track #3 is The Cars She Used To Drive, then track #6 (given as "Out In The Street") is, presumably, Dancing On God's Thumb (which not only was *not* played at the 688 gig, but the only listing i have for it ("the asking tree" is, as i write this, inaccessible) is on a soft boys tape called "Live At The '80s" (i think this was sent to me by terrence, though can't remember for sure)). 4. what the hell is "A Prison Without Walls"? i suppose it could be I'm Only You ("a prison cell without a door"), but listed back-to-back with "A Memory Engraved Upon Your Soul"? I'm Only You isn't *that* lengthy and/or confusing is it? 5. the last song of the 688 gig was Bells Of Rhymney (not included on A SOFT BOY NO MORE), which doesn't seem to jibe with the last song on this cd. (presumably Eight Miles High. a quick lyrics search returns Antwoman and The Underneath -- both well-post-'85 -- as the only two songs containing the phrase "the birds" (and trimming it to just "birds" adds only Birds In Perspex).) i'm not saying it's *not* from the 688 gig. but i'm not so sure that it is. whatever it is, i'd concur with tom that the sound quality's probably fairly shitty. From: "Thomas, Ferris" Reply-To: "Thomas, Ferris" To: the oracle Subject: ebay posting? Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 14:45:10 -0500 Ahoy, all. I was sailing the seas of cheese that are eBay and came up with this: http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=294893302 Soft Boys CD from Atlanta, c. 1985. Any ideas as to what it is? At $35+ it would have to be exceptional to lure me at this point. - -f. ______________________________________ Ferris Scott Thomas programmer McGraw-Hill Technology Division Farmington, CT 06032 860.409.2612 860.677.5405 (fax) mailto:ferris_thomas@mcgraw-hill.com (work) mailto:ferris@snet.net (home) Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. --Benjamin Franklin ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2000 03:08:54 -0800 (PST) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Comics and ads On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Terrence Marks wrote: > This one, the Comic Strip Cornucopia, let you set up your own daily > comics page from about 600 strips. Shut down under legal pressure. Note: Legal pressure. Not actual legal action, just pressure. It's a sad world where the heavyweights shut down the little guy with a threat of dragging out a court battle that only one can afford. > This "are they doing anything illegal" bit was heavily debated. The > prevailing answer was "yes". The prevailing answer to whom? Copyright holders, I assume. The courts have backed up the idea that even deep linking (linking one page on your site to a page deep within someone else's site without noting even who you're linking to) has been upheld as not at all misleading or violating of copyright (Ticketmaster V. tickets.com). > Putting image tags in a page is a lot more like publishing a picture > than just writing an abstract computer program. It's exactly like writing an abstract program. See all the people that avoided prosecution for distributing the RSA encryption algorithm overseas by writing image tag links to images of the algorithm's code on foreign servers. To the user, it all looked like one page, but because the image was loading from a site outside the US, there was no case for the prosecution. > Distributing something like that widely on the Internet can > generally cause legal trouble. No test case, though. Not legal trouble, financial trouble. You'll be threatened with a lawsuit or criminal charges, but you will win. Both the ACLU and the EFF have attorneys that will help if you find yourself in such a case... however, those organizations can't afford to fight every battle. They'll help, but you have to reimburse some of the costs. > > So Scott Adams (or whatever feature syndicate is his daddy) gets to say > > "yeah, advertisers... I got your readership right here" because his logs > > show hits. But those readers aren't seeing the ads at all. > That ain't how advertising works. They buy impressions or clicks. They > do their own logging. They don't, generally, care what numbers you get. I know this. But the discreprency will sink content providers that insist on ad revenue. The content will be slurped and the ads left behind. > > (Hmm... geekcomics.org is available... and as long as I don't sell ads, > > I won't be breaking their rules... hmm... Public services like this are > > all over the internet; web and otherwise.) > A lot of .org sites sell ads nowadays. The open US top level domains (.com, .net, & .org) are no longer restricted to any particular kind of registrant. Anybody can own any of them for any reason. You no longer have to prove you are a company, networ, or non-profit to get those tlds respectively. I was just making a generic point. It would be cheap and easy for me to set up such a thing... much like the Comics Cornucopia did... but if I set it up with no ads, they have zero legal grounds... I'm neither redistributing nor marketing their work. It's a non-commercial endeavor. I'm making no illicit copies. There's just not even room for the threat of legal action. > Penny Arcade is better than User Friendly. Hi & Lois is better than User > Friendly. It panders something fierce, though. (Hey! You like Quake. > We like Quake. Let's have a whole bunch of strips with Quake in them. > Punchlines? Who needs punchlines? We've got Quake!) Or any other aspect of the craft. The drawings are pretty juvenile. However, there are a few really good Users Friendly. I particularly enjoy the following: [Pitr at work] Hmm... am hatink this junk mail This is NOT spam! I will be fixink their red wagon. [generic corporate folks presumably at the company that sent the unsolicited commercial email] Boss! Our mail server is being flooded with fifty-thousand copies of the same message every second! What do we do? What does the message say? "This is not a denial of service attack!" OK, maybe you have to have had to sit down to the abuse@eli.net mail queue for a day or two to really appreciate it, but I thought it was well crafted all around. > Hmm? Freedom? Ads are what pay for content. You put in less money, you > get less content. Passion is what pays for content. Project Gutenberg doesn't run ads. Neither I nor woj nor bayard run ads. Content is created by people who feel compelled to create. Content created for profit is very rarely worthwhile. In fact, I find all of my best information on sites built by enthusiasts. It is usually more honest, thorough, and verbose than anything a commercial source produces. > When you talk about ads in magazines, is that about freedom? When you > talk about ads on the radio, is that about freedom? It is important to understand that the content of your magazine is determined by its advertisers and parent company. The same is true for radio content. Those people are not free to publish anything they believe. Ziff-Davis, for example, will never run an article in any of their dozens of publications explaining the folly of forced-upgrades and buggy operating systems. They will never say that open source software has every advantage over commercial software. It's simply contrary to the message promoted by every single one of their advertisers. Advertising in magazines doesn't violate freedom the way that internet ads do... ads in magazines are required by law to be marked as ads (though some magazines are ads to themselves, but not officially and so they only mark pages explicitly sold as ads). Ads on the web are just images that can say pretty much anything they like. So this is a case of freedom FROM ads... The public has the right to be properly informed. It has been shown in US courts time and again that misleading advertising is illegal. On the web, nearly all ads are misleading to some degree. And if there's an image roughly five or six times wider than it is tall, it's probably an ad, but that's really the ONLY clue some ads give. [A quick example: I have this ad filter running on a spare box I found at work. I set up the proxy server and plugged it in between the computers in my room and the outside world. So ads are replaced with an image of my company's logo (this was done to appease anyone looking over my shoulder... not out of some misplaced, overzealous corporate pride... though I do really love what my company does and how they do business). When I went to http://www.vh1.com/ to inspect something I read on the list, I found that a large square in the middle of the central table on their website was my company's logo. I turned off the proxy and looked again. It said it was a link to content about some vh1 featured artists. But it tripped my ad filter, so I checked out the source. Turns out that if you click there (which I didn't do), you'd be taken away from VH1's site and asked a bunch of questions about those artists and, in return for your email address and home address, you'd be entered to win some prize or other. It was completely misleading. Neither the content nor the prize was offered by VH1, but it was right in the middle of their content and indistinguishable from the rest of their page in style and presentation. That would be illegal in a magazine or newspaper.] Anyway, you can avoid ads in magazines and newspapers. You can avoid commercial television and radio (though they use the public airwaves, and that's been a point of contention for quite some time). But you can't avoid billboards and you can't avoid banner ads. You can't tell a commercial web site from a non-commercial one anymore. And not using the web is like not going outside... I mean to say, that avoiding the web to get away from ads is like not going outside to avoid billboards. And there is absolutely nothing worse than private citizens wearing logos for companies with whom they do not share profits. (I was extremely pleased to see a local dance club posted a dress code on their door that explicitly forbits "logo gear". The other patrons shouldn't have to be subjected to that.) You know, I work at a telephone company (well, telephony is one of the many things we do). I'm going to talk to some of the bell-heads next week about the regulations on what sort of intrusion they can have on their service. You know how you get that little tone and then someone saying "ay tee and tee" when you use some payphones? I wonder if the only reason no phone company has forced you to listen to fifteen seconds of commercials before you get a dial-tone on your telephone is because it's illegal. If it's not illegal, I'm going to patent the idea and then burn the patent. Of course, that'll only save us until that expires... > > dotted with billboards. It will be a vast repository of all public > > knowledge. It maybe unindexed and impossible to effectively search. But > > everying anybody knows will out there... and you won't have to give your > > Visa number to read it. > > Yeah. File that with "the Internet will bring about a golden age > of tolerance" and "information wants to be free". "Big pile unsorted > information" isn't a useful medium. Fuck tolerance. More information doesn't make people more tolerant. There's just no sense in that. You can't predict a person. And information DOES want to be free. My ISP's news server has all of Jim Jarmusch's new film Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai in VCD format for download as of yesterday. This movie hit theaters here last Friday. Gary downloaded American Beauty from work today and burned the two discs, then played them on his Panasonic portable VCD player he bought in Jakarta a couple years back for $200 (about the same price as a DVD player, but the size of a walkman... comparable image quality, too). So we watched a movie that isn't even available for sale today without paying anyone that made it a cent. Information gets free. It always does. The big pile of unsorted information is being used every day. It doesn't need to be sorted. Sorting is something you do to suit your own needs. Now, USENET is sorted, somewhat, but it's sorted by itself... not by some imposed order based on commercial needs. I've said it before and I'll say it again. When the profit motive is removed, only those that are COMPELLED to create will create. And those people are the only ones that usually have anything meaningful to create in the first place. Abundant things are cheap or free: human labor, information, opinions. Scarce things are expensive: clean water, real estate, time. J. - -- ______________________________________________ J A Brelin Capuchin ______________________________________________ ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V9 #83 ******************************