From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V12 #213 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Friday, June 13 2003 Volume 12 : Number 213 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: More gasoline for the inferno [Capuchin ] Re: Advanced text editing in OS X [Ken Weingold ] Re: More gasoline for the inferno [Capuchin ] the only thing you can depend on is feg ["Michael Wells" ] Re: the only thing you can depend on is feg [Jeff Dwarf ] Diving into the murky sea [Barbara Soutar ] Re: Safari, so good [Capuchin ] Re: Advanced text editing in OS X [Capuchin ] oops, wrong list! [steve ] Re: Advanced text editing in OS X [Ken Weingold ] Re: Advanced text editing in OS X [Capuchin ] Importing Safari [Mike Swedene ] Oban - (Robyn content 50%) [crowbar.joe@btopenworld.com] RE: Advanced text editing in OS X. Advanced music downloading everywhere else. ["Terrence Marks" ] Sick of the moralizing [The Great Quail ] Re: Sick of the moralizing [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 20:11:15 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: More gasoline for the inferno On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Glen Uber wrote: > What fegsynchronicity! > Contrary to what Jeme thinks, even the open source people believe that > copyrights and trademarks are essential. > > Of course this may just be a case of "the opinions expressed do not > reflect the opinions of those associated with us, etc..." > > I don't think The Open Group is who you think it is. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 23:13:04 -0400 From: Ken Weingold Subject: Re: Advanced text editing in OS X On Thu, Jun 12, 2003, Capuchin wrote: > GNU fileutils include a really good cp, by the way. cp -a is nice. GNU fileutils rock. > > Oh, and OS X comes with emacs. End of story. > > Would that be GNU Emacs or XEmacs? GNU Emacs 21.1.1 (powerpc-apple-darwin6.0). No xemacs, at least on my system. But you can get it if you want it. - -Ken ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 20:18:03 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: More gasoline for the inferno On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Stewart C. Russell wrote: > For once, I think I'm siding with Apple; 'unix' should become a generic > term. It'd stop all this bickering and build the community. I was describing the whole fiasco to a (soon to be ex-) roommate last night and it occured to me that Unix is pretty heavily diluted and generic and should probably not count as a trademark anymore. I'm glad to see somebody doing something about it. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 22:24:33 -0500 From: "Michael Wells" Subject: the only thing you can depend on is feg Greg: > chance didn't deal those birds a good > hand last night, but it dealt me royal flush. Damn glad to hear it. I've come up aces twice on deals like that, and it gave me the willies for a month each time. It felt afterwards like Oblivion had popped in for something else, looked me straight in the eye and said "not this time," then buggered off for a sandwich. > 'Austin City Limits' Fest Unveils Full Lineup Well, you can see Richard Buckner to cheer you up (careful, Hopstetter might be listening)...though actually the word I got from someone who knows him is that things are not going all that well. Alcoholism affecting the quantity and quality of output, that kind of thing. Shame, and though I never really gave two shits about him several people I know swear he's the Messiah. Rex > To me it almost felt like the survey must've been taken by equal numbers of > radio programmers and critics/purists, so it reads like two totally > different decks of cards shuffled together. But it's true, it could've been > worse and may even have some value. I'm going to take the opposite line, and say while I am impressed with the caliber of the 'classic' deck, the rest is dodgy at best. If the list succeeds as an informational/marketing tool by generating interest in older artists by placing them alongside newer ones, then it is not actually a list of the greatest songs as selected on their own merit. The quality has been decreased by half to serve a different purpose, and it is an insult to the quality of those songs that deserve to be there in the first place to be listed with some of the crapola that's just there as the tease. I'd like to have seen Johnny Cash's "Hey Porter," "Cry, Cry, Cry", "Cocaine Blues" or even "Wanted Man" in there somewhere. I understand the widespread appeal of "A Boy Named Sue", but still...come on. Gene Autry ranked *below* LeAnn Rimes? You could make a list of the greatest country songs ever, and have one of the criteria be that they all had to be older than LeAnn Rimes...and you could do so without much trouble and get very little argument. Not that Gene Autry would have minded being below LeAnn, physio-temporally speaking. Only one apiece for Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs seems thin. Awfully thin. "Muleskinner Blues," "I'm Sittin' On Top of the World," "Nine Pound Hammer"...Bill gets only one song, same as Toby Kieth? And if you're going to put "Harper Valley PTA" on there, why omit F & S "Petticoat Junction" or "Beverly Hillbilies?" That "Come Back Darlin'" didn't make the list is criminal. No Carter Stanley ("The Old Home") or Marty Stuart ("Now That's Country"). Agree on Merle Haggard needing at least one more, probably "I Am a Lonesome Fugitive." Was glad to see Ernest Tubb get his props, though. No Townes van Zandt or Steven Fromholz. The entire list is rendered meaningless by the omission of either one. Throw in the missing Guy Clark, and there clearly occurs to be a bit of anti-Texas bias going on. And the CDB thing is just shameful. For God's sake, where's "Uneasy Rider" or (Hi Rex!) "Long Haired Country Boy"? And you're right about Steve Earle... Sorry, I'll stop the bitching now. They got half that list exactly right. Jeff hopefully reaps: > Tom Delay? Bill O'Reilly? Jay Mariotti? Skip Bayless? You got Skippy now? Didn't really wonder where he went, but that gives you an idea of the lasting impression he didn't make here. We got Mike Downey now...he won't be around long either. Mariotti is simply a tool. Michael "really, I do like SOME country music" Wells ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 22:30:59 -0500 From: steve Subject: Re: [loud-fans] iPod questions On Thursday, June 12, 2003, at 12:21 AM, Stewart Mason wrote: > he actually prefers eMusic himself because of its depth in jazz and > other > non-rock music and because they don't use a dumb proprietary format Dumb maybe, but I don't think it's proprietary. - - Steve __________ When I watch the Fox News channel, I can't believe how much nerve those people have and how they assume that people are just going to swallow that shit. - Thom Yorke ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 20:34:24 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: the only thing you can depend on is feg Michael Wells wrote: > Jeff hopefully reaps: > > Tom Delay? Bill O'Reilly? Jay Mariotti? Skip Bayless? > > You got Skippy now? Didn't really wonder where he went, > but that gives you an idea of the lasting impression he > didn't make here. We got Mike Downey now...he won't be > around long either. Mariotti is simply a tool. It always astounds me that someone who clearly hates professional athletes en masse -- not just the individual ones who are assholes -- as much as either Bayless would become a sportswriter. It's almost like Jerry Falwell wanting to be king of the gay pride parade or Mary Murray O'Hare running for pope. I cancelled my subsciption to the San Jose Mercury News the minute Bayless appeared. ===== "Being accused of hating America by people like Ann Coulter or Laura Ingraham is like being accused of hating children by Michael Jackson or (Cardinal) Bernard Law." -- anonymous . __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 20:37:16 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: run of the mill On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey wrote: > Quoting ken ostrander : > > anyway, the point is that anyone can be an artist. > > Yes, but not anyone can be a good artist. Even if you assume everyone > has talent, or that everyone has a different definition of talent and > someone somewhere is bound to agree with yours, there are also skills > involved. I mean, I *could* claim to be a dancer...but trust me, no one > else on the planet would buy it for a second. I've always had a fairly controversial (surprise) definition of art even though it's fairly classical (or at least Rennaisance) in origin. Art is merely the perfection of a craft to the point of personal expression. Personal expression itself is not art unless it is shown in a work of mastery of a craft and mastery of a craft is not art unless it shows personal expression. So the way you dance, Jeffrey, may be personal expression and some folks these days might call that art, I would say that until you can show that you've mastered the craft of dance, you cannot show create art as a dancer. Joyce and Eliot and Stein could produce seeming nonsense and it was art because they were also proven masters of their craft. Once you know the rules, you can break them and part of the art is which rules you broke and why. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 20:39:10 -0700 From: Barbara Soutar Subject: Diving into the murky sea Miles signed off: "still oscillating between dismay and an odd sense of comfort at the full-on Grand Reopening of Jeme's Feglist House of Idiosyncratic Self-Contradictary Idealism and Pancakes" I like the way this is worded! To participate in this debate: I've lived in a housing co-op and know exactly what (I believe it was Jeff) meant by the freeloading reference. And it does not refer to housework as Jeme has assumed! "With housework, there is an incremental cost to each person who uses the house. For more people, you must pay more for food and work harder at cooking and cleaning. Freeloaders bring the system down." What you have to do in a co-op is, in addition to the usual housework, participate in the community... attend meetings where new members are considered for membership, decide whether it's time to get bids from various companies to repaint the units, produce the newsletter,etc. Lots of extra work... On the subject of housework: every woman would roll her eyes at the concept of it being a fair and equitable sharing of tasks! Not to mention that all babies and toddlers are by definition "freeloaders". Why on earth would someone give birth to freeloaders? she asked rhetorically. Barbara Soutar Victoria, British Columbia ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 20:46:44 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Safari, so good On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Stewart C. Russell wrote: > Capuchin wrote: > > Woah! Rental is BY FAR more corrupt and contributes FAR MORE to greed > > than sale. Rental is usury. > > I was with you until you said this. Rental can be more efficient on many > fronts, though they require a little more thought to abstract the object > from the service it provides. > > Take a car.[snip] I totally agree with the concept of "products of service" as you're describing it. Things like television and carpet and so on... they make sense in those terms. They're not things you really want to OWN in any way except under special conditions. Mostly, you want to use the stuff and then have someone else deal with repairing, dismantling, or recycling the thing. A person doesn't want any of that. They want the service. You don't want A television, you want Television. So I'm with you there. > I got most of these from Bob Willard's "The Sustainability Advantage" > (ISBN: 0-86571-451-7). They're not just greenwash, but ways that > service/rental can provide cheaper, more efficient, and greener > operation than buying. I had a similar conversation with a neighbor about things like lawn mowers and hedge trimmers and so on. It's ridiculous that everyone is expected to OWN this stuff when almost nobody on the block uses them at the same time. The neighbor discussed rental as a good option. (He actually thought it would be a good business idea.) But I disagreed because of my idea that using money to make money (rather than doing new and useful work) is immoral. I suggested, instead, a neighborhood garden shed where these things could be kept and the cost of purchase and upkeep could be disseminated over a larger group of people. It's not the short-term use of rental that makes it wrong, it's the getting-more-than-you-paid-without-adding-anything-else-yourself part. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 20:48:07 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Advanced text editing in OS X On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Ken Weingold wrote: > On Thu, Jun 12, 2003, Capuchin wrote: > > GNU fileutils include a really good cp, by the way. cp -a is nice. > > GNU fileutils rock. Amen, brother. It's the first thing installed on any non-GNU unix-like system I touch. > > > Oh, and OS X comes with emacs. End of story. > > Would that be GNU Emacs or XEmacs? > > GNU Emacs 21.1.1 (powerpc-apple-darwin6.0). Excellent. > No xemacs, at least on my system. But you can get it if you want it. Why would I? Blecch. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 22:52:20 -0500 From: steve Subject: oops, wrong list! Nevermind this stuff - > Re: [loud-fans] iPod questions - - Steve __________ It's something new to see crises  especially a crisis as shocking as the terrorist attack  consistently addressed with legislation that does almost nothing to address the actual problem, and is almost entirely aimed at advancing a pre-existing agenda. - Paul Krugman, on Republican strategy ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 23:59:58 -0400 From: Ken Weingold Subject: Re: Advanced text editing in OS X On Thu, Jun 12, 2003, Capuchin wrote: > > No xemacs, at least on my system. But you can get it if you want it. > > Why would I? Blecch. No clue. :) The closest I ever get to emacs is the emacs-mode on the command line. As much as I use vi/vim as an editor, I think it's a silly mode for the command line. - -Ken ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 21:13:36 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Advanced text editing in OS X On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Ken Weingold wrote: > On Thu, Jun 12, 2003, Capuchin wrote: > > > No xemacs, at least on my system. But you can get it if you want it. > > > > Why would I? Blecch. > > No clue. :) The closest I ever get to emacs is the emacs-mode on the > command line. As much as I use vi/vim as an editor, I think it's a silly > mode for the command line. I totally agree with what you wrote. I like the IDEA of emacs (and all that elisp stuff), but I've never been able to incorporate it into my life. One day I might and when I do, it'll be GNU emacs. And vi command line editting mode is really dumb. I tried it for a while and I got really sick of hitting esc every time I had to fix something. I don't think any of this is helping my head cold. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 22:58:22 -0700 (PDT) From: Mike Swedene Subject: Importing Safari Safari looks cool. I like it thus far (a few days). is there any wya to import bookmarks from Netscape/Mozilla to Safari? I have been dragging each one individually over but I am unable to keep them grouped as they are now.... Thanks a lot! Mike "I feel like steve irwin and a bit like Mr Wells" Swedene np -> "There There" Radiohead Dublin 05/03 ===== - --------------------------------------------- Rebuilding my websight: http://www34.brinkster.com/bflomidy/ _____________________________________________ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 12:05:46 +0100 (BST) From: crowbar.joe@btopenworld.com Subject: Oban - (Robyn content 50%) Matt drank... >ND: Oban, from er, Oban... smoky... Aha! The second greatest thing to come out of the 'Gateway To The Isles (ho, ho, ho). Yes, Stewart remembered correctly. I was born in Oban, and my mother saw the Beatles for the first time on TV the night before... However, I was dragged kicking and screaming to unlovely Buckhaven in East Fife at the age of three; and so developed a harsh wee accent, instead of a euphonious, lilting one. Of course, when my parents emigrated 'dahn sarf' to unlovely Essex (I was ten), I had to swap quickly for an equally grating new dialect, otherwise I'd have got 'ma heid caved in'. From what I've heard in Edinburgh, Robyn's Scottish accent isn't *too* bad for a sassenach ;-)In fact he seems to have quite a range. His Elvis is superb, and I know a French person who reckons he's got a pretty good command. Tend to agree with Carrie about Luxor, but probably rate it a little higher than she does. I like the playing on it, but Robyn seems to be struggling a tiny bit towards a new voice. A lot of treading water going on, lyrically speaking. There's a bit of an Ono/Lennon vibe to his domestic bliss - not entirely productive artistically. AND, to keep vaguely on topic, he GAVE the album away to people attending his 50th birthday gig. (Yes,I know that he's selling it now, but he doesn't seem to be busting a gut to do so...). To extend the freeloaders-mucking-it-up-for-everyone-in-a-potential-Utopia argument; there were folks apparently hoovering up the copies placed on the seats at the RFH, before people arrived to take their places. A naive, or perhaps just lazy, method of distribution in the first place... Crowbar Joe Can I add to Jeffrey's censure on Nora. Nice bit of tanking in for a newbie, girl...I don't expect any better from Quail...Jeme shouldn't have made that jibe about Steve's job - and occasionally writes like a robot - but he has my vote on many of the things he's trying to express. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 00:27:04 -0400 From: "Terrence Marks" Subject: RE: Advanced text editing in OS X. Advanced music downloading everywhere else. >> If you've got any kind of file-sharing program, you need Spybot >> (http://security.kolla.de) to keep this off your machine. >That's absolutely false. You can use lopster. I can personally assure >you that there is no spyware, pop-ups, or tie-ins of any kind. And if you >don't take my word for it, you can read the source. > I believe it. But I say you need Spybot anyhow. I'm a firm believer in the "You Need More Stuff" theory of computer security. Even if you know what you're doing, read your EULAs thoroughly, and don't download anything you haven't researched, you still should check on things to make sure. Or if you're like 99% of the population and click "yes" on whatever legalese gets shoved in your face, you need it around to keep your computer in line. I'm not trying to get involved in any kind of ideological discussion. My ideology is that these things break computers faster than I can fix them, and if more people know how to nix this, my quality of life directly improves. Terrence Marks http://www.unlikeminerva.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 07:52:01 -0400 From: "FS Thomas" Subject: RE: Safari, so good I know I...shouldn't. Can't...resist... > -----Original Message----- > From: Capuchin > Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2003 11:47 PM > To: Nerdy Groovers > Subject: Re: Safari, so good > > ... I disagreed because of my > idea that using money to make money (rather than doing new and useful > work) is immoral. Heir Marx! So good to see you again! ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 08:35:28 -0400 From: The Great Quail Subject: Sick of the moralizing Jeme writes, > Well, he did Mystery Men and Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula. I think the > guy knows on which side his bread is buttered. Bram Stoker's Dracula had many flaws. But still, I find it one of the most inventive, conceptually stunning Hollywood movies of its time. In fact, I number it among my top 25 films. But to the point: Ken and Jeme, and to a lesser extent Jeffrey: I am extremely wary of your utopian socialism. While it has the benefit of elevating your own views to the moral center of the universe, it does so through the alienation of basic human drives -- to earn recognition and compensation through one's work. And, the more brilliant the work, the more compensation one should earn. The more one should profit. But of course, that's the dirty word, isn't it? Profit? "The amount received for a commodity or service in excess of the original cost." But how do you place an original cost on creativity? Are you telling me that in your heart you think Robyn, an artist you admire and respect, should not earn more than he does? I *love* my new iPod. It probably cost only a few dollars to manufacture, but it costs $300. Good -- Apple should be a successful company. So should Pixar, and Wingnut Films, and Vintage Books, and Miyazake, and Radiohead, and...fill in the blank with your own favorite artistic success story. Let them make a profit for making my tenure in life a little more fun. While I understand that your hearts are in the right place, so to speak -- though I confess I'm not so sure about Jeme -- I find it baffling to the extreme that you find earning an above-average accumulation of wealth and resources to be contemptible. Yes, the arts business is full of middle-men who get rich at the expense of artists, and that *is* something contemptible. And something that could be addressed -- such as Robert Fripp is doing. And, yes, more should be done, the arts business is corrupt indeed. I am not saying things are perfect. And obviously the "Awards" system is flawed and corrupt as well. I "get" the biz. I am not naove. But I sense in your longings for a so-called "free" society the seeds of a dystopia that will sprout in a garden somewhere between Vonnegut's fable of forced "equality" to outright Maoism. Jeme wants to reward mediocrity -- thought he would never admit that! -- and Ken would dispense with mass culture altogether -- or at least, through his redefining of what mass culture is, through his elitist contempt of the masses, masquerading as compassionate neo-Marxism. It all sounds great on paper, until you explore a bit what they are *really* saying, which is this: Let's tear down the society we have and reconstruct one based around *my* tastes, *my* morality, *my* principles. If this means that you can no longer buy a movie on DVD or drive a car or make a CD of pop music, so be it. Now, I know that's not what they think they are saying, and I am sure they will rush in to point out how I have misunderstood. That's ok, I won't reply, I am done with this, I think I am hopelessly divided from the majority of well-meaning Fegs at this point. Of course, I have a bias of my own -- after all, I helped found two failed Internet start-ups, and I dream of earning a living through writing, which is difficult indeed. Hell, I dream of getting rich, too, and I admit that. Vacations in Amsterdam would be nice. I would love to, say, be able to but a signed copy of Ulysses. But money is not the reason why I write, that I do for love. It would be great if doing what you loved got you rich, wouldn't it? Well, not to some folks around here, that would just be unfair, or selling out, or something else worthy of flaming or preaching. So, Jeme, Ken: I invite you to practice what you preach. Sell off your computers and software, give away your CDs, abandon the theaters, and please, for the sake of us all, go live off the grid and stop moralizing at us like a bunch of born-again Christians. It is wearisome indeed. - --Quail, getting increasingly nearer to signing off this List for good, which has grown less fun, more snarky, more conformist, and more preachy over the last year or so. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 08:13:56 -0500 From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: Sick of the moralizing Quoting The Great Quail : > Ken and Jeme, and to a lesser extent Jeffrey: I am extremely wary of > your > utopian socialism. While it has the benefit of elevating your own views > to > the moral center of the universe, it does so through the alienation of > basic > human drives -- to earn recognition and compensation through one's work. I'm not sure how my political/ethical views elevate themselves to the moral center of the universe any more than anyone's political/ethical views do: what specifically is it about *those* views that cause them to do that any more than anyone else's do? And realizing your "lesser extent" qualification, I still wonder how anything I've said denies recognition and compensation through one's work. I certainly (and I don't think Ken or Jeme did either) never said work should be anonymous - and one could argue that the current system enforces anonymity in creative work (through contractual agreements regarding creative work being the intellectual property of one's employer, say - or even in the common practice of not back-announcing tracks on the radio, or newspapers that don't put the artists' names next to the comics) far more than a system I'd propose. I don't think people shouldn't be compensated for their work (and my understanding of Jeme's position is that they should be, but in a different way than they are now, more or less as Aaron pointed out is generally case for most employees); I only think that the pursuit of bottom line above all other principles is immoral. That doesn't mean I think everyone should make the same; or that talented sprinters should have weights attached to their ankles; etc. As an aside, the world is a hell of a lot less meritocratic than your arguments imply: take a look at a list of millionaires, and notice how many come from wealthy families. (Political irony: the same class that tediously emphasizes responsibility and the need to be self-supporting largely derives its power from inherited wealth...sure, Joe Slumdweller didn't "earn" his piddly welfare check - but neither did Joseph Buckston Fuller III, Esq. earn the millions he inherited, whatever he may have done w/that wealth afterwards). > And, the more brilliant the work, the more compensation one should earn. Brilliant by whose standards? I might agree...but: > Are you telling me that in your heart you think Robyn, an artist you > admire and respect, should not earn more than he does? ..clearly the market disagrees. In fact, the arts are one of the clearest realms in which the failure of the implicit "cream will rise" philosophy of free market ideology is grossly self-evident. > I find it baffling to the > extreme that you find earning an above-average accumulation of wealth > and resources to be contemptible. Since I never detailed this part, I can understand the misunderstanding. What I'm opposed to is the exploitative extremes. As a start, say, structure taxes and regulations such that no person receives less than a living wage, and the highest pay at the corporation should be no more than X times that amount (10? 15?) - and, since in any corporation, its success and profits are attributable to the entity as a whole, profits should be distributed to all, not just to the top. I find it immoral that, say, when a company struggles because it's product is poorly designed or marketed, the people who make the product are typically first let go - not the marketers or people making the (bad) executive decisions - esp. since those latter, when they are let go, are typically in a far better position to survive. I also unfashionably believe that there are many things of value to society as a whole that are not profitable in a market-driven sense, and that in some way, those things must be allowed to fluorish. Arts, yes...but more mundanely, garbage collection, etc. > Let's tear down the > society we have and reconstruct one based around *my* tastes, *my* > morality, *my* principles. You know what? If you're honest, you'll admit that *any* time you take an ethical position that's not trivial and affecting no one but yourself, you're essentially saying exactly this: I believe the world would work better if it ran in the way I believed. That's what a political belief *is*: the notion that the idea you hold would work better. > own -- after all, I helped found two failed Internet start-ups, and I > dream > of earning a living through writing, which is difficult indeed. Hell, I > dream of getting rich, too, and I admit that. Vacations in Amsterdam > would > be nice. I would love to, say, be able to but a signed copy of Ulysses. > But > money is not the reason why I write, that I do for love. It would be > great > if doing what you loved got you rich, wouldn't it? Well, not to some > folks > around here, that would just be unfair, or selling out, or something > else worthy of flaming or preaching. I would only say that in my view, the current system does much more to prevent people from earning a living doing what they love than any system I'd propose. See your Robyn example above. > So, Jeme, Ken: I invite you to practice what you preach. Sell off your > computers and software, give away your CDs, abandon the theaters, and > please, for the sake of us all, go live off the grid and stop moralizing > at us like a bunch of born-again Christians. It's a bit ironic to moralize against moralizing, isn't it? Oh, and about Crowbar Joe's remarks: even though I thought Nora overreacted to Jeme's comments, I wasn't censuring her as such. Actually, I rather admire the fact that, even though she's a newbie, she can show up here and speak her mind like that. ..Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html :: we make everything you need, and you need everything we make ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V12 #213 ********************************