9 Message 9: From exi@panix.com Tue Jul 27 12:42:24 1993 Return-Path: Received: from usc.edu by chaph.usc.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1+ucs-3.0) id AA26038; Tue, 27 Jul 93 12:42:22 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: from panix.com by usc.edu (4.1/SMI-3.0DEV3-USC+3.1) id AA15086; Tue, 27 Jul 93 12:41:53 PDT Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Received: by panix.com id AA01357 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for more@usc.edu); Tue, 27 Jul 1993 15:30:26 -0400 Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 15:30:26 -0400 Message-Id: <199307271930.AA01357@panix.com> To: Exi@panix.com From: Exi@panix.com Subject: Extropians Digest X-Extropian-Date: July 27, 373 P.N.O. [19:29:06 UTC] Reply-To: extropians@gnu.ai.mit.edu Errors-To: Extropians-Request@gnu.ai.mit.edu Status: R Extropians Digest Tue, 27 Jul 93 Volume 93 : Issue 207 Today's Topics: AI: Searle's Chinese Room [1 msgs] California school vouchers [1 msgs] FSF: Some Useful Software, No Useful Politics [2 msgs] FWD: SPUNK PRESS: Call for submissions! [1 msgs] Health: My Doctor [1 msgs] Intellectual property and why (some) people work [1 msgs] MEDIA: Slamming of FSF; more on software & video rental [1 msgs] POLI: William Gibson - a statist! :-( [1 msgs] Vegan: My cholesterol - 118 [1 msgs] Vegan: My cholesterol - 118 [1 msgs] Wage Competition [1 msgs] Who is signed up for cryonics [1 msgs] sexuality [1 msgs] unsubscribe hiscdcj@lux.latrobe.edu.au [1 msgs] weather control [1 msgs] Administrivia: No admin msg. Approximate Size: 51386 bytes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 2:51:33 WET DST From: rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray) Subject: FSF: Some Useful Software, No Useful Politics Stanton McCandlish () writes: > > -=> If you want to get software without paying for it, you can rent it. > -=>Perhaps in the future, public libraries will carry software that can be > -=>borrowed. > > No you can't. Federal law prohibits it. If you want to get free software > you have to write it, steal it outright from the stores, convince the > company in question to send you beta versions (always risky, just by the > very nature of what betas are) or pirate it. > > This was the whole point of my previous posts. Software rentals needs > desperately to be made legal again. When was it made illegal? As of 1988, I could rent Commodore 64 software. You could rent it in the UK too. Blockbuster currently rents Nitendo and Sega software. Perhaps you mean that the renter would have to get permission from the publisher? > -=>Shareware sucks, and CS people know it. Programmers depending on shareware > -=>/freeware contributions for a living would be welfare cases making less than > -=>janitors. > > Shareware sucks? Hmph. I presume you've had little experience with > shareware. Yes SOME shareware sucks so hard I wonder that it doesn't You totally misunderstood what I meant. I mean shareware sucks as far as _making a living_ on it. The quality of some shareware is actually quite good, that is not the issue. The fact of the matter is, left to their own, people do not altruistically send in major shareware fees. I remember when PK ported PKZIP to the Amiga. Out of 4 million Amiga owners, he didn't even get $1000. If you don't believe me, try living on shareware. It's less than minimum wage in terms of total capital, _for the majority_ of programmers. > As for how much shareware authors make, you pose your guess as if the > matter were hypothetical. It isn't. Yes, most people don't make any > money at it, just like most musicians don't make any money at that. Your > view would seem to hold that all musicians must sign up with a major > label and starve. It just isn't true. For specific success stories, No, my view holds that those musicians that do decide to sign up with a major label be able to protect their music. Your view seems to hold that those musicians who wish to sell their music commercially be prevented from doing so. > have a look at Mustang Software, Joaquim Homrighausen, Phil Katz, Vern > Buerg, etc. These are people and companies that are NOT in any way shape > or form starving. Just doing some basic math, I conclude that the author > my my BBS software (Mark Goodwin, TriBBS) has made approximately $15,000 > in the last 6 months (judging from number of new BBS registrations in the > time period, times the price of registration -- this does not count his > other software, only the BBS -- minus taxes. Considering that TriBBS is > sort of "snowballing", I figure he should net about $40k this year.) And > TriBBS is one of the least known and used stable BBS packages (I am not > counting the beta crap that pops up and vanishes, and never seems to make > it out of beta). Why register? Is there a gimmick? Either the software isn't fully functional (crippleware) or bugged so much that you must pay to have the privilege of downloading updates from his bbs? Or is there is implicit contract (e.g. "your use of this software constitutes your acceptance of these rules. You are obligated to send $XX to me.") > If your idea is that shareware authorship is a bit "iffy" as a career you > are correct, but if you mean to say that it is impossible to make a > living in that market, I'd have to strongly disagree. I propose that if shareware were enforced by law, far more computer programmers would be unemployed. The facts of the matter are, Phil Katz and others are a statistical blips. I can buy a CD-ROM collection containing a gigabyte of shareware software right now. The vast majority of the programs on those disks made hardly any money at all, yet if they went commercial they could have atleast made $5000 up front. I'm not against shareware, I'm against enforced shareware by virtue of Gibson "freebie"/FSF philosophy. It all depends on what you want to achieve. On average, commercial software is higher quality, better documented, and better supported than sharewhere. If you want to see more large scale projects like Taligent or NT and less utility hacks like compression programs or editors, it would be wise to support intellectual property rights. -Ray ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 00:55:58 -0600 (MDT) From: Stanton McCandlish Subject: weather control Quoth Nick Szabo, verily I say unto thee: -=>mirrors and Venetian blinds based in Clarke (geosynchronous) orbit. Speaking of Arthur C. Clarke, is he signed up for cryonics? Last I heard he was approaching deamination due to cancer or something. Actually, let me ask this, is ANYONE of note (i.e. people that are generally respected and valued by Extropians, and/or people who are in a good position to serve as something of a good example, or who are otherwise in the media eye) signed up for cryonics? Here's something that just occured to me. I wonder if, after nanotech and cloning get perfected, there will evolve a market for grave-robbed genes of famous people? I can see it now: "Well, I just grew an Asimov. He's doing pretty well." "Really, so they found some of his hair in the grave or something?" "Well it was actually a bit of fingernail. Oh and you should see my Reagan, too. What a clown! He's only 12 now, but looks 30, and after another decade of hormone treatments he should look just like he did in the 1980s." -- Stanton McCandlish * Space Migration * Networking * ChaOrder * NO GOV'T. * anton@hydra.unm.edu * Intelligence Increase * Nano * Crypto * NO RELIGION * FidoNet: 1:301/2 * Life Extension * Ethics * VR * Now! * NO MORE LIES! * Noise in the Void BBS * +1-505-246-8515 (24hr, 1200-14400, v32bis, N-8-1) * ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 3:05:37 WET DST From: rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Ray) Subject: Intellectual property and why (some) people work Inigo Montoya () writes: > > Why I Do Stuff > > Recent discussion on extropians has included a thread about Why > (Rich) People Work and another about Intellectual Property. > > In the currently not at all anarchocapitalist USA, I work for > a software company, in a group which develops compilers. I > get paid for this (well, this isn't actually as clear as it > could be. I am definitely getting paid by this company, and > I definitely do this sort of work. The correlation between > those two facts is, however, what I can only call a mutually > acceptable myth. More about this later). These compilers > are then sold to people, who actually pay what I would consider > quite a bit of money for the right to use these compilers. Included > in the product are a variety of mechanisms to attempt to insure > that they don't get copied, used after a certain date/by more > than a certain number of people, etc. These mechanisms can > be defeated in a variety of ways, which require various levels > of competence, etc. I wouldn't suggest implementing copy protection at all. I used to crack software protection schemes as a hobby when I was a teenager. Copy-protection is more of an annoyance than a protection. I think software should be protected not from ordinary pirates but from resellers. Pirating can't be stopped, but reselling *copied* software certainly could, under a PPL. Example: many software companies try to sell software in Arab markets but find themselves in trouble since their software is already pirated and sold legally in shops across the Arab world. If you want free software, move to the Arab PPL. The future of copyprotection may lie in decentralized object orientation. If your application is scattered across the net and information is processed nonlocally, you can't copy the software because it's not running on your machine. Furthermore, since the pieces are constantly changing with components bought and sold on a network market, there would be little use in copying the data even if you could. -- Ray Cromwell | Engineering is the implementation of science; -- -- EE/Math Student | politics is the implementation of faith. -- -- rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu | - Zetetic Commentaries -- ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 02:35:11 -0600 (MDT) From: Stanton McCandlish Subject: MEDIA: Slamming of FSF; more on software & video rental Quoth Ray, verily I say unto thee: -=> -=>Stanton McCandlish () writes: -=>> -=>If Microsoft decided to sell MS word for $10,000 per copy that is their -=>decision. If MS decided to only distribute MS Word to the top ten CEOs, -=>that's their decision. If Bill decided that MS Word was too good -=>for the world and locked it in a vault so that no one but he could use it, that -=>would also be his decision/right. Ridiculous as it may seem, you don't -=>have a right to cheap software. You don't have a right to computers -=>or software period. That's not the point. The point isn't any "right to free software" but rather that the entire software industry is shooting itself in the foot then crying and pointing fingers when they do so. I find this to be almost incredibly obvious. Like I say, shift the focus to rental, selling techsupport/texts/tutorials/upgrades, and it would be whole new picture. Probably 500+ times more people could afford any given software application, and if it cost 10% of what it used to, guess what? Insert Software Company Here just made 50 times more money, and 500 times more people are empowered to do stuff with this new software. This would encrease competition, which we all know and love so well. What would be the state of CAE if there were 500 times as many people who know how to use the software? With the big jump in engineering, we might be able to expect nanotech to show up sooner. Just one example. Perhaps the numbers I've picked are too large, but it doesn't matter, the principle is still the same. -=> Many people on this list are going into the software business, like -=>Derek. I'm sure he would be pissed if he spent ten years developing -=>an innovative product only to find out that he had to distribute it -=>for free. Agreed. I'm not advocating such a thing, though I think the intellectual property laws as they currently stand are crap. Then again considering that they are a statist imposition, I suppose they'd have to be crap by definition. -=> I see no real difference between intellectual property rights and normal -=>property rights. Information is easy to copy, so what? The nanotech/robot -=>revolution will make material goods just as easy to copy, but that doesn't -=>mean you should be able exploit the mental work of a designer for free. MS -=>probably spent millions on Word development, probably even more on Windows->NT -=>development. No but you can bet there will be a LOT of changes to property law when nanotech does arrive. The whole problem with IntProp laws we have now is they are unrealistically based on PhysProp laws. The idea that by pirating, say, AutoCAD, I am somehow "stealing" it is absurd, since I have not removed it from anyone else's possession. Indeed, another part of my software industry reform proposal, not duplicated on this list yet, is that piracy HELPS the software giants, because it lets people who are, say, poor college students, get a package and become familiar with it; they will be quite likely to actually BUY future versions when able to afford it, because they know how it works, and know how to use it. Not to mention buying external utilities for it, books, you name it. Back in the days before I ran a BBS, and thus had to be very cautious about this sort of thing, I pirated CorelDraw 2.mumble. I am now preparing to -=>BUY<=- CorelDraw 4.0, because I can use it. Had I never leeched that first old copy way back when, I'd've never used it, and not been interested in the least in buying 4.0. It is said that piracy harms smaller software companies due to the largely fictional thing called "lost revenues" (I say it is fiction in this case because if you have no intention to buy software, and pirate it, this is not costing the company anything, since you would not have bought it in the first place), but if this IS true, it is a result of the self-imposed structure of the software marketplace. When piracy isn't piracy any more, but part of a strategy based on selling people upgrades & special versions, tutor programs and Tips from the Pros books, etc, and charging them rental fees, then this will no longer even be an issue. Read some of the trade journals: companies are damn near going bankrupt on tech support. They charge an arm and a leg for the software, include the manual, and give away tech support. This is utterly wrongheaded. To make a long story short, most piracy either does no harm whatsoever, or serves as a kind of "shareware-whether-they-like-it-or-not", in which the data buccaneer gets to test drive the software, and then when they can they'll buy the real thing (what incentives? Lack of a source for hot-off-the-press pirated wares, need of a manual, the good feeling of legitimacy, need for tech support, and registration yielding cheap future upgrades, plus special deals on utils and addons.) -- Stanton McCandlish * Space Migration * Networking * ChaOrder * NO GOV'T. * anton@hydra.unm.edu * Intelligence Increase * Nano * Crypto * NO RELIGION * FidoNet: 1:301/2 * Life Extension * Ethics * VR * Now! * NO MORE LIES! * Noise in the Void BBS * +1-505-246-8515 (24hr, 1200-14400, v32bis, N-8-1) * ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 01:40:20 -0700 From: dasher@netcom.com (D. Anton Sherwood) Subject: sexuality Perry says: > I can state anecdotally > that repeated exposure to gays has made me very comfortable with them, > but has not altered my heterosexuality one bit. You're in denial. Get help. ;) I've gone so far as to perceive that so-and-so *would* turn me on if I weren't so straight. And ... Tony says: > [I have] Fantasized about being a woman! . . . > But more importantly, during such fantasies, I do not fantasize about having > sex with men, but instead with women. . . . I would certainly be a lesbian. I, on the other hand, like the narrator of Varley's recent novel STEEL BEACH (Hugo nominee -- check it out), think I'd remain hetero if converted to female. If I weren't so lazy, I might take a survey: How many of you have sex-change fantasies? (It can't be only those named Anthony;) Of those who do, how does your alternate self behave? Given the technology, and long life, I think I'd change sex every thirty years or so. And Dave says: > (. . . I have not read any of the news reports about the "gay > gene", but I would be very surprised if it correlated positively with > physically androgynous characteristics.) Anecdotally -- most of the tallest women I know are gay. (As is the tallest non-woman I know.) Anton Sherwood dasher@netcom.com +1 415 267 0685 1800 Market St #207, San Francisco 94102 USA "And if they stare, just let them burn their eyes on your moving. And if they shout, don't let it change a thing that you're doing." --Rod Argent/Chris White ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 01:41:14 -0700 From: dasher@netcom.com (D. Anton Sherwood) Subject: California school vouchers Sasha said: >I just heard it from a colleague of mine, who read a short article >in Boston Globe (if you have more info, please share it!). > California just enacted the voucher program ... and Pete Cappello, a member of the California LP, replied: > I don't think that this is accurate. A Voucher proposal is slated to > be on the CA ballot as an initiative in the near future. It will be > BIG BIG news, if it passes. I seem to remember that some rural town or county is doing it. How that works, when a big chunk of the school budget comes from Sacramento, I don't know. Anton Sherwood dasher@netcom.com +1 415 267 0685 1800 Market St #207, San Francisco 94102 USA ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 19:07:21 EST From: hiscdcj@lux (Dwayne ) Subject: unsubscribe hiscdcj@lux.latrobe.edu.au unsubscribe hiscdcj@lux.latrobe.edu.au unsubscribe dwayne jones-evans -- --- Dwayne. (Dwayne Jones-Evans IRC: ddraig PODS: Y Ddraig) ( SCA: Cynon Yscolan ap Myrddin, Stormhold, Lochac, West) internet: hiscdcj@lux.latrobe.edu.au ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 03:29:00 -0600 (MDT) From: Stanton McCandlish Subject: FSF: Some Useful Software, No Useful Politics Quoth Ray, verily I say unto thee: -=> When was it made illegal? As of 1988, I could rent Commodore 64 software. -=>You could rent it in the UK too. Blockbuster currently rents Nitendo -=>and Sega software. Perhaps you mean that the renter would have to get -=>permission from the publisher? Not precisely certain, but it was either this year or last; I believe it was last year. Write to SPA, I'm sure they'd be glad to tell you, and send you a Buick-sized pile of propaganda tracts. -=> No, my view holds that those musicians that do decide to sign up with -=>a major label be able to protect their music. Your view seems to hold -=>that those musicians who wish to sell their music commercially be prevented -=>from doing so. Dunno where you got that idea. Other musicians can protect their music. My view holds that one does not necessarily have to suck up to the corporate trough and sign away one's rights to one's labour. You have better chances of making more money if you do, but for some people making a somewhat less amount, POSSIBLY, and having full rights to their own software, music whatever, is more important. PS your Phil Katz example is not a good one. The non-commerical version of PKZip is explicitly FREEware, you don't have to pay for it. Considering that the man has a real office, employees, booths at COMDEX, etc, I don't think he's doing all that poorly. -=> Why register? Is there a gimmick? Either the software isn't fully -=>functional (crippleware) or bugged so much that you must pay to have the -=>privilege of downloading updates from his bbs? Or is there is implicit -=>contract (e.g. "your use of this software constitutes your acceptance of -=>these rules. You are obligated to send $XX to me.") Nope, TriBBS (I assume this is the example you are asking about) is fully functional. Yes you can DL upgrades from his BBS, just as you can with almost any other shareware that has a BBS distribution site. However, most new versions are upgrades in the real sense: new features that registered sysops have asked for. I dare say, Goodwin is about a gazillion times more responsive to his customers needs and demands than Micro$oft. How many years between DOS 5.0 and 6.0? How many real improvements are there in DOS 6.0? Of course there is an implicit contract. Almost all software, commercial or otherwise, has a "license agreement", and almost all shareware has very explicit statements saying, roughly, "You are licensed to test this software for 30 days [or whatever]; after this time you must register." This is hardly earth shaking. Anyway, what incentives for registering? Mainly, if the software is good, you register it. That's just the etiquette involved. Just like you don't call someone an asshole in a public online conference. I went considerably past the free trial period with TriBBS (with the author's permission - I was making time payments), and I actually had calls from irate TriBBS sysops telling me what scum I was for not registering! A GOOD product like TriBBS garners registrations because people like it, and if you care to have a look at the Intelec/Fido/TTN conference TRIBBS, you'll see that there's a very involved user community built up around TriBBS, and much 3rd party software is developed for it, possibly more than that being written for WildCat! BBS (#1). Another perk is that registered sysops get direct tech support, by mail, email, phone or fax, access to betas [some avoid that like the plague, others like me enjoy it because we get to have an active hand in the debugging, get new features sooner, and Goodwin's alpha testing is generally superb, so there are few serious bugs anyway.) Another strategy, like that used for the immensely popular BBS games Barren Realms Elite and Solar R. E., is to have a more-or-less fully functional product, but you get extras of various sorts when you register. There's an aweful lot of registered BREs and SREs around. The main way to make this work is to keep the price down ($15 each), so lots more people register, and make it work well enough that people get hooked on it even before they consider registering. Same reason Castle Wolfenstein 3D made a bundle for Apogee, and gave them the capital to break into the 'real' commercial PC game market with Spear of Destiny. True crippleware is about the worst marketing strategy there is. People just hate it, and have a negative reaction. For myself, I just delete all the crippleware uploads people send, since they aren't worth my customers' time to download. -=> I propose that if shareware were enforced by law, far more computer -=>programmers would be unemployed. The facts of the matter are, -=>Phil Katz and others are a statistical blips. I can buy a CD-ROM collection -=>containing a gigabyte of shareware software right now. The vast majority -=>of the programs on those disks made hardly any money at all, yet if they went -=>commercial they could have atleast made $5000 up front. Could you elaborate what you mean by "if shareware were enforced by law" and how this would cause programmers to lose jobs? I fear I am not reading it right at all. Most of that shareware is the trash that never makes any money, CD-bundling or not, and wouldn't sell in the commercial market in the first place. I agree with you that most shareware makes no money, but I think people like Katz and Goodwin are more than statistical blips, they are the people that run their software businesses AS businesses, not hobbies, and concern themselves with what the customer wants and needs; they produce quality products and market them effectively and professionally, rather than sending out poorly documented, frivolous, buggy junk in whimsical hobbist enthusiasm. It seems almost like you wish to serve as an apologist for unprofessional shareware programmers by saying that the medium itself is at fault? -=> I'm not against shareware, I'm against enforced shareware by virtue of -=>Gibson "freebie"/FSF philosophy. I'd agree Gibson's idea is bunk, but I don't think there's that much in commone with what the FSF is doing. Mainly because the FSF is DOING. They are not telling anyone "do this, do that" but putting their philosophy into practice, for whatever that's worth. -=> It all depends on what you want to achieve. On average, commercial -=>software is higher quality, better documented, and better supported than -=>sharewhere. On all of these I will agree, but for higher quality (almost EVERY commercial application I have is buggy as all hell, Windows and DOS included). I'd say on average good commercial software is better than most shareware, but at the same time, I'd have to say good shareware is usually equal to or better than most mershware. Better documented: almost always, because corps can afford to hire technical writers and professional printing services. Better supported? Not in my experience. If I send mail to the guy that wrote my BBS, I'll get a reply within a day or 2 tops, from someone that knows what they are talking about. When I called MicroSoft technical "support" last week, when some incompatibility with my SCSI driver caused a total disk crash, I had to wade through about 7 minutes of routing and voicemail crapola, on MY dime, then wait for over HALF AN HOUR, prime time business hours phone rates, and in the end the utterly ignorant slob on the end, who barely spoke English, REFUSED to give me tech support, since I was using QEMM instead of M$'s crappy memory management software. I don't call that "support" I call it "I'm not shopping with Microsoft any more". I eagerly await the release of NovelDOS [Novel Netware + DR-DOS] 7.0. -=>If you want to see more large scale projects like -=>Taligent or NT and less utility hacks like compression programs or editors, -=>it would be wise to support intellectual property rights. Well, I'm not sure I want to get into an argument about whether NT counts as a "large scale project" or "vaporware", and that would not be relevant to the list, but I fail to see how supporting intellectual property rights laws will have any effect on what KIND of software people write. The market determines that. Compession programs were wanted, there was a market for them, voila! NT had a limited market, and may in fact fail dismally if M$ does not deliver soon. IntProp laws would seem to me to irrelvant in this context. Can you explain what you mean more? Maybe I'm just missing your point. And to be honest, I'd like to see more utilities than new OSs, since I can use utilies to do something useful, while a new OS (particularly a buggy one that is just an improvement on an old one, designed to run on hardware I cannot afford, like DEC Alphas) is not of much interest to me. Anyway before people start whining about whether any of this is on topic or not, I for one think it is, since we are discussing not only the value of state-regulated intellectual property, but also economic forces, alternative markets, capitalism, and distinctions between successful and dismal strategies, all of which would seem to be Extropian subjects, even if couched in arguments about software. -- Stanton McCandlish * Space Migration * Networking * ChaOrder * NO GOV'T. * anton@hydra.unm.edu * Intelligence Increase * Nano * Crypto * NO RELIGION * FidoNet: 1:301/2 * Life Extension * Ethics * VR * Now! * NO MORE LIES! * Noise in the Void BBS * +1-505-246-8515 (24hr, 1200-14400, v32bis, N-8-1) * ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 03:49:42 -0600 (MDT) From: Stanton McCandlish Subject: POLI: William Gibson - a statist! :-( Quoth Jamie Dinkelacker, verily I say unto thee: -=> The point here is that its doubtful that giving software to kids will -=>necessarily engender long-term brand loyalty for application publishers. -=>They'll go through much by the time they have many disposal rubles they -=>direct to software. Many, many software generation will come and go, and so -=>will many companies. Though I don't in the least support Gibson's idea, I'll advocate Mephisto here, and disagree. Yes you are right that software (and the companies making it) will come and go, but the major leaders will be there for a long time to come. And precisely because many companies do NOT change software for years, there will be a market for people who know Yesterday's Wares. That early experience with one company breeds loyalty is just incontrobertible: Ask your self my DOS is still the #1 OS for personal computers, even when there are far more powerful, competitively priced, alternatives. I'll tell you why: because DOS came bundled and pre-installed in almost all of the IBM-compatible PCs that have been sold in the last decade or so, up to the present day. DOS is the only OS many people know, or will know for a long time. They've been using it since the 80's, and they know it. That's what they'll buy. Software breeds very strong loyalties. I know people that will adamantly tell you that CP/M machines or C-128's are the ultimate computer, because it what they know. Likewise I know one guy that swears by GeoWorks, despite the fact that it is a dead platform, beat out by Windows (again, due to bundling and first-use) Those learning AutoCAD and Lotus-123 now, will have marketable skills for many years to come. And even if the company switches from Word Perfect to WP for Windows, or to M$ Word, so what? One word processor is very like another, and the learning curve is negligible, especially those that are GUI based. I learned to effectively use 7 Mac and Windows word processors, and one DOS version, plus about a dozen DOS and Unix text editors, and WP for VAX and XWindows, all in about a week of goofing around, based on knowing how to use WP for DOS and WinWord. This sort of thing is not a problem for anyone with the intelligence and drive to be in the market in the first place. Anyway your idea that giving away (or selling cheap) samples does not engender brand loyalty flies in the face of well established marketing technique. I've seen it happen in computers quite a bit. CIRT (where I work) has a "vendor room" wherein a company can show their wares, offer discounts, etc. Our Macs were not used much at all, until Apple happened to be this season's vendor (CIRT got a bunch of high-end Macs for cheap in return of course). After that, Mac use at our labs has soared. And this is just from demos. What if they gave away Macs and software? These people would be hooked for life. Of course it's impractical to give away stuff like this to all comers, thus Gibson's idea to have them give it to schools. I think his heart's in the right place, but he left his brain back at the bus station or something. -=>Plus, I doubt many of the teachers would take the time to learn all the -=>software. Aren't we always hearing how badly they're overworked and -=>underpaid. Horrors, especially for a career path they chose freely. Umm...education is supposed to teach STUDENTS not teachers. The teachers just need to learn the package well enough to teach it (which, judging from some of my HS comp. classes, means only that they have to know how to read a manual aloud to the class -- not a tall order.) The kids will figure out the software, trust me. -- Stanton McCandlish * Space Migration * Networking * ChaOrder * NO GOV'T. * anton@hydra.unm.edu * Intelligence Increase * Nano * Crypto * NO RELIGION * FidoNet: 1:301/2 * Life Extension * Ethics * VR * Now! * NO MORE LIES! * Noise in the Void BBS * +1-505-246-8515 (24hr, 1200-14400, v32bis, N-8-1) * ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 09:33:28 -0400 (EDT) From: Harry Shapiro Subject: Health: My Doctor This is a brief description of my "doctor." I am posting it as it think it is worth discussing the divergent views of "our" healthcare workers. On the plus side: He trained first as a chemist and is also an MD, so he bring somewhat of a scientific "mind-set" to his work. He has actually studied Nutrition. He recommends his patients take vitamins. He is currently marketing a private labeled brand of anti-oxidants to doctors called Life Link. I told him about my interested in Cryonics and asked for his help with that should it be needed. He agreed, although he feels that it is unlikely to work. (Which I agree with but feel it is worth the cost; I also feel it is more likely to work in the future as technology improves.) On the neg. side: He was very skeptical of "smart drugs." He seems to be deathist. "Interested in a healthy but "normal" life span." He indicated he wanted to be freeze dried and "planted" under a fruit tree when he deanimates. /hawk -- Harry S. Hawk habs@extropy.org Electronic Communications Officer, Extropy Institute Inc. List Administrator of the Extropy Institute Mailing List Private Communication for the Extropian Community since 1991 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 09:49:47 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: Wage Competition FutureNerd Steve Witham says: > Now, ask yourself, how many PIPS will common desktop computers have at the > point where "real AI" software becomes commonly available? > > It's a trick question, though. The more PIPS are available, the faster > AIs will be able to take over the economy. But the fewer that are > available, the fewer slave-breeding generations you'll be able to run > before it's too late. Before its too late to do what? What is it exactly that we are supposed to be afraid of here? Perry ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 14:50:21 BST From: jrk@information-systems.east-anglia.ac.uk (Richard Kennaway) Subject: FWD: SPUNK PRESS: Call for submissions! Date: Tue, 27 Jul 93 14:52:55 +0200 From: miekael Subject: SPUNK PRESS: Call for submissions! CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS TO ELECTRONIC TEXT ARCHIVE (Please copy this text to any other forum you see fit) Spunk Press is an independent publishing organization started at the end of 1992 by a few individuals, and run via a mailing list, which want to do the same thing for alternative literature as the Gutenberg project does to the classics. We want to archive scanned in, typed in or posted alternative and anarchistic material as well as distribute and encourage the production of such material online. Anything anarchistic, alternative, underground or fringe scientific will fit into the Spunk Press archive. We're finally getting something that approaches order in our main archive, so we're now requesting material from all of you. If you're a zine editor, a radical publisher, a writer, a scientist or anyone else with material that you feel fit, please contact us and we'll include your text in the archive for further distribution. If you want to take a look at the archive and see what's there so far, you can peek into red.css.itd.umich.edu under pub/Politics/Spunk Although our archive may be located on the Internet we don't want to concentrate our activities solely to the net. On the contrary we want to reach out with the Spunk Press tentacles into the BBS and PC community and even into the realms still reigned by Paper. We want to distribute our material everywhere and since this, after all, is a call for submissions, we also want to *get* texts from all those communities. So send us what you got, wherever you are! If you're on the Internet you can write to the spunk press editorial collective at spunk-list@lysator.liu.se and tell us what you got that you want to get published. If you have no way of reaching the Internet, via mail bridges or other ways, you can write to: Spunk PRESS c/o ACF Freedom Bookshop 84B Whitechapel High Street London E1 7QX UK or Spunk PRESS c/o Practical Anarchy PO Box 173 Madison, WI 53701-0173 USA If you want to join us in collecting material, consider joining the spunk-list. If you just want to get information about new titles and what's going on in Spunk Press, consider joining the spunk-info mailing list instead. To join anyone of these, please write to spunk-list-request@lysator.liu.se and specify which list you want to be added to. There is no need to subscribe to both lists since every piece of information sent to the spunk-info list will be thoroughly discussed on spunk-list first. Miekael, Spunk Press Online Publicity Czar ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 10:00:49 -0400 (EDT) From: Harry Shapiro Subject: Vegan: My cholesterol - 118 I just got the results from my yearly "check-up" I am pleased to report my cholesterol level is 118 and the ratio of "good to bad" is 3.2 Having a "good" heart is important to me, which is why this news is so important to me. My average grandparent lived to 79.25 years (and is getting older), I hope to live a long time. My grandparent with the shortest life span only lived to be 48 years old, and died of heart failure, as a result of epilepsy and being a chain smoker. /hawk -- Harry S. Hawk habs@extropy.org Electronic Communications Officer, Extropy Institute Inc. List Administrator of the Extropy Institute Mailing List Private Communication for the Extropian Community since 1991 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 10:11:28 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: AI: Searle's Chinese Room Stanton McCandlish says: > -=>The real problem with Searle is this -- he makes this big deal of the > -=>distinction between "simulation" and reality -- a simulated hurricane > -=>is obviously not a real hurricane. However, is a simulation of adding > -=>2 to 2 any different from really adding 2 to 2? > > So, you are saying if I take another .AVI animation file, this time of a > calculator, and in one series of frames I show it "adding" 2 + 2, and in > the final frame I make it show the result of "4" that this is somehow the > same as actually computing 2 + 2? No. I'm not talking about displaying a movie; I'm talking about running an algorithm. If you don't understand where all this fits in, or why Searle would call running an algorithm a "simulation", then read his article -- its easily available in at least four collections I can name, including "The Mind's I", and then re-read what I've written. Perry ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 10:20:28 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: Who is signed up for cryonics Stanton McCandlish says: > Quoth Nick Szabo, verily I say unto thee: > > -=>mirrors and Venetian blinds based in Clarke (geosynchronous) orbit. > > Speaking of Arthur C. Clarke, is he signed up for cryonics? Last I heard > he was approaching deamination due to cancer or something. > > Actually, let me ask this, is ANYONE of note (i.e. people that are > generally respected and valued by Extropians, and/or people who are in a > good position to serve as something of a good example, or who are > otherwise in the media eye) signed up for cryonics? As long as we are asking, Stanton, are *YOU* signed up for cryonics? Cryonics is cheap. Even a student can easily afford it. There is little or no excuse for anyone who feels that it can work and who desires the service not to try to sign up. Alcor's phone number is 1-800-367-2228. Reach for that phone right now and ask for an information packet, or, better yet, just start the signup process. They take credit cards. Perry Who is signed up for Cryonics. PS Alcor has a strict policy of neither confirming nor denying the signup or suspension of anyone -- so its likely hard to find out if a particular person is signed up. However, given that there are only a few hundred suspension members at Alcor, the odds are against any particular individual you can name being signed up. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 10:37:02 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" Subject: Vegan: My cholesterol - 118 Harry Shapiro says: > I just got the results from my yearly "check-up" > > I am pleased to report my cholesterol level is 118 and the Still 25 clicks above mine, but congratulations. Of the non-vegans with healthy diets I know, Harry has one of the better ones. Of course, his is nearly vegan, too... > ratio of "good to bad" is 3.2 About where mine is. I started exercising about five months ago when I finally got a membership in the Gym at my office. Since then, my average resting heart rate has dropped from about 100 bpm to around 70 bpm. I hope to push it lower in the future. Regular exercise is another important component of the life extension picture. I must thank Mark Desilets for pointing out to me about a year ago that I was neglecting it. Perry ------------------------------ End of Extropians Digest V93 #207 ********************************* &