Sounds like an interesting book -- what is it to be human and to be conscious? When we ask the question about WHAT A HUMAN IS, then you are faced with the fact that we are self-conscious beings. This element of consciousness cannot be ignored, because you cannot deny the fact of your own conscious existence. However, we can question whether human consciousness is a by-product of interactions within matter or not.
Many people maintain the belief that humans ARE nothing more than the sum total of their bodily composition. Those that believe this will then be of the opinion that consciousness is a by-product of a complex interaction of molecules within the human organism, much like software running on the hardware of a computer.
But the question is still unresolved: Is matter primary, and consciousness an attribute of it, or is consciousness primary, and matter and energy are the substrate into which this consciousness acts?
For one of the best researched treasties on the subject of THE QUESTION OF HUMAN FREEDOM OF WILL, see:
the main attacks of the opponents of freedom are directed only against freedom of choice....Herbert Spencer, whose doctrines are gaining ground daily, says:
That everyone is at liberty to desire or not to desire, which is the real proposition involved in the dogma of free will, is negatived as much by the analysis of consciousness, as by the contents of the preceding chapter. *
* The Principles of Psychology, 1855, German edition 1882; Part IV, Chap. ix, par. 219.
Others, too, start from the same point of view in combating the concept of free will. The germs of all the relevant arguments are to be found as early as Spinoza. All that he brought forward in clear and simple language against the idea of freedom has since been repeated times without number, but as a rule enveloped in the most hair-splitting theoretical doctrines, so that it is difficult to recognize the straightforward train of thought which is all that matters. Spinoza writes in a letter of October or November, 1674:
I call a thing free which exists and acts from the pure necessity of its nature, and I call that unfree, of which the being and action are precisely and fixedly determined by something else. Thus, for example, God, though necessary, is free because he exists only through the necessity of his own nature. Similarly, God cognizes himself and all else freely, because it follows solely from the necessity of his nature that he cognizes all. You see, therefore, that for me freedom consists not in free decision, but in free necessity.
But let us come down to created things which are all determined by external causes to exist and to act in a fixed and definite manner. To perceive this more clearly, let us imagine a perfectly simple case. A stone, for example, receives from an external cause acting upon it a certan quantity of motion, by reason of which it necessarily continues to move, after the impact of the external cause has ceased. The continued motion of the stone is due to compulsion, not to the necessity of its own nature, because it requires to be defined by the thrust of an external cause. What is true here for the stone is true also for every other particular thing, however complicated and many-sided it may be, namely, that everything is necessarily determined by external causes to exist and to act in a fixed and definite manner.
Now, please, suppose that this stone during its motion thinks and knows that it is striving to the best of its ability to continue in motion. This stone, which is conscious only of its striving and is by no neans indifferent, will believe that it is absolutely free, and that it continues in motion for no other reason than its own will to continue. But this is just the human freedom that everybody claims to possess and which consists in nothing but this, that men are conscious of their desires, but ignorant of the causes by which they are determined. Thus the child believes that he desires milk of his own free will, the angry boy regards his desire for vengeance as free, and the coward his desire for flight. Again, the drunken man believes that he says of his own free will what, sober again, he would fain have left unsaid, and as this prejudice is innate in all men, it is difficult to free oneself from it. For, although experience teaches us often enough that man least of all can temper his desires, and that, moved by conflicting passions, he sees the better and pursues the worse, yet he considers himself free because there are some things which he desires less strongly, and some desires which he can easily inhibit through the recollection of something else which it is often possible to recall.
Because this view is so clearly and definitely expressed it is easy to detect the fundamental error that it contains. The same necessity by which a stone makes a definite movement as the result of an impact, is said to compel a man to carry out an action when impelled thereto by any reason. It is only because man is conscious of his action that he thinks himself to be its originator. But in doing so he overlooks the fact that he is driven by a cause which he cannot help obeying. The error in this train of thought is soon discovered. Spinoza, and all who think like him, overlook the fact that man not only is conscious of his action, but also may become conscious of the causes which guide him. Nobody will deny that the child is unfree when he desires milk, or the drunken man when he says things which he later regrets. Neither knows anything of the causes, working in the depths of their organisms, which exercise irresistible control over them. But is it justifiable to lump together actions of this kind with those in which a man is conscious not only of his actions but also of the reasons which cause him to act? Are the actions of men really all of one kind? Should the act of a soldier on the field of battle, of the scientific researcher in his laboratory, of the statesman in the most complicated diplomatic negotiations, be placed scientifically on the same level with that of the child when it desires milk: It is no doubt true that it is best to seek the solution of a problem where the conditions are sinmplest. But inability to discrinminate has before now caused endless confusion. There is, after all, a profound difference between knowing why I am acting and not knowing it. At first sight this seems a self-evident truth. And yet the opponents of freedom never ask themselves whether a motive of action which I recognize and see through, is to be regarded as compulsory for me in the same sense as the organic process which causes the child to cry for milk.
Eduard von Hartmann asserts that the human will depends on two chief factors, the motives and the character.* If one regards men as all alike, or at any rate the differences between them as negligible, then their will appears as determined from without, that is to say, by the circumstances which come to meet them. But if one bears in mind that a man adopts an idea, or mental picture, as the motive of his action only if his character is such that this mental picture arouses a desire in him, then he appears as determined from within and not from without. Now because, in accordance with his character, he must first adopt as a motive a mental picture given to him from without, a man believes he is free, that is, independent of external impulses. The truth, however, according to Eduard von Hartmann, is that:
even though we ourselves first adopt a mental picture as a motive, we do so not arbitrarily, but according to the necessity of our characterological disposition, that is, we are anything but free.
* Phaenomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, p. 451.
Here again the difference between motives which I allow to influence me only after I have permeated them with my consciousness, and those which I follow without any clear knowledge of them, is absolutely ignored.
This leads us straight to the standpoint from which the subject will be considered here. Have we any right to consider the question of the freedom of the will by itself at all? And if not, with what other question must it necessarily be connected?
If there is a difference between a conscious motive of action and an unconscious urge, then the conscious motive will result in an action which must be judged differently from one that springs from blind impluse. Hence our first question will concern this difference, and on the result of this enquiry will depend what attitude we shall have to take towards the question of freedom proper.
(Rudolf Steiner, from *The Philosophy of Freedom*, Chapter 1)
hi - i'm the one who typed in tesla's autobiography that is available at a number of different sites on the web. all of them are sourced from the one i typed in, but that was a couple of years ago. then, i listed my email address as: genie.geis.com but that is obsolete now. my new email address is:
johnrpenner@earthlink.net
the original link from where all the other copies are coming from starts at my home page:
hi - i'm the one who typed in that pdf book. that was a couple of years ago. i listed my email address at @genie.geis.com -- but that is now obsolete. my new email address is:
The solution to the Microsoft problem lies in this -- that there must be seperation of RIGHTS (i.E. Who sets the STANDARDS), and of Economic Interest (those who produce the software which EMPLOY the standards, and go by them as a guide to create the product of their labour called the "Operating System Platform"). So long as they remain coupled, the abuses of monopoly power will be able to continue. The solution to monopoly problems is to deccouple the FEELING / RIGHTS / STANDARDS DEFINITION BODIES - from the PRODUCERS / THOSE WHO PRODUCE WHAT IS DEFINED BY THOSE STANDARDS. Microsoft's monopoly has resulted from the ability for a proprietary standard to exist. The proprietary standard could not arise if you decoupled these two functions. Instead of having the vested-interest manufacturer defining their own standards and letting the economic force run amuck, it is in the public interest to have economic power trimmed and pruned to grow appropriately to what is good for the consumer (the people) by the democratic exercise of FEELING, rights, and standards definition as a seperate, non-biased entity. A failure to seperate these two will always eventually result in a situation where an abuse of monopoly power can arise.
thank you for your kind opportunity to accept questions from the slashdot community. i have two questions:
1) what i would like to know is this: we have all been instructed in the theory of the conservation of matter and energy. yet, i was wondering if there is any evidence to confirm that the possibility exists that the conservation of matter is an illusion created by the continuous passing-away and re-appearance of matter on an atomic scale. only because the matter continuously passes away, and then comes back into existence, it gives the illusion of the imperishablity of matter. what are your thoughts on this?
2) we know that physical systems are bounded by entropy, but seeing that we live in a world which not only contains physical systems, but also biological systems (which seem to defy entropy), do you have any idea of where is the bridge between the entropy of the physical systems, and the seemingly entropy-defying behaviour of the biological systems?
thank you, and best regards, johnrpenner@earthlink.net
the coming age will be whatever people decide to do. if a lot of people just decide to do things for themselves, then that collectively will be the course of the greater whole of what we call society. the strength of the wolf is the pack, and the strength of the pack is the wolf. people are more and more inclined to see things from only what benefits themselves -- i.e. egoism. but human development does not depend so much on technology as on the ability of individuals to see themselves as part of a greater community and rise beyond mere egoism. this is the reason why open source works. it is one of the first signs towards the adoption of a new way of working. supply and demand (on physical economic principle only) ignores the other tiers of maslows hierarchy of needs. not only the physical needs must be met through supply and demand, but also the emotional, and social needs of people, onwards to self-actualisation. this is only possible where people see themselves as part of a community which forms a greater whole, and which in turn supplies the needs of those individuals which comprise it. beside this, so-called technological progress is nothing than mere gimickry (as much as it does keep us gainfully employed...;-)
| | - copyright exists to ensure musicians get paid.
|
| Wrong. Copyright exists to ensure writers get paid. Contracts exist to
| ensure musicians get paid.
if you read past the next line, you'd see the words:
in practice, many musicians (who play instruments) starve,
while marketing bimbos (spice girls) thrive
the point being made is that: a lot of people justify
copyright (correctly or incorrectly) that it is an (imperfect)
system for somehow getting money to the producers.
that this doesn't actually happen is already said.
but perhaps you didn't read past the first line.
| | - the physical distributors and merchandisers pay into the
| | musician's pool that pays and feeds the musicians.
|
| Does Iggy Pop (only 5'4") get the same amount as Meatloaf?
| That's communism!
who are you to decide and say how muhc iggy pop gets?
iggy pop gets as much of the pie as is determined by
the percentage of downloads of his music.
| | - so all software is free - you get mindshare from it.
|
| "Sorry, I can't pay rent this month. Here, have some of my mindshare."
think again guy -- you quote it out of context - you overlook the very
mechanism in this system that gets them paid.
| | - distributors pay back a percentage of sales back into the pool.
| | - so it comes back and feeds itelf (the most important part).
|
| Why doesn't your "musicians association" (no drummers allowed, I take it)
since when and where was any commennt made
that didn't allow drummers in this?
the exclusion is yours - not the musician's association's.
the whole basis for the 'musicians association' is the development
of an idea contained in the following threefold social-economic
lectures located here:
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/ St einer-Social.html
| act as middleman and do its own P&D, using college radio and the Internet
| for marketing? Pressing and distribution are easy. Marketing is a bitch,
| especially with commercial radio, TV, and print locked up in a HOT WET 69
| with the Big 4.5.
the idea is precisely to chop current record companies into
TWO independent functioning units. what is gained by this?
currently record companies do two functions:
i) PRODUCE -- sign, record, market, and feed musicians.
ii) DISTRIBUTE -- make money from marketing and selling products
from the musicians they sign.
just as there is a conflict of interest between the RIGHTS
of people, and ECONOMIC involvement (can you truly expect someone
with a vested Economicc interest in a matter to act objectively on
the basis of what someone's RIGHTs are in a given situation?),
so also there a conflict of interest that moves record companies
towards promoting 'marketing bimbos' rather than solely representing
and serving the needs of actual musicians who write and play music.
by severing the connection betweenn i) production of music content,
and ii) making money from distribution, you remove this artificial
pressure that exists when they are coupled, and thus the pressure
for record companies to producce 'spice girl' phenomenon is relieved.
that is not to say that someone couldn't make a spice girl if they
wanted to - just that the field would actually be leveled so that
the promotion of spice girls wouldn't be artificially inflated.
under the 'musicians association' model, current record companies
are given a choice:
A) BECOME A DISTRIBUTOR only:
become strictly a merchandiser (you sell stuff based on the stuff
that every other merchandiser can also get FREELY out of the pool),
and you compete based on whover packages and markets the best.
B) BECOME A PRODUCER only:
become involved in the 'musicians pool' where you are allowed
to record and produce content, but your income comes from the pool
and is dividied up among the producers based on number of downloads.
that way no one can cry foul over a false and arbitrary splitting
of profits.
if they don't want to join, they are still free to distribute
music created by artists belonging to the musician's pool.
however, they will be paying a percentage of profits back to
the pool for every product they sell back into the pool, and
that money will be dividied-up between the artists that ARE
in the musician's pool.
> Okay, but picture this: I create a few songs. I join the pool, but I do
> not release a cd. I generate *NO* profit for the system, I just make music
> available for download through the system. If everyone downloads my
> digital music then I am theoretically entitled to a large portion of the
> money pool when I have contributed none through actual physical sales. Is
> there some aspect that I have missed to prevent this sort of situation?
yes - any distributor out there that wants to can take a copy
of your music. make up some posters, CDs, some fancy packaging
that will make it appeal as a product to your fans.
THEN -- every time they sell a CD (with your, and other stuff on it),
they pay back a percentage into the musician's pool. that musicians
pool sends micropayments into your bank account based on how many
people downloaded your song for free.
the following has to be worked out by those involved - change it
as necessary -- but the basic idea is this: by having your song downloaded
for free, you would have to register an email address -- a place to make
micropayments to -- such that any downloads made in your name get registered
into the 'payment pie' -- which is determined by the number of 'napster'
downloads (doesn't really matter if its napster or something else - that
can be any download service that is willing to participate in this).
> As we move closer to 100% digital distribution, with no physical product,
> where does the money come from?
>
> Also, why would I pay any significant money for a CD when it's legal for
> someone to download and burn the CDs locally, charging only for resources
> consumed (with a slight markup)?
i do not believe the vision that sales of physical goods will diminish
towards zero and be replaced entirely by digital distribution.
as digital distribution goes up, the value-added of merchandising
of 'physical' stuff based around the content will go up. SOMETHING
THAT IS PHYSICAL IS SCARCE, and its value (unlike digital) lies in
that not everyone can have it. thus, collectors will pay a premium
to have something TANGIBLE and official from the band over just a
download of the song.
when anyone can get a copy of a song downloaded for free,
then the merchandisers will 'add value' to the product through
unique packaging, and by inventing desirable things to provide
in addition to 'just the data'. for example:
- you get a printed booklet and poster with your CD - looks nicer than
if you burn it yourself.
- you have all sorts of merchandise: books, fanzines, t-shirts,
it is up to the ingenuity of the merchandisers to make money off of
this stuff - and when they do - a percentage (like a sales tax) goes back
to the musician's pool, and gets divided up by percentage of napster (or
insert your service here) downloads that month.
- i can download a copy of any of shakespeare's worrks TODAY FOR FREE
from PROJECT GUTENBURG - but i still go out to amazon to order a copy.
why? i COULD download it and print it myself on my inkjet printer,
but it would cost me more to download and print then to buy a copy
that's already nicely packaged by a bookseller. in essence - the 'data'
of the book is free, but i'm paying for more than just the content,
i'm also paying for the convenience (over printing on my own inkjet),
and the PRESENTATION.
- copyright exists to ensure musicians get paid.
- the other side is that once an artist produces something,
it goes beyond them and many benefit.
- between consumers and producers now stands record companies
- but paying artists is only a step on the way to gaining profit.
in practice, many musicians (who play instruments) starve, while
marketing bimbos (spice girls) thrive - this is wrong.
- a fundemental qualitative difference between physical and
electronic goods is - if i have an apple and give you an apple,
i no longer have an apple; but if i have an idea and give you an idea,
we BOTH have an idea. therefore you cannot treat electronic things as
if they were actually physical goods, because they aren't!
- still, you must compensate producers of the original bits.
so what to do?
> MUSICIANS ASSOCIATIONS:
- the physical distributors and merchandisers pay into the musician's
pool that pays and feeds the musicians.
- the musicians pool distributes it equitably among its active producers.
- from the pool comesmore new music. which is given away for free.
unlimited digital copies for everyone, never again a dime paid for
anything that's just DATA.
- distributors get fresh music, and sell and package more STUFF.
- distributors pay back a percentage of sales back into the pool.
- so it comes back and feeds itelf (the most important part).
> RESULTS:
- so all software is free - you get mindshare from it.
- but if you make a physical whose value lies on the free music on it,
then a percentage goes back.
- but the artist is not paid direct - it goes to the musician's pool,
which doles out shares each month by percentage of overall downloads
from a service such as Napster.
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/ St einer-Social.html
--
The Strength of the Wolf is the Pack;
and the Strength of the Pack is the Wolf.
(Rudyard Kipling)
they're finally catching on... about ten years ago, came to the conclusion that casuality runs "backwards" through time -- but its really us that are going backwards through time. what we call reverse-time is actually forwards time. therefore the statement "the cause changes the effect" is incorrect; it would be better to say, "the effect changes the cause!".:-) regards - http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/
'You govern a kingdom by normal rules; You fight a war by exceptional moves; But you win the world by letting alone, How do I know that this is so? By what is within me! The more taboo and inhibitions there are in the world, The poorer the people become. The sharper the weapons the people posses, The greater confusion reigns in the realm. The more clever and crafty the men, The oftener strange things happen. The more articulate the laws and ordinances, The more robbers and thieves arise.' (Tao Teh Ching #57, Lao Tzu)
prayer done mechanically is NOT prayer! prayer is about life appealing to life. when prayer is done as a routine, as something mechanically, it is no longer prayer. when people just go spewing off words without imbuing them with feeling and meaning in a living way, then it ceases to be prayer. having a bunch of computers "pray" is nothing more than setting up a bunch of tape recorders playing back to nothing. just because the same sounds are coming out of the speakers doesn't mean anything. if you're on a phone, and you're listening to someone, or you're listening to a recording of a taped phone conversation -- its NOT the same thing. one is live, and one is just a dead recording. 2pesos. http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/
operating system: that which lies between the hardware and the applications running on the hardware. the purpose for this is to abstract the hardware from the applications software so as to provide: device independence, scalablitiy, and portability for applications. they also provide basic system-wide resources such as: fonts, device drivers, and file-systems, sound, video, printer, and power-management. operating systems that still maintain hardware-dependencies are imperfections.
i've been using USB for over a year as my ONLY peripheral connector, and it rocks! currently, i'm using: i) mouse ii) keyboard iii) QuickCAM iv) Umax Scanner v) QPS-CD-RW vi) ZIP Drive -- plugged into a 7-port USB hub. it works! the mouse does NOT slow down when i am scanning or trasferring data from ZIP drive (it is actually smoother, because overall datarate of mouse is higher). i'm using them on a notebook (ibook), and to get all these peripherals plugged in, i plug in just ONE plug, and everything is connected - simple! people who want to keep their old connectors are LUDDITES! who in their right mind wants to continue to advocate five incompatible types of plugs when you can have just ONE??? just think about it for a minute -- in five years, you could still have: i) a plug for keyboard, ii) a plug for mouse, iii) a third plug for ZIP drive, iv) a fourth plug for scanner, v) a fifth plug for printer -- talk about stupid. replace all these incopmatible plugs with one universal plug that is interchangeable between ALL perpipherals -- heck ya! its a done deal for me. i've been on this system for over a year and would never go back to the stone-ages of all those crummy and incompatible legacy connectors and all their attendant configuration headaches. johnrpenner@earthlink-NOSPAM-.net
i'm using DOS with a USB keyboard -- on an imac running VIRTUAL PC -- works great. dos thinks the USB keyboard is an old-fashioned keyboard, never even blinks...:-)
TIME FOR AN INTERNET (BOSTON) TEA PARTY! mark FEBRUARY 17, 2000 as "internet tea party day" the day microsoft comes out with y2k, millions of people the globe over will protest the upgrade, and demonstrate their actions by deleting windows from their hard drives, and installing another operating system of their choice. the day we dump our microsoft OS's into the digital harbour, and refuse the microsoft tax! huge international installfests! web site coming soon. someone respond to: johnrpenner@earthlink-NOSPAM-.net if interested in forming something more of this, and getting some server space up.
i gave up my car and television two years ago after seven year of commuting -- it's the best thing i ever did. i don't watch TV anymore. instead, now i actually live the life people sit about passively watching. one thing i've noticed is that the faster people go, the less patient they become. i walk to work now, and it takes me abotu 40 minutes. there are peopl driving in cars by me that are moving about ten times as fast, yet they are impatient and frusterated with 'how slow' traffic is moving, but they're going faster than me -- i just think people in cars are crazy now, i see them angry all the time. people flip through 500 channels and "there's nothing on". but they spent two hours watching nothing, and i read half a book. it all comes down to deciding whats important. i think in the case of media, less is definitely more. one good book is worth several days of TV watching, but people say they don't have the patience. but they have less patience, because they don't make the effort, it's NOT AS EASY, but its more worth it.:-)
"If you own a machine, you are in turn owned by it, and spend your time serving it..." (Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Forbidden Tower)(br>
On the effect of Computers on Children in Education:
http://www.ime.usp.br/~vwsetzer/comp-in-educ.htm l
On the effect of computers in relation to: doing, feeling, thinking:
Remember - it's not HOW MUCH information you have, its a matter of having THE RIGHT information -- the rest just bogs you down. The better question is not "how much can you get", but "HOW MUCH CAN YOU DO WITHOUT!?"
It is important to note that nature of human memory is fundamentally different than the externalized computer storage of "memory". If you study neuro-psychology, you will understand that scientists have had utmost difficulty in localising memory in the human brain. That is because human memory is not like RAM at all. Every time you recall something, you are not doing a lookup from a physical-electronic memory address. Instead, the impression is brought up as an entirely new creation within your consciousness. To speak of machine sentience, you must consider this very fundamental difference between machine "memory" and human memory which is an aspect of self-consciousness.
i've been working on keyboards and with mouse for over 20 years (since 1979), and it is a problem at work, because when a deadline comes, and the wrists start to hurt, what do you do? since this is a prime concert for my livelihood, i have found two solutions:
i) i have switched to a dvorak keyboard. its a pain to learn for the first two weeks, but once you get used to it, the 70% less finger travel off the home row starts to become significant. this works because they did a frequency analysis of the most common consonants and vowels and placed them on the home row. if you've got RSI, the dvorak keyboard is worth looking into (from someone who's tried it).
ii) about a year ago when my wrists were particularly sore from over 10+ hours/day on a computer, my doctor wanted to perscribe an anti-inflamatory to reduce tendon swelling. but i had read something (below) that got me thinking -- when mouse clicking and keyboard typing, i'm constantly using my muscles and adapting them to a single and automatic way of moving. this gives the muscles fatigue for that configuration of movements. after reading the below text, i surmised that perhaps i should retrain my muscle reflexes with a new set of movements that are difficult to learn (as in playing a guitar or new instrument when you've never played one), or do something like practice fine motor control in a way.
the solution to mouse-clicking and keyboard typing pains is therefore this: REPROGRAMME THE DEVICE DRIVERS OF YOUR MUSCLE MEMORY WITH A NEW FINELY CONTROLLED SET OF MUSCLE MOVEMENTS SUCH AS THOSE PRODUCED WHILE PLAYING A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT OR WITH AN ALTERED STYLE OF HANDWRITING. THIS WORKS TO STRENGTHEN THE MUSCLES INVOLVED, and alleviates much of the pain, because your hand is stronger, it can withstand more of what causes the pain -- i.e. the cumulative effect of small repetitive strain.
--| repitivie strain solution from 1920's |-----
Here is another example that may also appear trivial on the surface. You know that the physical and etheric bodies are intimately connected. Now anyone with a healthy soul will be moved to compassion for clerical workers and others whose professions demand a great deal of writing. Perhaps you have noticed the strange movements they make in the air whenever they are about to write. Actually, with some of them the movements are not so extreme and they may only give a kind of jerk when they write, a jerk repeated for every up and down stroke. You can see the jerking in the writing. This condition is easily understood through spiritual science. In a healthy human being the etheric body, guided by the astral body, is always able to permeate the physical body. Thus, the physical body is normally the servant of the etheric body. When, undirected by the astral body, the physical body executes movements on its own, it is symptomatic of an unhealthy condition. These jerks represent the subordination of the etheric to the physical body, and denote that the weak etheric body is no longer fully able to direct the physical. Such a relationship between the physical and etheric bodies lies at the occult foundation of every form of cramp or convulsion. Here the physical body has become dominant and makes movements on its own, whereas in a healthy man all his movements are subordinated to the will of the astral body working through the etheric.
Again, there is a way of helping a person with such symptoms, provided the condition has not progressed too far, if one takes into account the occult facts. In this case we must recognize the existence and efficacy of the etheric body and try to strengthen it. Imagine someone so dissipated that his fingers get to shaking and jerking when he tries to write. You certainly would do well to advise him to write less and take a good vacation, but better still you might also recommend that he try to acquire a different handwriting. Tell him to stop writing automatically and try practicing for fifteen minutes a day to pay attention to the way he forms the letters he writes. Tell him to try to shape his handwriting differently and to cultivate the habit of drawing the letters. The point here is that when a man consciously changes his handwriting, he is obliged to pay attention to, and to bring the innermost core of his being into connection with what he is doing. The etheric body is strengthened in this way and the person is made healthier.
(Experpted from "Overcoming Nervousness", a lecture by: Rudolf Steiner, Munich, January 11, 1912, GA 143)
also, as wonderful as linux is, it does not allow me to do my daily work. if i cannot run: framemaker, photoshop, filemaker, acrobat distiller, soundedit16pro, cubase, visionDSP, and illustrator on linux -- then linux is less than useless for me for getting my work done instead of tinkering!
right now the only daily app that i need for work that linux actually provides is NETSCAPE, and say what you like - the GIMP is not photoshop. you can not do complex high-quality four colour (CMYK) work for prepress on linux! that is simply a fact of the current state of linux.
so -- during the day, i must use macOS (or windoze) if i want to use my work to actually do something productive. at night, linux (ppc) is fun to tinker with, but still lacking in any consistent elegant ease-of-use or productivity applications. i give it another two years before linux becomes anywhere close to the mac for useful productivity applications. but by that time OS-X should be able run linux binaries anyways...;-)
a lot of linux users miss this point -- the mac is still a great machine to hack. any user with a copy of resedit can alter final binaries, down to the text in menus and dialogues because of resources. the mac provides a better hack for most average users than is possible for the average users of unix. sure, it is possible to hack more in linux if you have hours and hours to devote to it, but the fact of the matter is, the mac is easier to hack for the average user in a useful way. if you want to change the menus from english to german for your mother on a final binary -- it is simple on a mac, it is difficult in linux (your mother should never have to do a recompile to get something to run!).
another point missed here by most is that apple made the mouse & gui as low-level as the mouse and an xterm, but the linux people keep on looking for a lower-level CLI below the GUI, what they don't get is that the macOS is so advanced that the GUI is equally as low-level as the CLI. having a resource database in every file, and only having a graphics-mode for display (and no text mode) is a step up in the evolutionary chain away from the thirty year-old teletype printer terminals. i know a lot of people will say that you don't get as much control with a GUI as you do with a CLI, but that is only because these backwards people have insisted on writing CLI-only commands without writing their equivalent GUI commands. that is the failure of the programmers, not of GUI vs CLI.
i've been paperless since 1979 and my trs80 model i. i've kept everything as a text file, and this last year i backed up every text file, email (from BBS systems before internet and fidonet) onto one searchable CD-ROM. i've been consistent at forwarding data from system to system and always made backups. the system works, it just takes training users how to live filing electronically instead of with wasteful old paper. i had to use xmodem and a rs-232 cable to get it out of my trs80 into a PC (xt8088), then a few years later into a macintosh plus, and from then on in all my creator dates and filenames have been long filenames. i still use text files (with bbedit) for writing everything, because then you can easily search it on the mac using GREP (built-into bbedit). the system works great. just the other day i emailed a friend of mine a 30k text file entered in 1981 - he didn't even remember it existed, but my text search found it in less than ten seconds. if only people could be weened off their archaic reliance on paper. i think its just a comfort thing. they're tought how to files with paper, but they "don't trust" electronic filing, because they don't know how to backup properly, nor how to create a useful directory structure with DESCRIPTIVE and useful filenames for when they have to search. its all a matter of learning good filenaming and directory structuring, but people keep crazy electronic file structures, while they don't think twice about spending HOURS organising paper files in a cabinet. if people would just take the care they did in filing things electronically as they did in a real paper filing cabinet, there would be no problem!
Slashdot Mirror
hi - i'm the one who typed in tesla's autobiography that is available at a number of different sites on the web. all of them are sourced from the one i typed in, but that was a couple of years ago. then, i listed my email address as: genie.geis.com but that is obsolete now. my new email address is:
T esla.pdf
johnrpenner@earthlink.net
the original link from where all the other copies are coming from starts at my home page:
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Downloads/
please note the new email address if you have any questions or suggestions.
thank you,
john penner.
hi - i'm the one who typed in that pdf book. that was a couple of years ago. i listed my email address at @genie.geis.com -- but that is now obsolete. my new email address is:
johnrpenner@earthlink.net
regards,
john.
home page: http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner
breaking up microsoft is stupid -- it'll be just like the sorcerer's apprentice -- you'll just end up with lots fo little microsofts.
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles
The solution to the Microsoft problem lies in this -- that there must be
seperation of RIGHTS (i.E. Who sets the STANDARDS), and of Economic
Interest (those who produce the software which EMPLOY the standards, and
go by them as a guide to create the product of their labour called the
"Operating System Platform"). So long as they remain coupled, the abuses
of monopoly power will be able to continue. The solution to monopoly
problems is to deccouple the FEELING / RIGHTS / STANDARDS DEFINITION
BODIES - from the PRODUCERS / THOSE WHO PRODUCE WHAT IS DEFINED BY THOSE
STANDARDS. Microsoft's monopoly has resulted from the ability for a
proprietary standard to exist. The proprietary standard could not arise if
you decoupled these two functions. Instead of having the vested-interest
manufacturer defining their own standards and letting the economic force
run amuck, it is in the public interest to have economic power trimmed and
pruned to grow appropriately to what is good for the consumer (the people)
by the democratic exercise of FEELING, rights, and standards definition as
a seperate, non-biased entity. A failure to seperate these two will always
eventually result in a situation where an abuse of monopoly power can
arise.
dear mr. lederman,
thank you for your kind opportunity to accept questions
from the slashdot community. i have two questions:
1) what i would like to know is this: we have all been
instructed in the theory of the conservation of matter
and energy. yet, i was wondering if there is any
evidence to confirm that the possibility exists that
the conservation of matter is an illusion created by the
continuous passing-away and re-appearance of matter
on an atomic scale. only because the matter continuously
passes away, and then comes back into existence, it
gives the illusion of the imperishablity of matter.
what are your thoughts on this?
2) we know that physical systems are bounded by entropy,
but seeing that we live in a world which not only contains
physical systems, but also biological systems (which seem
to defy entropy), do you have any idea of where is the
bridge between the entropy of the physical systems, and
the seemingly entropy-defying behaviour of the biological
systems?
thank you, and best regards,
johnrpenner@earthlink.net
the coming age will be whatever people decide to do. if a lot of people just decide to do things for themselves, then that collectively will be the course of the greater whole of what we call society. the strength of the wolf is the pack, and the strength of the pack is the wolf. people are more and more inclined to see things from only what benefits themselves -- i.e. egoism. but human development does not depend so much on technology as on the ability of individuals to see themselves as part of a greater community and rise beyond mere egoism. this is the reason why open source works. it is one of the first signs towards the adoption of a new way of working. supply and demand (on physical economic principle only) ignores the other tiers of maslows hierarchy of needs. not only the physical needs must be met through supply and demand, but also the emotional, and social needs of people, onwards to self-actualisation. this is only possible where people see themselves as part of a community which forms a greater whole, and which in turn supplies the needs of those individuals which comprise it. beside this, so-called technological progress is nothing than mere gimickry (as much as it does keep us gainfully employed...
Threefold Social Ordering:
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles
microsoft and the penguin:
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles
Towards Social Renewal:
http://www.anth.org/socialthreefolding/tsnindex
hmmm - schmo will go with the status quo.
but he doesn't have any better ideas to offer.
| | - copyright exists to ensure musicians get paid.
/ St einer-Social.html
:-P
|
| Wrong. Copyright exists to ensure writers get paid. Contracts exist to
| ensure musicians get paid.
if you read past the next line, you'd see the words:
in practice, many musicians (who play instruments) starve,
while marketing bimbos (spice girls) thrive
the point being made is that: a lot of people justify
copyright (correctly or incorrectly) that it is an (imperfect)
system for somehow getting money to the producers.
that this doesn't actually happen is already said.
but perhaps you didn't read past the first line.
| | - the physical distributors and merchandisers pay into the
| | musician's pool that pays and feeds the musicians.
|
| Does Iggy Pop (only 5'4") get the same amount as Meatloaf?
| That's communism!
who are you to decide and say how muhc iggy pop gets?
iggy pop gets as much of the pie as is determined by
the percentage of downloads of his music.
| | - so all software is free - you get mindshare from it.
|
| "Sorry, I can't pay rent this month. Here, have some of my mindshare."
think again guy -- you quote it out of context - you overlook the very
mechanism in this system that gets them paid.
| | - distributors pay back a percentage of sales back into the pool.
| | - so it comes back and feeds itelf (the most important part).
|
| Why doesn't your "musicians association" (no drummers allowed, I take it)
since when and where was any commennt made
that didn't allow drummers in this?
the exclusion is yours - not the musician's association's.
the whole basis for the 'musicians association' is the development
of an idea contained in the following threefold social-economic
lectures located here:
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles
| act as middleman and do its own P&D, using college radio and the Internet
| for marketing? Pressing and distribution are easy. Marketing is a bitch,
| especially with commercial radio, TV, and print locked up in a HOT WET 69
| with the Big 4.5.
the idea is precisely to chop current record companies into
TWO independent functioning units. what is gained by this?
currently record companies do two functions:
i) PRODUCE -- sign, record, market, and feed musicians.
ii) DISTRIBUTE -- make money from marketing and selling products
from the musicians they sign.
just as there is a conflict of interest between the RIGHTS
of people, and ECONOMIC involvement (can you truly expect someone
with a vested Economicc interest in a matter to act objectively on
the basis of what someone's RIGHTs are in a given situation?),
so also there a conflict of interest that moves record companies
towards promoting 'marketing bimbos' rather than solely representing
and serving the needs of actual musicians who write and play music.
by severing the connection betweenn i) production of music content,
and ii) making money from distribution, you remove this artificial
pressure that exists when they are coupled, and thus the pressure
for record companies to producce 'spice girl' phenomenon is relieved.
that is not to say that someone couldn't make a spice girl if they
wanted to - just that the field would actually be leveled so that
the promotion of spice girls wouldn't be artificially inflated.
under the 'musicians association' model, current record companies
are given a choice:
A) BECOME A DISTRIBUTOR only:
become strictly a merchandiser (you sell stuff based on the stuff
that every other merchandiser can also get FREELY out of the pool),
and you compete based on whover packages and markets the best.
B) BECOME A PRODUCER only:
become involved in the 'musicians pool' where you are allowed
to record and produce content, but your income comes from the pool
and is dividied up among the producers based on number of downloads.
that way no one can cry foul over a false and arbitrary splitting
of profits.
if they don't want to join, they are still free to distribute
music created by artists belonging to the musician's pool.
however, they will be paying a percentage of profits back to
the pool for every product they sell back into the pool, and
that money will be dividied-up between the artists that ARE
in the musician's pool.
| Hey, nice try though.
i don't see YOU suggesting anything better.
regards,
john.
> Okay, but picture this: I create a few songs. I join the pool, but I do
> not release a cd. I generate *NO* profit for the system, I just make music
> available for download through the system. If everyone downloads my
> digital music then I am theoretically entitled to a large portion of the
> money pool when I have contributed none through actual physical sales. Is
> there some aspect that I have missed to prevent this sort of situation?
yes - any distributor out there that wants to can take a copy
of your music. make up some posters, CDs, some fancy packaging
that will make it appeal as a product to your fans.
THEN -- every time they sell a CD (with your, and other stuff on it),
they pay back a percentage into the musician's pool. that musicians
pool sends micropayments into your bank account based on how many
people downloaded your song for free.
the following has to be worked out by those involved - change it
as necessary -- but the basic idea is this: by having your song downloaded
for free, you would have to register an email address -- a place to make
micropayments to -- such that any downloads made in your name get registered
into the 'payment pie' -- which is determined by the number of 'napster'
downloads (doesn't really matter if its napster or something else - that
can be any download service that is willing to participate in this).
> As we move closer to 100% digital distribution, with no physical product,
> where does the money come from?
>
> Also, why would I pay any significant money for a CD when it's legal for
> someone to download and burn the CDs locally, charging only for resources
> consumed (with a slight markup)?
i do not believe the vision that sales of physical goods will diminish
towards zero and be replaced entirely by digital distribution.
as digital distribution goes up, the value-added of merchandising
of 'physical' stuff based around the content will go up. SOMETHING
THAT IS PHYSICAL IS SCARCE, and its value (unlike digital) lies in
that not everyone can have it. thus, collectors will pay a premium
to have something TANGIBLE and official from the band over just a
download of the song.
when anyone can get a copy of a song downloaded for free,
then the merchandisers will 'add value' to the product through
unique packaging, and by inventing desirable things to provide
in addition to 'just the data'. for example:
- you get a printed booklet and poster with your CD - looks nicer than
if you burn it yourself.
- you have all sorts of merchandise: books, fanzines, t-shirts,
it is up to the ingenuity of the merchandisers to make money off of
this stuff - and when they do - a percentage (like a sales tax) goes back
to the musician's pool, and gets divided up by percentage of napster (or
insert your service here) downloads that month.
- i can download a copy of any of shakespeare's worrks TODAY FOR FREE
from PROJECT GUTENBURG - but i still go out to amazon to order a copy.
why? i COULD download it and print it myself on my inkjet printer,
but it would cost me more to download and print then to buy a copy
that's already nicely packaged by a bookseller. in essence - the 'data'
of the book is free, but i'm paying for more than just the content,
i'm also paying for the convenience (over printing on my own inkjet),
and the PRESENTATION.
--| piracy or copyright? the third solution |---
- copyright exists to ensure musicians get paid.
- the other side is that once an artist produces something,
it goes beyond them and many benefit.
- between consumers and producers now stands record companies
- but paying artists is only a step on the way to gaining profit.
in practice, many musicians (who play instruments) starve, while
marketing bimbos (spice girls) thrive - this is wrong.
- a fundemental qualitative difference between physical and
electronic goods is - if i have an apple and give you an apple,
i no longer have an apple; but if i have an idea and give you an idea,
we BOTH have an idea. therefore you cannot treat electronic things as
if they were actually physical goods, because they aren't!
- still, you must compensate producers of the original bits.
so what to do?
> MUSICIANS ASSOCIATIONS:
- the physical distributors and merchandisers pay into the musician's
pool that pays and feeds the musicians.
- the musicians pool distributes it equitably among its active producers.
- from the pool comesmore new music. which is given away for free.
unlimited digital copies for everyone, never again a dime paid for
anything that's just DATA.
- distributors get fresh music, and sell and package more STUFF.
- distributors pay back a percentage of sales back into the pool.
- so it comes back and feeds itelf (the most important part).
> RESULTS:
- so all software is free - you get mindshare from it.
- but if you make a physical whose value lies on the free music on it,
then a percentage goes back.
- but the artist is not paid direct - it goes to the musician's pool,
which doles out shares each month by percentage of overall downloads
from a service such as Napster.
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles
--
The Strength of the Wolf is the Pack;
and the Strength of the Pack is the Wolf.
(Rudyard Kipling)
check out article (today's headlines only: october 3/99), got posted up on -- MICROSOFT AND THE PENGUIN --
i crosoftPeng.html
- http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/M
- http://macmadness.applewizards.net/
- http://www.osopinion.com/
they're finally catching on... about ten years ago, came to the conclusion that casuality runs "backwards" through time -- but its really us that are going backwards through time. what we call reverse-time is actually forwards time. therefore the statement "the cause changes the effect" is incorrect; it would be better to say, "the effect changes the cause!". :-) regards - http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/
'You govern a kingdom by normal rules; You fight a war by exceptional moves; But you win the world by letting alone, How do I know that this is so? By what is within me! The more taboo and inhibitions there are in the world, The poorer the people become. The sharper the weapons the people posses, The greater confusion reigns in the realm. The more clever and crafty the men, The oftener strange things happen. The more articulate the laws and ordinances, The more robbers and thieves arise.' (Tao Teh Ching #57, Lao Tzu)
prayer done mechanically is NOT prayer! prayer is about life appealing to life. when prayer is done as a routine, as something mechanically, it is no longer prayer. when people just go spewing off words without imbuing them with feeling and meaning in a living way, then it ceases to be prayer. having a bunch of computers "pray" is nothing more than setting up a bunch of tape recorders playing back to nothing. just because the same sounds are coming out of the speakers doesn't mean anything. if you're on a phone, and you're listening to someone, or you're listening to a recording of a taped phone conversation -- its NOT the same thing. one is live, and one is just a dead recording. 2pesos. http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/
operating system: that which lies between the hardware and the applications running on the hardware. the purpose for this is to abstract the hardware from the applications software so as to provide: device independence, scalablitiy, and portability for applications. they also provide basic system-wide resources such as: fonts, device drivers, and file-systems, sound, video, printer, and power-management. operating systems that still maintain hardware-dependencies are imperfections.
i've been using USB for over a year as my ONLY peripheral connector, and it rocks! currently, i'm using: i) mouse ii) keyboard iii) QuickCAM iv) Umax Scanner v) QPS-CD-RW vi) ZIP Drive -- plugged into a 7-port USB hub. it works! the mouse does NOT slow down when i am scanning or trasferring data from ZIP drive (it is actually smoother, because overall datarate of mouse is higher). i'm using them on a notebook (ibook), and to get all these peripherals plugged in, i plug in just ONE plug, and everything is connected - simple! people who want to keep their old connectors are LUDDITES! who in their right mind wants to continue to advocate five incompatible types of plugs when you can have just ONE??? just think about it for a minute -- in five years, you could still have: i) a plug for keyboard, ii) a plug for mouse, iii) a third plug for ZIP drive, iv) a fourth plug for scanner, v) a fifth plug for printer -- talk about stupid. replace all these incopmatible plugs with one universal plug that is interchangeable between ALL perpipherals -- heck ya! its a done deal for me. i've been on this system for over a year and would never go back to the stone-ages of all those crummy and incompatible legacy connectors and all their attendant configuration headaches. johnrpenner@earthlink-NOSPAM-.net
i'm using DOS with a USB keyboard -- on an imac running VIRTUAL PC -- works great. dos thinks the USB keyboard is an old-fashioned keyboard, never even blinks... :-)
TIME FOR AN INTERNET (BOSTON) TEA PARTY! mark FEBRUARY 17, 2000 as "internet tea party day" the day microsoft comes out with y2k, millions of people the globe over will protest the upgrade, and demonstrate their actions by deleting windows from their hard drives, and installing another operating system of their choice. the day we dump our microsoft OS's into the digital harbour, and refuse the microsoft tax! huge international installfests! web site coming soon. someone respond to: johnrpenner@earthlink-NOSPAM-.net if interested in forming something more of this, and getting some server space up.
i gave up my car and television two years ago after seven year of :-)
m l
/ NatureTechnology.html
commuting -- it's the best thing i ever did. i don't watch TV anymore.
instead, now i actually live the life people sit about passively watching.
one thing i've noticed is that the faster people go, the less patient
they become. i walk to work now, and it takes me abotu 40 minutes. there
are peopl driving in cars by me that are moving about ten times as fast,
yet they are impatient and frusterated with 'how slow' traffic is moving,
but they're going faster than me -- i just think people in cars are
crazy now, i see them angry all the time. people flip through 500 channels
and "there's nothing on". but they spent two hours watching nothing, and
i read half a book. it all comes down to deciding whats important. i think
in the case of media, less is definitely more. one good book is worth
several days of TV watching, but people say they don't have the patience.
but they have less patience, because they don't make the effort, it's
NOT AS EASY, but its more worth it.
"If you own a machine, you are in turn owned by it, and spend your time
serving it..." (Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Forbidden Tower)(br>
On the effect of Computers on Children in Education:
http://www.ime.usp.br/~vwsetzer/comp-in-educ.ht
On the effect of computers in relation to: doing, feeling, thinking:
http://www.gottfried.no/articles/it_eng.htm
On the Nature of Technology:
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles
Remember - it's not HOW MUCH information you have, its a matter of
having THE RIGHT information -- the rest just bogs you down. The
better question is not "how much can you get", but "HOW MUCH CAN
YOU DO WITHOUT!?"
It is important to note that nature of human memory is fundamentally different than the externalized computer storage of "memory". If you study neuro-psychology, you will understand that scientists have had utmost difficulty in localising memory in the human brain. That is because human memory is not like RAM at all. Every time you recall something, you are not doing a lookup from a physical-electronic memory address. Instead, the impression is brought up as an entirely new creation within your consciousness. To speak of machine sentience, you must consider this very fundamental difference between machine "memory" and human memory which is an aspect of self-consciousness.
see: http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/H
i've been working on keyboards and with mouse for over 20 years (since 1979), and it is a problem at work, because when a deadline comes, and the wrists start to hurt, what do you do? since this is a prime concert for my livelihood, i have found two solutions:
i) i have switched to a dvorak keyboard. its a pain to learn for the
first two weeks, but once you get used to it, the 70% less finger travel
off the home row starts to become significant. this works because they
did a frequency analysis of the most common consonants and vowels and
placed them on the home row. if you've got RSI, the dvorak keyboard is
worth looking into (from someone who's tried it).
ii) about a year ago when my wrists were particularly sore from over 10+
hours/day on a computer, my doctor wanted to perscribe an anti-inflamatory
to reduce tendon swelling. but i had read something (below) that got me
thinking -- when mouse clicking and keyboard typing, i'm constantly using
my muscles and adapting them to a single and automatic way of moving.
this gives the muscles fatigue for that configuration of movements. after
reading the below text, i surmised that perhaps i should retrain my muscle
reflexes with a new set of movements that are difficult to learn (as in
playing a guitar or new instrument when you've never played one), or do
something like practice fine motor control in a way.
the solution to mouse-clicking and keyboard typing pains is therefore
this: REPROGRAMME THE DEVICE DRIVERS OF YOUR MUSCLE MEMORY WITH A NEW
FINELY CONTROLLED SET OF MUSCLE MOVEMENTS SUCH AS THOSE PRODUCED WHILE
PLAYING A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT OR WITH AN ALTERED STYLE OF HANDWRITING.
THIS WORKS TO STRENGTHEN THE MUSCLES INVOLVED, and alleviates much of
the pain, because your hand is stronger, it can withstand more of what
causes the pain -- i.e. the cumulative effect of small repetitive strain.
--| repitivie strain solution from 1920's |-----
Here is another example that may also appear trivial on the surface. You know that the physical and etheric bodies are intimately connected. Now anyone with a healthy soul will be moved to compassion for clerical workers and others whose professions demand a great deal of writing. Perhaps you have noticed the strange movements they make in the air whenever they are about to write. Actually, with some of them the movements are not so extreme and they may only give a kind of jerk when they write, a jerk repeated for every up and down stroke. You can see the jerking in the writing. This condition is easily understood through spiritual science. In a healthy human being the etheric body, guided by the astral body, is always able to permeate the physical body. Thus, the physical body is normally the servant of the etheric body. When, undirected by the astral body, the physical body executes movements on its own, it is symptomatic of an unhealthy condition. These jerks represent the subordination of the etheric to the physical body, and denote that the weak etheric body is no longer fully able to direct the physical. Such a relationship between the physical and etheric bodies lies at the occult foundation of every form of cramp or convulsion. Here the physical body has become dominant and makes movements on its own, whereas in a healthy man all his movements are subordinated to the will of the astral body working through the etheric.
Again, there is a way of helping a person with such symptoms, provided the condition has not progressed too far, if one takes into account the occult facts. In this case we must recognize the existence and efficacy of the etheric body and try to strengthen it. Imagine someone so dissipated that his fingers get to shaking and jerking when he tries to write. You certainly would do well to advise him to write less and take a good vacation, but better still you might also recommend that he try to acquire a different handwriting. Tell him to stop writing automatically and try practicing for fifteen minutes a day to pay attention to the way he forms the letters he writes. Tell him to try to shape his handwriting differently and to cultivate the habit of drawing the letters. The point here is that when a man consciously changes his handwriting, he is obliged to pay attention to, and to bring the innermost core of his being into connection with what he is doing. The etheric body is strengthened in this way and the person is made healthier.
(Experpted from "Overcoming Nervousness", a lecture by:
Rudolf Steiner, Munich, January 11, 1912, GA 143)
--
also, as wonderful as linux is, it does not allow me to do my daily work.
;-)
if i cannot run: framemaker, photoshop, filemaker, acrobat distiller,
soundedit16pro, cubase, visionDSP, and illustrator on linux -- then
linux is less than useless for me for getting my work done instead of
tinkering!
right now the only daily app that i need for work that linux actually
provides is NETSCAPE, and say what you like - the GIMP is not photoshop.
you can not do complex high-quality four colour (CMYK) work for prepress
on linux! that is simply a fact of the current state of linux.
so -- during the day, i must use macOS (or windoze) if i want to use my work to actually do something productive. at night, linux (ppc) is fun to tinker with, but still lacking in any consistent elegant ease-of-use or productivity applications. i give it another two years before linux becomes anywhere close to the mac for useful productivity applications. but by that time OS-X should be able run linux binaries anyways...
a lot of linux users miss this point -- the mac is still a great machine to hack. any user with a copy of resedit can alter final binaries, down to the text in menus and dialogues because of resources. the mac provides a better hack for most average users than is possible for the average users of unix. sure, it is possible to hack more in linux if you have hours and hours to devote to it, but the fact of the matter is, the mac is easier to hack for the average user in a useful way. if you want to change the menus from english to german for your mother on a final binary -- it is simple on a mac, it is difficult in linux (your mother should never have to do a recompile to get something to run!).
another point missed here by most is that apple made the mouse & gui as low-level as the mouse and an xterm, but the linux people keep on looking for a lower-level CLI below the GUI, what they don't get is that the macOS is so advanced that the GUI is equally as low-level as the CLI. having a resource database in every file, and only having a graphics-mode for display (and no text mode) is a step up in the evolutionary chain away from the thirty year-old teletype printer terminals. i know a lot of people will say that you don't get as much control with a GUI as you do with a CLI, but that is only because these backwards people have insisted on writing CLI-only commands without writing their equivalent GUI commands. that is the failure of the programmers, not of GUI vs CLI.
2pesos,
johnrpenner@earthlink.net
i've been paperless since 1979 and my trs80 model i. i've kept everything as a text file, and this last year i backed up every text file, email (from BBS systems before internet and fidonet) onto one searchable CD-ROM. i've been consistent at forwarding data from system to system and always made backups. the system works, it just takes training users how to live filing electronically instead of with wasteful old paper. i had to use xmodem and a rs-232 cable to get it out of my trs80 into a PC (xt8088), then a few years later into a macintosh plus, and from then on in all my creator dates and filenames have been long filenames. i still use text files (with bbedit) for writing everything, because then you can easily search it on the mac using GREP (built-into bbedit). the system works great. just the other day i emailed a friend of mine a 30k text file entered in 1981 - he didn't even remember it existed, but my text search found it in less than ten seconds. if only people could be weened off their archaic reliance on paper. i think its just a comfort thing. they're tought how to files with paper, but they "don't trust" electronic filing, because they don't know how to backup properly, nor how to create a useful directory structure with DESCRIPTIVE and useful filenames for when they have to search. its all a matter of learning good filenaming and directory structuring, but people keep crazy electronic file structures, while they don't think twice about spending HOURS organising paper files in a cabinet. if people would just take the care they did in filing things electronically as they did in a real paper filing cabinet, there would be no problem!
2cents.
johnrpenner@earthlink.net