OT: Business as usual: NY Times: 'The iPod and the Vacuum Tube Sing a Warm Duet'

semi-cynical jokes

made global warming,

I like tubes - for their Frankenstein Laboratory look mainly ;-)

Never - The "New Economy" is here: the price of a thing is not based on what it costs to produce but on what the "cun(t)soomers" can be made to pay! ... Like HP exec's being rewarded with the princess and half the kingdom for running the business into the abyss.

You're just jealous that you couldn't negotiate your last hiring benefits to include relocating *your* private yacht from one coast to the other!

I agree with your sentiment though -- much of the economy today has very little to do with the cost of producing good, but rather everything to do with packaging, style, and image that can attached to any given product. This isn't entirely a bad thing -- in many ways I think it's due to the fact that the basic needs of living such as food, clothing, a roof over your head, and some semblance of health care are for *most* people no longer a huge percentage of their income. It's incredible when you think that even 100 years ago, the average person spent a *lot* of effort trying to insure they'd have enough food to eat throughout the year, whereas today you can have any fruit or vegetable you want year-round and spend no more than a hundred bucks a month on food if you're not-so-well-off financially.

semi-cynical jokes

made global warming,

I like this statement about reconstituting data from compressed (lossy) file formats:

"a vacuum tube can deal with the degradation in a potentially better and more pleasant way than a non-vacuum-tube amplifier."

Or you could say that the tube distortion masks the missing-data distortion.

our semi-cynical jokes

human made global warming,

Or tube missing data distortion sounds better than solid-state missing data distortion.

Couse I am: The Corprat Litterature from both the compagny that sold us and the business that bought us sport huge yatches going round the globe with gleaming executives "benefiting sales and customer relations" - Pah!!!

That's the advantage of civilisation - I do not understand why people are slagging it so much and seem so willing to give it up bit by bit to better suit the prejudices of all comers.

Indeed. At least if you join Scientology, after giving them enough money they let you cruise on *their* ship

Supposedly society hits some point where there's a revolt and everything changes again for the better, but maybe we're "beyond" that point now?

We're at the cusp, right now.

Good Luck! Rich