[linux-audio-user] [OT] The 99th Monkey Nut

[tim hall]

Last Tuesday 30 November 2004 15:51, Rob was like:
> On Tuesday 30 November 2004 08:30, Marek Peteraj wrote:
> > Lots of people stop eating meat or send letters to food
> > producers insisting that they comply with vegetarian
> > principles. As a result, there are many food products having a
> > 'suitable for vegetarians' sticker on them.The fight over
> > revealing ingredients was aslo one such fight.
>
> Unfortunately, that's a poor analogy as manufacturers only list
> ingredients because they're required to do so by law.  Much as
> it'd tickle me to see proprietary software made illegal, I think
> that would be a very bad idea.

ingredients = specs
recipe = code

I think it's quite a good analogy actually. Food and Medicine are similar to 
software in that they suffer from Patent Abuse. The law on ingredient 
disclosure has tightened up due to pressure from vegetarians/vegans/people on 
other restricted diets. Before then it was only vegetarian / wholefood 
producers that bothered to list everything. How many of you non-veggies have 
ever read the ingredients list on your toilet cleaner? I think making the 
release of a certain level of specification a legal requirement , enough for 
compatibility purposes, would be cool. I know, dream on ...

I realise the argument goes nowhere with anyone who has never bothered with 
ingredients lists or restricted diets. The difference is that food & medicine 
are a necessity & human right and therefore you can justify a more aggressive 
approach. It can yield results, especially in conjunction with a few 'good 
cops'. It still won't make you any friends. ;-]

The point that I'm really trying to make is that things do change. It's been a 
long haul as far as vegetarianism is concerned, but it all started with a 
small bunch of nutters with no more leverage over food producers than we have 
over hardware manufacturers. At no point have we tried to make eating meat 
illegal, although we do seem to have banned hunting for sport in this country 
and frankly that's a bill I never thought would get through the House of 
Lords. It only takes a relatively small group of dedicated and vocal 
practitioners to change the law. It's known as The 100th Monkey effect.

Anyway, I'm using a big contentious issue as an analogy and it probably won't 
bear much deeper discussion. FTR: Eat what you like, I know I do. :-)

cheers

tim hall is powered by organic fair-trade coffee, rice and vegetables.
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk