Mark Rauterkus: First off, some attribution to me has been off the mark. Alain: I take rigorous care not to make any mistakes in this regard, but some slips get through from time to time. Mark Rauterkus: I didn't write the Section 11: Voting part. I did just requoted it from the draft on the net. Alain: I was probably attributing the CITATION to you, but it ended up looking like you were the originator. I am fishing though. Mark Rauterkus: Secondly, another point I made had ***** throughout a word in the requote, when I wrote originally "strict consensus." Alain: I did this deliberately to underline the fact that it was those words in particular which were being responded to, not the whole paragraph. The latter was kept merely to maintain the context, of course. Mark Rauterkus: Helpful tip: Please be a lot more careful out there, okay. Alain: Euh .. thanks for casting your constructive criticism in the third-person, eh! ;-) Mark Rauterkus: Someone wrote: "Mark's attitude stinks". Then went onto to say, among other things, "The council could not ... blurt out ill-considered objections and idiosyncratic prejudices. Just for the record, comments about my attitude stinking are, IMHO, a great example of an ill-considered objection. Alain: Very ill-considered indeed. Lets endeavour to keep all of our deliberations constructive. Personal attacks are unacceptable. Mark Rauterkus: I'm led to guess then that the above attitude assesment must have been a toung-in-cheek quip. Alain: I sincerely hope so. Mark Rauterkus: Here is another matter. The notion of _protecting the interests_ is of little or NO concern here. We have no interests to "protect." We have not assets. We won't. Alain: I wholeheartedly agree. Thus, while the argument that unanimity is required because no one wants to be out-voted into a situation that was not agreed upon at the outset is a valid one, it does not apply in this case because there is absolutely no liability involved. Mark Rauterkus: FACT: We choose to work together on something for the public domain. Alain: Is "public domain" what we finally decided? Were my objections to it addressed, namely the danger of a non-free commercial fork/takeover of FreeCard by the pseudo-company MicroSloth ? Mark Rauterkus: Things that hinder action are fatal. Alain: As a designer, I might respond that constraints are what creation is all about. The guidelines/rules, even when we break them, are nevertheless the focus of any creative work. Alain: As a graduate and researcher in Communication, I have to agree with you wholeheartedly that hindrances to action must be removed when possible. Or, if you are not one of those half-empty-glass types, you could express this as Human Augmentation, as might Douglas Englebart. Mark Rauterkus: I'm voicing "THOUGHTFUL DISSENT" on the matter of 100% agreement needed before action is taken by partners. Alain: Nothing wrong with thoughful dissent, Mark. We value your opinion. We must debate this further. For the record, I am NOT stipulating that we obtain unanimity on each and every decision we will ever make. I am arguing instead that unanimity is required only on the really fundamental issues. Majorities (consensus) of varying degrees on issues that are NOT fundamental will be a MUCH more common occurrence, once the fundamentals are substantially put into place. Mark Rauterkus: (FWIW, I've said here that I'd like to be a partner.) Alain: Well ... you're certainly not a lurker, eh! ;-) Mark Rauterkus: Now what ???? Well, perhaps I'll ponder further. The sachems were required to be of "one mind." How do WE issue that test? I'm telling you now, I'm going to fail that "one-mind test." So, I won't be in. Fine. If the notion here stands in that, "Unanimity becomes a fundamental law," then I'm outta here regardless. Alain: Group-Think has always been abhorrent to me too. I am and always will be a non-conformist, and proud of it. Peer-pressure never had much hold on me. Back in 1984, I had a really great English class in college. It was called "1984" and the teacher was brilliant. His interpretation of George Orwell's masterpiece, and of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World too, were eye-opening in this respect. Mark Rauterkus: PS: Sorry if this message casts a foul odor in your mail box. Alain: No foul smell here. Besides, the inventor never commercialized the virtual-reality-like peripheral that outputs smells. The only prototype of it known to have existed is/was an arcade-like game in the form of a motorcycle simulation with smells for added realism. Can you imagine if they had commericlaized it? Can you turn down the smell on the TV, Harold. You're stinking up the whole house... Sorry, honey, the hero of the story is rummaging through a garbage dump. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com
