I've had my Flip for about 6 months now, and love it. Even though I'm kind of a gadget freak, the simplicity is very appealing. And rugged? I left it out in the rain, shooting pictures of hummingbirds, and it was just fine.

The argument that other camcorders are "better" because they have more features misses the point. More features do not equal better in many peoples' minds.

In case the writer hasn't noticed, there is a growing demand in software for programs with fewer features that thus becomes easier to use.

Some people are drawn to complexity, but I suspect there is a head-space limit to complexity in one's life, and just living in the modern world, one gets pretty full up. How many buttons and menu items do you have to deal with on a daily basis? Do you want to learn one more interface?

The Flip adds functionality to a life without adding complexity. One button turns it on, another starts recording. Two button pushes get you a whole new ability. For many, that's a huge plus.

empty calories...

That's the last thing these drinks have. Calories from sugar are far from empty. They're basically poison to your body. Well, unless you enjoy obesity, cultivate insulin resistance, and look forward to Type 2 diabetes.

And yeah, some body builders are far from fat. They work out like fiends when cutting up for contests, and eat basically zero carbohydrates and miniscule amounts of calories. Oh, and there are the drugs, too.

And we wonder why 40% of kids are obese, and diabetes is epidemic....

There is no longer any reason to continue to be in an organization you don't believe in.

The world is Open Source.

Start a new organization, with new goals, and invite people to join, much as you have invited people to Boing-Boing. Gee, that hasn't worked out.

You can't force people to be other than who and what they are. Join with like-minded people who are more valuable in creating wonderful things together.

Life is uncertain...

I think artists who choose to make their music freely available and copyable have every right to do so.

But let's not kid ourselves about why they are doing it.

Some are doing it just to get heard as an artist. And some musicians are also doing it because they like to make music and make people feel good through music/art.

But many of them, as DBR points out, are doing it as part of their business model, to become more popular and get more gigs. And that's great, and smart.

But it doesn't mean that all music products "should" be free for some reason. It just means that it can be a smart move career-wise, to make your work freely available.

I write software for a living, so I have to admit bias in this discussion.

Because I write software, I'm very uncomfortable about stealing someone else's work for free. So I don't. Does that make me more moral or ethical? I dunno, but paying for someone else's work product makes me feel good.

My wife is a composer, and her work product is printed scores. I have a really hard time seeing the difference between someone walking into our office and taking the printed scores, or walking into my "office," however you define that, and taking the product of my work.

I haven't really heard a convincing argument about why that's different. And, "Because it's easy," doesn't seem like a really convincing argument to me.

I have no problem with free software. In fact, there are times when I've suggested that to my partners as a way of getting something out there and getting people invested in it.

But if I want to ask people to pay for some of my software that they are making a living using, why shouldn't I be able to do that?

In other words, if I write something like Excel, and people use it in their work to make money to buy food and pay rent, and Excel has made it easier or possible for them to do that, why shouldn't the person who wrote Excel get paid so I can buy the same food and pay the same rent?

Now if you want to say that making Excel easily copy-able early on made Excel very popular, thus creating market share and a good base of users, that's fine. Apparently that's a good business model.

But if you use something that someone else took the time to envision or build, and it makes your life easier or more fun or more viable, why does the fact that it's "just bits," make it okay to take it without paying for it, as long as the economy is based on paying for things?

Hell, food is just bits, too. It just takes longer to put the bits together in a coherent way. it's just freaking carbon, after all.

And I'm fine with arguing that everything should be free, food, clothing, houses. But until it is, I'm unclear as to why my work, and not yours, should be free, just because it's easier for you to take my work than it is for me to put a rope around you and drag you over to my house to clear brush.

Work is work, whether its represented by bits, or ink on a page, or wood in a piece of furniture. If you want to say that selling bit-based work is somehow different than all other work, and therefore it shouldn't be rewarded, well I'm struggling with that convenient change of the definition of work, when it is of benefit to you when my work makes it easier to do your work, or your play.