Everything is relative as Albert Einstein delighted in telling posterity…to the horror of those theologians who like to place their faith in such absolutes as Good ‘n Evil, Right ‘n Wrong and God on My Side…and not yours. In this the Priesthoods and Webmaster Guilds are as one because Hyperlinks can be both absolute and relative…like our ethics.

This was causing me problems over the weekend because of the way I am cobbling together the radcon III website by modifying a lot of radcon I files. Here is a short tutorial for when you run into this problem.

The two big website-makers…Macromedia’s Dreamweaver and Microsoft’s FrontPage…can get too clever so you end up with links to local hard drives or servers. Here they are without their related Hyper Text Mark-Up Language (HTML):

"file:\\\C:\windows\desktop\document.html"
"www.server\people\someone\document.html".

When you post your page to the server, open your browser and click on the hyperlink everything is hunky-dory…and up pops the webpage you want to link to. Unfortunately you are the only person on the planet who accomplishes this feat because nobody else has the file document.html on their desktop or has your user privileges on the server.

Realising this is the first step towards sorting it…or debugging it in NerdSpeak. You need either "http://www.server/people/someone/document.html" or "document.html".

Relative links are more elegant as your website is relatively self-contained with the minimum of endogenous links…to use GordonBrownSpeak. But with today’s fast broadband, browser loading speed is not an argument for relative links as absolute links are instantaneous…when pointing at the right address. One day you will thank me for enlightening you….although changing wrong links can be a slog...but a once off slog and not eternally recurring.

Just before the turn of the century I talked Toni Pinschof into setting up a Lets Team in Brittany to translate Tom Greco’s New Money for Healthy Communities into French. Toni did his usual class organising act. And the team did an excellent job with the translating…for which they are now receiving…in principle…a life-time’s supply of vegetables from Kegroaz-Vraz...Toni’s organic farm in the Parish of Mael-Pestivien 45 minutes drive from Morlaix.

I use the term in principle advisedly because the Lets Scheme has gone the way of many…if not most…Lets Schemes and folded after the waning of initial enthusiasm…much of it generated by Toni’s persuasions. However I take part of the blame for its demise…these schemes go with a whimper not with a bang…because I promoted the Monnaies Locales Project as an Investment whereas with hindsight Monnaies Locales has turned out to be a Speculation.

One day the project may be a Successful Speculation but as time goes by that enigmatic lady…Ted Hughes’ Goddess of Complete Being…has taken her toll. Silvio Gesell believed everything should be biodegradable by nature or by human design and not by stealth. He saw differing decay rates as the cause of many inequalities. Money Deflation…incorrectly labelled Inflation…does Gesell’s Job much better than any Stamp ‘n Coupon system but it has undesirable side effects rooted in the Debt/Usury Central Banking mechanisms that misappropriate the rewards.

However the odds of project success are declining for two reasons…Obsolescence of Knowledge and Progress in Understanding. Not all knowledge becomes obsolete but much technical knowledge does while Tom Greco’s progress has led to the publication of a better book entitled Money: Creating an Alternative to Legal Tender.

Nonetheless the real problem lies with the Lets Protocols and their inability to cope with The Long-term or Risk. They work best as barter schemes…extended to triangular trade and beyond involving three or more exchanges coordinated by a Lets Administrator. Tom Greco recommends bringing outstanding trades to a close after two years.

Ours is a classic failure. We thought we had a publisher lined up but he withdrew. Toni was to have Euros as well as Vegetables…both show high demand and short supply in Lets Schemes…to exchange for Car Maintenance and Indian Massage. Guilt did its thing and I organised the French Manuscript as an e-book from cesc publications. But this is just piling speculation upon speculation and it has yet to deliver any euros or cybercash to remonetarise Toni’s local currency scheme. But hope springs eternal...our free downloads of Monnaies Locales shot up last month.