Klarinet Archive - Posting 001141.txt from 1997/08

From: Neil Leupold <nleupold@-----.edu>
Subj: RE: Bass clar. price and more
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1997 13:39:15 -0400

On Tue, 26 Aug 1997, Gary Young wrote:

> If you are implying that Lisa lacks fairness and integrity, I can attest
> from my dealings with her over the last fifteen years that that is not so.
> If you are basing your statement on your own experience with her, fine.
> But I notice you don't indicate that you've ever dealt with her. If you're
> just guessing about her and IMS, you shouldn't make statements like this.
> (Where do you get the "$100's of interest"?) Your posting lacks the
> carefulness and thoughtfulness which is typical of your other comments.

My assumption here is that the above was submitted prior to reading
the subsequent exchanges on this thread. My comments and recommendation
concerning IMS are based exclusively on empirical fact. No hearsay
or conjecture is involved. I refrain from describing the incident
in detail because it is immaterial to the essence of my intentions.
The contribution was made for the purpose of caution, sans any
explicit testament, with an offering of alternatives in order to
provide a positive actionable conclusion to the warning. As Mark
Charette said so simply and incisively, "caveat emptor". That is
the core of the issue. Ultimately, my experience with IMS will
have little or no bearing on anybody else's dealings with that
company, because they will simply have to have experiences of their
own in order to form a decisive opinion. But if I were hit by a
car for failing to look first to my left, I would as shamelessly
warn others to take appropriate action then as I have on the subject
IMS.

The subject of the thread strayed slightly from center concerning
whether or not it's appropriate to publicly recommend against a given
vendor as freely as we seem to recommend in their support. This double
standard is hypocritical at best, but we live in an imperfect world. I
happen to feel that an "open" forum should operate in a manner true to
its title, where discussions of both positive and negative content
receive participation at the level of a genuine desire to get to the
truth and facts of an issue. Not all clarinet-type subjects lend
themselves to this kind of epistemological directive, but those which
do, and which are pursued in that vein, often result in the most fruitful
of outcomes for nearly everybody involved. No double-talk or semantic
hocus-pocus.

Neil