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They Killed Ken!
kwings writes "SF Gate (via the AP) is reporting that your pal, Ken Jennings has been beaten after his 75th(!) game. I fully expect Mr. Trebek to hold a wake, or to keep calling the champion 'Ken' for the rest of the season. :) Since they're only up to airing game 41, it will be an interesting few months (or 34 shows)."
What's up with this? Why not just start posting all the endings for upcoming movies?
Glad I don't watch this show or I would be pissed...
Could you at least put the subject of the article somewhere in the description?
Sure, I agree with RTFA, if I can determine it is worthwhile...
Are you saying he just gave up? If he's no longer on the show then he must have lost. Slashdot fucked up huge on this one. Thanks for letting me know. I've been watching Ken since his first appearance and have been obsessed with this guy. Now I know that in 30 shows he's gone. What's the point now? FUCKERS!
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
I just happened to look at the front page and now it's ruined for me. Thanks a ton guys. At least put a little more...ambiguous title on it and hold the spoiler for inside the article so that I can choose whether to click on it or not.
Thanks again.
They are bastards for putting this on the main page.
/.
Some of us like to be surprised by things. Now slashdot has decided to take it upon themselves to ruin the next 30 shows for their readers that have been watching Jeopardy.
Thank you oh so much
Please take this off the main page or reword the article so no one else has to have their enjoyment ruined.
No. There are laws regarding this sort of stuff. In Australia I believe it's the lotteries commision. It will be stipulated by the local lotteries and gaming commission of where the event is actually held. The Questions will be picked totally at random. Of course, as we know, with all of these things, they are totally secure, and not open to any form of malicious tampering
ESPECIALLY when it's posted ON /. ;)
First we complain thats theres no news.
Then we complain thats the news is duped.
Now we complain that we didn't want to see the news!
(I'm actually 100% behind you on this, im not even American, and have never seen the show, but giving out spoilers on the main page is just bad m'kay!)
liqbase
While you raise an interesting point, seems kind of like the wrong analysis IMHO. If this was indeed a ploy to raise ratings, its a horrible one. Consider, you KNOW that Ken won't lose for another thirty four games, and then after that he's done. What incentive to you have to watch, knowing that he'll win every night? If anything, this would hurt their ratings. (At least until this 75th game, where he will or will not be defeated, and then we find out if this was true or just a rumor.)
I wasn't surprised at all that Ken, a guy from Utah, barely knew anything in the music categories.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
You would have to hide in a cave to avoid a story like this - it's already on CNN and (presumably) a zillion other news outlets...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Don't underestimate Trebek... he's a pretty smart guy himself. If for no other reason than he's read trivia questions for 20 years straight. ;)
Seriously, he's more than a stuffed shirt that you see on most other gameshows.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
I AM NOT IN U.S., YOUR INSENSITIVE CLODS
I'm not in the UK but I've seen every episode of Blackadder...
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
If people are interested enough for Ken Jennings to be news for nerds then they are interested enough to not want it spoiled.
Take this off the main page or modify it immediately.
Idiot.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Well, technically I am one here.
/. postings nowadays.
I have not the slightest clue what you are talking about. It's a game show, that's what I understood so far.
But what the hell is this show about?
Seems I have to move to the U.S. for some weeks each year to be able to understand
The article might be funny for you, but I would like to see at least 1 sentence regarding the backround to give foreigners a chance to get the whole picture without milking google for ages.
Nothing personal intended, but I would not use anybody's weblog for the basis of a story. I would confirm it somewhere else, first. Believe it or not, not everything you read on a blog is true.
A big thank you to the editors for posting this story front page! I mean could they have been anymore stupid?
"What incentive to you have to watch...?"
The wagering on the Daily Doubles? Wondering how Contestant X could possibly, possibly not know the question to *that* answer? The chitchat they use to fill the time slot when the play is too rapid? Seeing what sort of categories appeal to a left-handed pipefitter from Oshkosh who once bungee-jumped off the Sears Tower? The schadenfreude when a player relearns that pushing the button too soon makes it go dead? Discovering what the writers' idea of Really Tough Physics Questions is?
This is just a matter of common courtesy. Of course trying to find that on the internet is pretty difficult.
Doesn't make it right to post spoilers, though. It's still bad form, even if everyone else is doing it to get the scoop.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
I have noticed that too but I wonder if the researchers provide Trebek with info on possible near misses. eg: The operating system Linus Torvalds wrote? What is Unix? Sorry, Unix was written by AT&T. Linux is the correct answer.
South Park is popular outside the US. Jeoperdy is not.
His pointing out that he isn't American was on-topic. Your idiotic post was not.
The CNN article starts with this:
"Editor's Note: CNN picked this story up from The Associated Press, which gives details below. We have no idea as to the status of Ken Jennings' run. If you'd prefer to not know anything, stop reading now."
Slashdot should have done something similar with a "Read More" break.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Get the freakin' spoiler off the main page! You have summarily killed my enjoyment of Jeopardy for the next few months. Asses! --*Rob
Or that USians are watching Australian Jeopardy, and racking their brains for the name of the guy who dismissed Don Bradman for 0 in his final Test?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
1) So? That doesn't excuse it. Your mother did use the "friend jumping off a bridge" metaphor with you, didn't she?
/. had taken the high road. Yes, the world is full of trolls -- I would just as soon prefer that there were no trolls at /. responsible for delivering us the day's news.
2) True, but we wouldn't know WHEN he loses, or what the specifics were. If the 75th day loss is true, it negates some of the excitement of watching every night to see if he finally loses.
3) If you visit New York and walk down an alleyway, you're likely to get mugged. So, why don't you just hand over your money to me right now?
4) It still would have been nice if
I would imagine that anyone capable of unseating Ken (if that's what ends up happening) is capable of making a pretty good run like he did. My guess is that Jeopardy will modify the rules a bit (although not much -- they gotta love the ratings!).
The odds of THIS spoiler happening again are slim, but that doesn't mean other spoilers won't happen. Which reminds me... in case nobody knows, Darth Vader doesn't die in SW3.
He lost, but you still wont know when, because youre not going to be counting! Why complain about this being posted? You knew he was going to lose eventually. Now if youre going to count all remaining 34 shows, then youre going to be disappointed, but if youre normal, then you will not keep track, and you will still be shocked the day he goes down. BTW, who'd they bring on to beat him? Stephen Hawking and Ben Stein?
Christ, people, I'm usually the first person to mock the tin foil hat brigade, but don't any of you guys know that the man is employed to write systems for the very quizzes that he's answering questions on? Could that possibly (rather than him being some hero genius to ambition-failing nerds everywhere) explain his winning streak? Isn't this a more reasonable explanation for his fantastic performance than "well, suddenly, this genius just appeared"? Or are dreams nicer to hold on to?
I know you're probably trolling, but: I also have written computer software for a quiz, in my case an Internet pay-to-play one. You don't see me making a fortune off it. Why? Because if I did, I would be scrutinised very closely to ensure I wasn't cheating. If you're right about this contestant (being British, I'd never heard of him until this story -- which I only clicked on because I couldn't work out what it was about), then I doubt he's doing anything even remotely dishonest. In fact, I doubt there is anything dishonest that he could hope to get away with -- someone will almost certainly audit any work he does that ever deals with a live question (or should that be answer?) database.
You insist there was some way to cover the story without spoilers. There wasn't. What were they supposed to write? "We've got news about Ken Jennings on Jeopardy. Don't read further if you don't want to know." You'd know immediately: He lost. Granted, you wouldn't know when, or on what question -- but the important point can't be hidden.
This isn't like a movie, where a spoiler could be any number of things (e.g., main character dies, antagonist is revealed to be protagonist's father, etc.). If there's any news about Jennings that could possibly involve spoilers, then you know immediately: He lost. There's no way to effectively obscure it.