People just don't seem to grasp the laws of physics: the closer you are, the less time you have to slow down.
For the record, I hate tailgaters with a passion. But in the traffic around here, if you're not tailgating the person in front of you, you're inviting the person in another lane to cut you off to "get ahead". It seems the only way to keep people from doing it is to not give them the room to. But then, people around here think it's your responsiblity to avoid the accident they're causing.
Normally the lights have a sign a few hundred feet infront of them that warn of their functionality. People slow down in advance so that they do not get stuck at it.
And then speed right back up again once they're past it. So they've slowed down traffic at that one small section of road before the light.
the funny part is that speeding does NOT get you there any faster than the guy driving the speed limit.
Yes it does. You said so.
over a 40 mile stretch of road between cities, the speeder going 15 mph faster than the other driver will only arrive ~7.5 minutes earlier
Backing in your numbers, you are comparing are 65 mph to 80 mph, so the 15mph difference is a 25% increase in speed, which results in a 25% decrease in time. The implication you are apparently making is that a 25% reduction in time is insignificant. Over an hour, that's 15 minutes. Over two, it's half an hour. If your argument is that 7.5 minutes is insignificant (which is subjective and arguable), then, possibly, in your very specific example, you might be right. But a specific case does not prove a generality.
IF he kept his speed constant never slowing below the 15+mph he has on the other driver
Your calculation is meaningless unless you're using average speed, so this is implied.
slowing for other traffic obeying the law or not as brazen will significantly reduce that time saved
Again, you have to assume average speed or the calculation is meaningless. Any conditions which slow the driver down throw your 15mph difference out the window. If he can go faster, he gets there faster. If he can't, he doesn't.
People who speed all the time are usually not bright enough to understand that concept anyways.
Possibly because they understand the concept of physics.
Note: this is not a defense of reckless driving which is not necessarily a function of speed compared to an arbitrary limit. There are times when 80mph is not reckless and times when 25mph is.
it's hard to come up with any good reason why this isn't a good idea. Follow the damn law.
I can't speak for Pleasonton, but in New Jersey the speed limits are typically set lower in anticipation of people speeding. If the State wants traffic to go 75mph, they set the speed limit at 65 and don't ticket you unless you're doing 80. This is apparent in New Jersey's traffic laws where a "slow vehicle" is defined as one traveling below the posted speed limit. So the posted speed limit is, in actuality, a minimum rather than a maximum. Not that you're particulary wrong, but "follow the damn law" isn't reasonable advice when the law is unreasonable and the State doesn't even expect you to follow it.
I think this traffic light is a bad idea, not because it violates anyone's rights[1], but because it will be ineffective[2] and, by the article's own admission, isn't going in because there have been a lot of accidents but rather to make people "feel safe".
[1] Except, as you pointed out, by punishing people following a speeder. [2] As others have pointed out, people will either speed up to make the light, ignore it completely, or slow down just long enough to avoid tripping it.
They think that this will save more accidents and lives by slowing everyone down.
Except that:
The punitive nature of the signal on Vineyard appears to have the united support of neighbors and the Police Department,
which hasn't seen an unusual number of accidents on the route but envisions a low-cost way to make people feel safe.
In other words, it's fixing a problem that doesn't exist and is only meant to make people feel better.
One of the arguments for keeping the barrier tolls on the Garden State Parkway is that they slow down traffic. But they only slow it down at the toll. People just speed between them.
This will do little more. People speeding before the light will have to stop for it, and continue speeding after it. All they've done is slow them down through the intersection. And once they've learned it's there, they'll only slow down for the radar gun and speed up after.
Proving the concept of the rights exists is a far cry from proving people have those rights.
I could summarise it, but why should I -- read it yourself.
No. Support your own argument. If you can't be bothered to point out where it says "Creators have moral rights on their works," and how those rights are being violated by this DVD player, I'm not doing it for you. It's your statement, you defend it.
Oh, and you might actually want to read what you're citing as support for your argument:
As seen above, courts in the USA occasionally recognize rights equivalent to some moral rights of authors, and grant relief to an author.
However courts in the USA have consistently avoided or condemned the concept of moral rights of authors, as demonstrated by the following quotations.[emphasis mine]
people shouldn't be pirating the hell out of their music so that they'll at least get something back.
What, in anything I said, even remotely condoned copyright infringement? For the record, I have downloaded two songs in my entire life and owned the albums for both. I was just too lazy to get them out of my car. That makes me evil, I know.
By the way, the RIAA doesn't have anything to do with label contracts. It's the record labels that do it--the RIAA is just their public lobbying group. People have lumped the RIAA into being the entire music industry for some reason. Why not name names--Sony, Virgin, etc.
Excuse me. I misspoke. Change "RIAA" to "every single member of the RIAA". Sorry for the confusion.
You know, the RIAA uses this same argument to justify paying the musicians squat. It's the studio's job to evaluate the risk and worth of a new series. If they're bad at it, then they should lose money. But don't punish the actors of a sucessful series because your other shows, which they had no involvement with or control over, were crap.
The failure of your other projects in no way lessens the value of the project I'm working on.
That being said, I have no idea what the voice talent of the Simpson's is worth, not being in the business myself. I just want it resolved. Personally, I think it would be funny if, next season, everybody aged 15 years over night.
Well, sometimes it works out for the better. I've never understood why stores would want to close on one of the two days most people can shop. Or why people would want to cut their available shopping time in half.
Laws like that are silly. They don't help the businesses or the people.
That's actually the opposite - it's very generic! It does not say anything about how to promote progress
Read it again. "by securing for limited times the exclusive rights of Authors and Inventors to their respective writings and inventions." That's the only method they have available. No other way.
One definition of "own" is to have control over.
But they do not have complete control. There are a number of uses that are not covered in their exclusive rights. So they only partially own it. In the loosest sense of the word, they do own it, but that definition in no way implies that the thing being owned is property.
You don't care, you can't own ideas. Information wants to be free!
Ideas don't want anything. They are free until you put artificial constraints on them.
Why should they? You can't own ideas, and you've lost nothing, right? You still have your idea and a copy of the original manuscript, right? They didn't steal anything from you...
Well, what have I lost? It didn't cost me any money. And I still have my story. I can still tell it, I can still read it, I can still know it. They've taken nothing from me. If you're suggesting that I've lost the revenue to the film, I never had it, so how did I lose it. I also never had any right to it so what have I lost? The only thing I am deprived of are the benefits that don't exist in your example of life without copyright, because copyright is what gives you those benefits. So I've lost nothing.
Copyright is about not having to "share" ideas.
Copyright is only about having to share ideas. Copyright (theoretically) only covers the expression of the idea. There is no protection for an idea. If you're not going to share it, why should I give a shit if you make any money from it? Why should I limit my freedoms to give you a job?
"We'll give you exclusive legal control over your ideas, but only if you promise to give up that control after n years. Sound fair?"
Go back and look at my last post. You'll see I wrote the same thing almost word for word. The purpose is to get people to share their ideas. The incentive is the limited control we give them temporarily. Otherwise, why make them give up their rights to something they "own"?
Half your argument appears to be why copyright is a good thing. I never once said I thought copyright should be abolished. Copyright, in the form I describe, and as the writers of the Constitution wanted it, is for society's benefit first and the benefit of the creators as an incentive only. Copyright as it stands today is broken. And given the choice between having no copyright and having what we have now, I'd choose no copyright. But we don't need to go that far. It can be fixed. But only if people like you realize that ideas are not property, they don't entitle you to anything, and the purpose for copyright is to encourage you to share those ideas with everybody else. If you don't like the deal, keep them to yourself.
Not according to the Constitution: Article I, Section 8, Clause 8
[Congress shall have the power] "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
Notice that it does not just say Congress can create copyrights. It is very specific, not only in what they can do, but why: "to promote progress". Not "to give authors a method of income", to promote progress.
When you copyright something, you own it in every legal sense of the word.
No you don't. Not in any legal sense of the word.
From Title 17 of the United States Code,
S106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
Sections 107 through 122 are limitations on those rights. Nowhere does it say you own it.
but you can deprive them of the fruits of their imagination - and that's what copyright law is intended to prevent.
No you can't. If I have the recipe for a bundt cake and I give it to you, I still know how to make bundt cakes. There is nothing you can do to prevent me from knowing how to make bundt cakes. You can tell everyone in the world how to make bundt cakes and I will still know how. The only thing you can deprive someone of by using their idea is the benefit that copyright creates in the first place: the ability to profit from the sharing of the idea. Without copyright, those benefits don't exist, so saying that copyright was created to prevent deprivation of those benefits is ridiculous.
Nobody wants to steal ideas anyway.
You can't steal ideas. There's nothing to steal. You can only copy them. You can't own ideas either, because there's nothing to own. They are imaginary. They only exist in the mind. If you're going to sit there and tell me you can own something that is imaginary, you need to have your head checked.
It's what you can do with those ideas that is valuable,
Exactly. And that's why copyright was created: to encourage others to share their ideas so society may benefit from the use of the ideas. It was a compromise. We want to benefit from your ideas, but we realize there's little incentive for you to share them since they can be passed around for free. So we are going to delay the benefit to society and allow you to be the sole source of copies of your work, which we will protect, but it is going to belong to the public later.
Copyright law does not, under any circumstances, give you any property rights to an idea. It gives you exclusive rights, and those rights are limited, as is the duration of those rights. Because ideas are not real. They are, by definition, imaginary. They can also be copied and disseminated without diminishing the original idea. You cannot be deprived of an idea. That's what makes it fundamentally different from property and not inherently deserving of protection from theft.
Copyright is the incentive to share those ideas so that society may benefit from them. It is the means, not the end.
They're a corporation. The only way to hurt them is financially. The only way to make them comply is to make it more profitable to comply. I'm sure there are lawyers who will tell you it's their responsibility to not comply if it increases share holder value. The fines have to be large enough to make it unprofitable to continue paying them. Otherwise, it's just another cost of doing business.
You mean, like Microsoft's anti-competitive practices?
but it would also be an admission that Open Source cannot compete with MS.
It would be no such thing. Whether the source code to Windows is open has no bearing on how other open source products perform, except how they interact with Windows components. But closed source products would benefit the same way.
Instead, go out and elect a President who will appoint an Attorney General who thinks that anti-trust laws need penalities that actually hurt.
These two are mutually exclusive. Anyone who can get elected will have had their campaign financed by someone that this hurts. Anyone who hasn't had their campaign financed by someone that this hurts can't get elected.
Step 3 is: Make so much money that the fines just become a cost of doing business.
I seem to remember[1] this being a problem with the EPA laws years ago. The cost of disposing of waste legally was more expensive than dumping it illegally and paying the fine. It's a no brainer from a business point of view. As long as non-compliance makes them more money than compliance, even with the fines, guess which they're going to choose.
[1] this might be an instance of "creative memory" rather than actual fact, but the analogy still holds.
If you don't care if they don't find out then why should you care that they use Windows rather than Linux?
I don't care. I don't care if nobody uses Linux so long as I can still get it. Linux is what works best for me.
Personally I don't use Linux.
Good for you! This isn't about Linux. This is about a psychologist claiming that "too many choices" creates suffering. RTFA. It doesn't mention Linux once. The OP made the observation that if this guy was right, that it might apply to Linux on the Desktop. But he's full of shit. He's transformed a bunch of bad decision makers into victims of "too many choices" with the wave of a psychological magic wand. All of a sudden it's not their fault they can't decide. After all, who could be expected to do a little research or even make a few decisions about what they need? He'll probably make a killing counseling "choicophobes" that it's all okay, it's not their fault, it's the mean old world's fault for giving them too many options.
Saying "too many choices" implies that you think there should be fewer. We don't need fewer options. What we need is for these people to learn how to figure out what they want and ignore the rest.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess I could say the same thing about Linux. All hail the free market, huh?
Ah, so you're Linux battling the convicted anti-trust violator Microsoft? Is that a free market?
Or are you trying to sustain your business model by suppressing technology? Is that a free market?
Or have you just lost sight of the market? Maybe your "services" don't matter to people as much as you think they should.
As a brick & mortar retailer, I'm sick and tired of losing businesses to cheapskates who want to shave a few pennies off
Welcome to the free market. Thanks for playing.
People just don't seem to grasp the laws of physics: the closer you are, the less time you have to slow down.
For the record, I hate tailgaters with a passion. But in the traffic around here, if you're not tailgating the person in front of you, you're inviting the person in another lane to cut you off to "get ahead". It seems the only way to keep people from doing it is to not give them the room to. But then, people around here think it's your responsiblity to avoid the accident they're causing.
Normally the lights have a sign a few hundred feet infront of them that warn of their functionality. People slow down in advance so that they do not get stuck at it.
And then speed right back up again once they're past it. So they've slowed down traffic at that one small section of road before the light.
which results in a 25% decrease in time.
That'll teach me to pay attention. This should, of course, be 20%, not 25%.
the funny part is that speeding does NOT get you there any faster than the guy driving the speed limit.
Yes it does. You said so.
over a 40 mile stretch of road between cities, the speeder going 15 mph faster than the other driver will only arrive ~7.5 minutes earlier
Backing in your numbers, you are comparing are 65 mph to 80 mph, so the 15mph difference is a 25% increase in speed, which results in a 25% decrease in time. The implication you are apparently making is that a 25% reduction in time is insignificant. Over an hour, that's 15 minutes. Over two, it's half an hour. If your argument is that 7.5 minutes is insignificant (which is subjective and arguable), then, possibly, in your very specific example, you might be right. But a specific case does not prove a generality.
IF he kept his speed constant never slowing below the 15+mph he has on the other driver
Your calculation is meaningless unless you're using average speed, so this is implied.
slowing for other traffic obeying the law or not as brazen will significantly reduce that time saved
Again, you have to assume average speed or the calculation is meaningless. Any conditions which slow the driver down throw your 15mph difference out the window. If he can go faster, he gets there faster. If he can't, he doesn't.
People who speed all the time are usually not bright enough to understand that concept anyways.
Possibly because they understand the concept of physics.
Note: this is not a defense of reckless driving which is not necessarily a function of speed compared to an arbitrary limit. There are times when 80mph is not reckless and times when 25mph is.
it's hard to come up with any good reason why this isn't a good idea. Follow the damn law.
I can't speak for Pleasonton, but in New Jersey the speed limits are typically set lower in anticipation of people speeding. If the State wants traffic to go 75mph, they set the speed limit at 65 and don't ticket you unless you're doing 80. This is apparent in New Jersey's traffic laws where a "slow vehicle" is defined as one traveling below the posted speed limit. So the posted speed limit is, in actuality, a minimum rather than a maximum. Not that you're particulary wrong, but "follow the damn law" isn't reasonable advice when the law is unreasonable and the State doesn't even expect you to follow it.
I think this traffic light is a bad idea, not because it violates anyone's rights[1], but because it will be ineffective[2] and, by the article's own admission, isn't going in because there have been a lot of accidents but rather to make people "feel safe".
[1] Except, as you pointed out, by punishing people following a speeder.
[2] As others have pointed out, people will either speed up to make the light, ignore it completely, or slow down just long enough to avoid tripping it.
Except that:
In other words, it's fixing a problem that doesn't exist and is only meant to make people feel better.
One of the arguments for keeping the barrier tolls on the Garden State Parkway is that they slow down traffic. But they only slow it down at the toll. People just speed between them.
This will do little more. People speeding before the light will have to stop for it, and continue speeding after it. All they've done is slow them down through the intersection. And once they've learned it's there, they'll only slow down for the radar gun and speed up after.
Proving the concept of the rights exists is a far cry from proving people have those rights.
I could summarise it, but why should I -- read it yourself.
No. Support your own argument. If you can't be bothered to point out where it says "Creators have moral rights on their works," and how those rights are being violated by this DVD player, I'm not doing it for you. It's your statement, you defend it.
Oh, and you might actually want to read what you're citing as support for your argument:
source
If you're saying that moral rights don't exist, well, try Googling for it -- 163,000 hits.
Easter Bunny 700,000 hits.
Santa Claus 1,650,000 hits.
Tooth Fairy 175,000 hits.
Alien Abduction 74,900 hits.
Finding Google results does not prove it exists.
I'm sure someone has defined it for you.
Support your own argument. You used the term, you define what you meant by it.
This is anti-darwinitism. Against natural selection.
The unfortunate part of letting bad drivers de-select themselves is they usually take out one or two others at random.
people shouldn't be pirating the hell out of their music so that they'll at least get something back.
What, in anything I said, even remotely condoned copyright infringement? For the record, I have downloaded two songs in my entire life and owned the albums for both. I was just too lazy to get them out of my car. That makes me evil, I know.
By the way, the RIAA doesn't have anything to do with label contracts. It's the record labels that do it--the RIAA is just their public lobbying group. People have lumped the RIAA into being the entire music industry for some reason. Why not name names--Sony, Virgin, etc.
Excuse me. I misspoke. Change "RIAA" to "every single member of the RIAA". Sorry for the confusion.
You know, the RIAA uses this same argument to justify paying the musicians squat. It's the studio's job to evaluate the risk and worth of a new series. If they're bad at it, then they should lose money. But don't punish the actors of a sucessful series because your other shows, which they had no involvement with or control over, were crap.
The failure of your other projects in no way lessens the value of the project I'm working on.
That being said, I have no idea what the voice talent of the Simpson's is worth, not being in the business myself. I just want it resolved. Personally, I think it would be funny if, next season, everybody aged 15 years over night.
Well, sometimes it works out for the better. I've never understood why stores would want to close on one of the two days most people can shop. Or why people would want to cut their available shopping time in half.
Laws like that are silly. They don't help the businesses or the people.
That's actually the opposite - it's very generic! It does not say anything about how to promote progress
Read it again. "by securing for limited times the exclusive rights of Authors and Inventors to their respective writings and inventions." That's the only method they have available. No other way.
One definition of "own" is to have control over.
But they do not have complete control. There are a number of uses that are not covered in their exclusive rights. So they only partially own it. In the loosest sense of the word, they do own it, but that definition in no way implies that the thing being owned is property.
You don't care, you can't own ideas. Information wants to be free!
Ideas don't want anything. They are free until you put artificial constraints on them.
Why should they? You can't own ideas, and you've lost nothing, right? You still have your idea and a copy of the original manuscript, right? They didn't steal anything from you...
Well, what have I lost? It didn't cost me any money. And I still have my story. I can still tell it, I can still read it, I can still know it. They've taken nothing from me. If you're suggesting that I've lost the revenue to the film, I never had it, so how did I lose it. I also never had any right to it so what have I lost? The only thing I am deprived of are the benefits that don't exist in your example of life without copyright, because copyright is what gives you those benefits. So I've lost nothing.
Copyright is about not having to "share" ideas.
Copyright is only about having to share ideas. Copyright (theoretically) only covers the expression of the idea. There is no protection for an idea. If you're not going to share it, why should I give a shit if you make any money from it? Why should I limit my freedoms to give you a job?
"We'll give you exclusive legal control over your ideas, but only if you promise to give up that control after n years. Sound fair?"
Go back and look at my last post. You'll see I wrote the same thing almost word for word. The purpose is to get people to share their ideas. The incentive is the limited control we give them temporarily. Otherwise, why make them give up their rights to something they "own"?
Half your argument appears to be why copyright is a good thing. I never once said I thought copyright should be abolished. Copyright, in the form I describe, and as the writers of the Constitution wanted it, is for society's benefit first and the benefit of the creators as an incentive only. Copyright as it stands today is broken. And given the choice between having no copyright and having what we have now, I'd choose no copyright. But we don't need to go that far. It can be fixed. But only if people like you realize that ideas are not property, they don't entitle you to anything, and the purpose for copyright is to encourage you to share those ideas with everybody else. If you don't like the deal, keep them to yourself.
Not according to the Constitution:
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8
[Congress shall have the power]
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
source
Notice that it does not just say Congress can create copyrights. It is very specific, not only in what they can do, but why: "to promote progress". Not "to give authors a method of income", to promote progress.
When you copyright something, you own it in every legal sense of the word.
No you don't. Not in any legal sense of the word.
From Title 17 of the United States Code,
source
Sections 107 through 122 are limitations on those rights. Nowhere does it say you own it.
but you can deprive them of the fruits of their imagination - and that's what copyright law is intended to prevent.
No you can't. If I have the recipe for a bundt cake and I give it to you, I still know how to make bundt cakes. There is nothing you can do to prevent me from knowing how to make bundt cakes. You can tell everyone in the world how to make bundt cakes and I will still know how. The only thing you can deprive someone of by using their idea is the benefit that copyright creates in the first place: the ability to profit from the sharing of the idea. Without copyright, those benefits don't exist, so saying that copyright was created to prevent deprivation of those benefits is ridiculous.
Nobody wants to steal ideas anyway.
You can't steal ideas. There's nothing to steal. You can only copy them. You can't own ideas either, because there's nothing to own. They are imaginary. They only exist in the mind. If you're going to sit there and tell me you can own something that is imaginary, you need to have your head checked.
It's what you can do with those ideas that is valuable,
Exactly. And that's why copyright was created: to encourage others to share their ideas so society may benefit from the use of the ideas. It was a compromise. We want to benefit from your ideas, but we realize there's little incentive for you to share them since they can be passed around for free. So we are going to delay the benefit to society and allow you to be the sole source of copies of your work, which we will protect, but it is going to belong to the public later.
If it's not property, then nobody can control it.
Copyright law does not, under any circumstances, give you any property rights to an idea. It gives you exclusive rights, and those rights are limited, as is the duration of those rights. Because ideas are not real. They are, by definition, imaginary. They can also be copied and disseminated without diminishing the original idea. You cannot be deprived of an idea. That's what makes it fundamentally different from property and not inherently deserving of protection from theft.
Copyright is the incentive to share those ideas so that society may benefit from them. It is the means, not the end.
They're a corporation. The only way to hurt them is financially. The only way to make them comply is to make it more profitable to comply. I'm sure there are lawyers who will tell you it's their responsibility to not comply if it increases share holder value. The fines have to be large enough to make it unprofitable to continue paying them. Otherwise, it's just another cost of doing business.
Not only would this be completely unfair
You mean, like Microsoft's anti-competitive practices?
but it would also be an admission that Open Source cannot compete with MS.
It would be no such thing. Whether the source code to Windows is open has no bearing on how other open source products perform, except how they interact with Windows components. But closed source products would benefit the same way.
Property is property.
Intellectual property is NOT property.
Instead, go out and elect a President who will appoint an Attorney General who thinks that anti-trust laws need penalities that actually hurt.
These two are mutually exclusive. Anyone who can get elected will have had their campaign financed by someone that this hurts. Anyone who hasn't had their campaign financed by someone that this hurts can't get elected.
Step 3 is: Make so much money that the fines just become a cost of doing business.
I seem to remember[1] this being a problem with the EPA laws years ago. The cost of disposing of waste legally was more expensive than dumping it illegally and paying the fine. It's a no brainer from a business point of view. As long as non-compliance makes them more money than compliance, even with the fines, guess which they're going to choose.
[1] this might be an instance of "creative memory" rather than actual fact, but the analogy still holds.
It's just so much easier here with so many lawyers, and a very expensive judicial system.
If you don't care if they don't find out then why should you care that they use Windows rather than Linux?
I don't care. I don't care if nobody uses Linux so long as I can still get it. Linux is what works best for me.
Personally I don't use Linux.
Good for you! This isn't about Linux. This is about a psychologist claiming that "too many choices" creates suffering. RTFA. It doesn't mention Linux once. The OP made the observation that if this guy was right, that it might apply to Linux on the Desktop. But he's full of shit. He's transformed a bunch of bad decision makers into victims of "too many choices" with the wave of a psychological magic wand. All of a sudden it's not their fault they can't decide. After all, who could be expected to do a little research or even make a few decisions about what they need? He'll probably make a killing counseling "choicophobes" that it's all okay, it's not their fault, it's the mean old world's fault for giving them too many options.
Saying "too many choices" implies that you think there should be fewer. We don't need fewer options. What we need is for these people to learn how to figure out what they want and ignore the rest.
...or just another way of saying "I'm not a nerd. I do have a life."
Life is making choices.