First let me say I like your shifts in perspective, and the main reason I don't play go is that I feel like I'm out of time to pick up a whole second game competently.
My shifts in perspective are usually due to a failed understanding of the world. My losses in Go, on the other hand, are usually due to personal flaws; but a failed understanding of the game plays a large part. I may be 2 or 3 stones stronger if I wasn't so mindless, and I play sloppy against weak opponents.
A game-level handicap in Chess would be difficult. In Go, every piece does the same thing; whereas in Chess, losing a Queen may be preferable to losing a Knight if I can make a game-winning strategy with no Queen but not without the Knight, despite the Queen being more powerful. Further, having two moves in a row in the beginning of Chess is not necessarily as helpful as you'd like to think, and probably not in any way quantifiable; while two moves in a row in Go is quantifiable, and even devastating (Chinese rules where you can put your handicap stones anywhere; I prefer Japanese fixed handicap positions, because a Chinese style 4 stone handicap to me is 8 stones in strength, as I am really strong at the opening for my level). In Japanese rules, handicap stones are fixed; and a rank is defined by handicap anyway (if you can beat someone on X rank with 2 handicap stones 50% of the time, you are 2 ranks below them).
So of course in Go we have a rough idea of what a handicap does, whereas in Chess there's no such thing. The best you could do is make up a list of standard Chess positions playing off certain openings that are favorable to White by an established value, and play from there (which is roughly analogous to Japanese handicap rules in Go).
You never had time to learn Go. In 4000 years... the first 9 dan was about 50 years ago, nobody had ever advanced to that level of skill yet. And we're still searching. The game is too deep, there is more to know than can be known. That said, a few Chess grand masters were also Go players. I was 10k in Go (fairly competent) in 3 months, but I've been stalled for 2 months now.
That all sounds very complex and confusing. The only thing I got out of your first description was "they're either trying to overwhelm their opponent or trick them into a mistake."
Interesting (to me), Dan level players play mid-kyu and high-dan play high-kyu on high handicap waiting for them to make a mistake, but that's usually the only time that tactic is employed; this is because the handicap gives you an unwinnable game, and the only way to win is for your opponent to fail, so you play patiently and wait for them to play suboptimal moves. The direct strategy for high dan in Go high handicap games is to start complicated fights that they have the technical ability to understand, with the hopes that their lower level opponent won't be able to work it out: every play is a correct play (trick plays, when spotted, are typically devastating for the person trying the smoke-and-mirrors thing), but you're just too weak to respond correctly.
That "Fire" and "Ice" thing is cute, and immature. Go players who play like that suffer dearly: most high level players will recognize trick plays, and people who try to play based on the opponent's mistakes or weaknesses never progress out of the mid kyu levels (where I am now after 6 months). High level games usually come within a point or two--can you quantify how close the game was in Chess, or is it about "win or lose"? Mind you a 50 point win and a 1 point win are still simply a win.
The best way to study Joseki is to understand the why of each move, the reason and purpose, and then to forget the joseki. Get Strong at Joseki is a good series: it teaches you useful joseki variations, as well as how to punish improper variations. Learning to punish an improper move is excellent: it shows you why the move is wrong, and makes the strengths of the correct moves much more clear.
Winning at any cost is impossible in Go. Everything is an exchange, and a perfect game would be perfectly even. I take a corner on an empty board, you take another corner... two more such exchanges, then an approach, which I defend, taking an enclosure; you chose the joseki, but it will either complete my enclosure and give you a safe extension or give me freedom to play another agile move while leaving both positions weak and open.
In the latter case, I could take the opportunity to approach your approach and strengthen my corner; but this would strengthen your position, causing me trouble later. Even if I kept sente, I'd lose the aji in that area, giving me fewer strategic options later. So I must sacrifice some security to gain a better position elsewhere. Often you will also see even exchanges, and these are simply strategic considerations: protect a corner or extend to the center; diminish the opponent's moyo here or grow your moyo there. You take one, he gets the other; they're roughly miai, and both large.
We have too much winning at any cost here, especially in business and politics.
You have a goal but your opponent has the same goal, the idea is to outwit him to achieve your goal.
This is exactly what I dislike in chess, too. In Go I always examine my games afterwards and cite my flaws: greed, thoughtlessness, arrogance... the moment I assume my opponent is an idiot I let him lead me into the obvious plays, and then he pulls a brilliant tesuji and I lose. There is no opponent; there is only the board, and myself. I must examine the board thoroughly and find the correct play. I prefer to play stronger opponents for this reason.
Studying Chess is in no way equivalent to studying Go. The study of Chess is about memorizing openings, endgames, game positions, and strategies; the study of Go is about understanding. Some people like to memorize as much Joseki as they can; but most professionals study and understand some Joseki, then abandon memorization of piles of Joseki and all 25,000 variations because they know how moves play out. More importantly, which josek, tesuji, etc to use depends on the whole board position, and (by extension) on the timing of play; the 3-3 invasion behind the 4-4 early in the opening is a mistake. As far as openings go in general, there are some (nirensen, sanrensen, high/low/mini chinese, etc); but they are rather variable, and the decision on how and when to approach, what approach to use, how to extend, etc is a matter of goals.
There is no book of all good Go openings; the openings are a framework, with many variations, responses, etc. What actually happens is a matter of complex strategy.
Go teaches a few lessons as such too. Every play stays on the board: if your stones are captured, you likely lose that entire area of the board. Unless you play a sacrifice stone to capture. Also, attempting to save every stone/not sacrifice anything often ends in disaster, where a quick sacrifice may kill a large group instead. Everything on the board stretches influence across everything else; power, strength, speed, you need a flexible whole-board strategy to handle any and all possible situations.
When the music labels came in, and the unions came in, the big bands vanished. That big band sound, like the Brian Setzer Orchestra and all, just went away. Losing all this shit will give us back our god damn culture.
Job skills are not "you know how to build a car, we need that."
Take extremely intelligent people with no social skills. They're irritating, and can't hold a job, even though they can do the job way better than the plebs that actually work there. Why? Because nobody likes them, they don't mesh well, and they don't have the ability to separate what they want to do with what work wants them to do. Worse, they don't have the skills needed to negotiate between what they want to do and what work wants them to do: they may notice something is horribly wrong, and have a solution, but nobody cares because they're spitting out incoherent babble and just demanding they're right, and won't bring the technobullshit down to comprehensible terms.
Technical writing, business speaking, and the like deal with communications issues like this; but still, you can't just fire off a bunch of stuff that's well formed and then totally fall apart when questioned outside your prepared speech. You need those kinds of social skills, the ability to stop and go, "Oh, well shit I don't know that. I'll get back to you." You need to do it in such a way that people respect you for it, rather than ridiculing you.
Argumentative logic and basic philosophy are staples of a good, working society. Politicians bullshit a lot, and people fall for all sorts of stupid scams and logic traps that "make sense" when you're an idiot. The ability to spot the obvious is highly important. One thing that's obvious: our society is a massive entitlement/consumerism society, which is only a bad thing if you happen to want to get into a philosophy discussion. We should take care of everyone, right? That's the core of communism, but why is communism wrong but paying for everyone's healthcare and feeding the poor and everything not wrong? The answers to these questions are actually complex balance systems, not really direct "yes" or "no" binary outputs.
The most useful forms of philosophy for daily life number two. The first is the ability to recognize flaws in argumentation, such that you are not lead as sheep. The second is the ability to recognize that some problems don't have solutions: they have attempts, adjustments, and balance; unlimited costs and limited benefits; they can "save" a few from one terrible outcome while damning the many to a horribly reduced quality of life. Combining both of these moves politics safely to the center, because people do not argue vehemently for or against things (i.e. no government medical assistance vs complete coverage) but rather search for the best answer (what is the least we can do, what is reasonable and affordable, what is the benefit? What more can we do, and what else could we do instead that would supply better benefit?). There will always be people that want to go a little more one way and a little more on the other; we absolutely need both.
That second one, by the way, is largely analogous to the game of Go. I consider Go a decent mental exercise, and a good metaphor to relate such things to; it is extremely difficult to explain stuff like that in terms of raw numbers and make people actually care or understand.
It is my belief that everybody has a little flex. We all get lazy, we all buy fast food, it's never just the dollar menu. Shoes happen to be something the homeless generally wear through and generally buy a lot: you see them with $80 Nikes because the sole on a $40 pair of Converse All-Stars is a Vibram sole that outlasts the shoe by about 10 years, while the shoe itself starts to wear out after a month of that kind of life style. The Nikes actually last several months, a year at best. If they suffered a little longer between buys, with shoes that are barely holding up but at least somewhat protect the feet (better than being barefoot), they could get a $150 pair of military boots and be done with it. Sure that's $80/year maybe, but that's a hell of a lot of money to these people.
That's an extreme example. People who can actually (barely) make their rent are less extreme, and have other options; but it still applies. They can dig themselves out into a comfortable but poor lifestyle; it's unfortunately a daily struggle, in the same way you struggle to become fantastically wealthy. It's not so bad, though: when they actually reach goals like that, it doesn't really matter that it's the goal of "buying a washing machine that won't break in 2 years" or whatever. One burden is gone, and they have claimed victory by their own hand; it's the same feeling you get when you pay off your $30,000 car and decide never to go into car debt like that again.
Wealth is really a factor of person. I have a $150 Shun Premier Santoku, an excellent knife with a VG-10 steel core exposed at the blade and stainless cladding along the body, hand-hammered and hand-forged. A $40 Victorinox is also an excellent knife, will hold its edge for months, will take a new edge easily, and generally will do the same job. If a poor person buys a good Victorinox chef's knife, learns to use it and keep it well maintained, and cooks much at home, they will have satisfaction of person (by the validation of cooking well, daily) without buying expensive $1000 23 piece knife sets. They will also save money preparing their own food.
I bought a $450 bicycle and have been upgrading parts. It's a hybrid road bike (i.e. city bike) with no suspension, so I added a $150 seat suspension and am putting on a $150 leather seat. For the $1000 that went in, I can get to work in 60 minutes instead of 40, 8 miles away. It's cheaper on gas, cheaper than a car (I have one of those too), and more demanding of me personally than of my wallet. You can finance bicycles too, in fact the shop I went to would finance anything above $500 total purchase with 0% interest for 6 months. If a poor person works at like McDonalds or something, probably 3 miles away, he can bike there and lock his bike up (or even bring it inside). Or he can find a bus pass, or (most likely) buy a $2000 used car that he has no idea how to maintain and that breaks so often that he's dumping $500 in every 3-4 months to keep it running, plus insurance. If lifestyle permits, then buying an expensive bicycle is cheaper than buying a more expensive car, and will keep you healthy.
And there is the Ramkin Extension again, isn't it? A $1000 bicycle, holy shit are you rich? Yet these poor fuckers will turn around and buy a $2000, $5000, etc used car that costs an assload to maintain because they have no idea how to shop for or maintain a car--unless their shit-pay job is being a mechanic, in which case they're likely doing extremely well buying $1000 cars that they throw another $1500 into and make run for 5-8 years, and feel quite satisfied and proud as they drive down the street (you've seen these people, they know what they did and it feels good 'cause they did it).
Of note, my bike won't pay for itself; I ride it to work 2 days a week. If I get more endurance maybe I'll do it daily; it'll take roughly 160 total days of bike instead of car to make back the $1000 (completely in fuel costs) I spent on the bike, and I've currently logged 2. But then, I'll also be in much better shape, and have the ability to handle a bicycle well.
Craftsman is a good buy. It's re-branded from some other tool maker I don't know; someone told me once, but also assured me that said tool maker is well known for making good tools. With Craftsman, you buy a wrench and what you get is forged steel instead of stamped; this means the steel flexes better and springs back to its proper shape, rather than snapping off under extreme torque or deforming permanently. All their tools are of this type of quality; they're also of a price absolutely off the scale of Harbor Freight, but if you plan to use a Harbor Freight tool more than once then buy two.
Plasma displays were dumped in the 70s too. As was OLED recently dumped by everyone (until they make their margin on the other incremental technologies anyway).
Actually, just the opposite is true, in a way. Let's say you want to spend money on shoes. You could buy a $40 pair of Converses. I've done this plenty, they fall apart in a year of normal work (I walk up the stairs and up a 1/3 mile hill to my office job 5 days a week). Or you could spend $150 on a pair of military issue (Matterhorn, Bellville, etc; I have Bellville 770, $145 shipped from Botach) boots, waterproof (GoreTex with breathable canvas, not to mention the leather), insulated (200g/m^2 3M Thinsulate), made of quality leather that you can spend 5 bucks a year to maintain (black leather obviously means shoe shine, but rough leather treatments exist too). They'll last you 10 years maybe, maybe more, if you're walking in them a lot (homeless, bike/walk to work, etc), and keep your feet warm, protected, and dry.
More often you see people spending money on shit like Uggs ($150) or Reeboks($100), funny enough these don't hold up to heavy-duty use. The soles fell off my Reeboks after a year! They're hollow, after they wear a little the glue starts giving out and you start getting holes and such and find out there's a large honeycomb structure inside. Uggs don't hold up to anything, at all, and they directly tell you this (not for "heavy walking" or rain or snow). Despite that, poor people buy 'em.
My mom has gone through... who knows how many $50-$80 juice machines. They break in a year under daily use, sometimes less. I suggested a $200 juice machine of better quality, but the Wal-Mart special is a favorite and shelling out so much money over and over seems like a deal to them. It's odd because they had an Oster Regency kitchen center for like 25 years before the motor wore down, which should have hammered the "Buy Better Shit" thing in.
In some cases the ROI is immediate: socks at $8/8 pair vs (decent, not overpriced quality-fucked designer!) $20/3 pair, the $8 ones will wear down QUICK under normal use and even faster under strained use, getting holes and in general providing no cushion after just weeks; I still have 3 year old pairs of socks that are just now starting to thin out, just a bit, but they still provide cushion and they're long discolored. In other cases, the ROI is slow: appliances that last a year or two, versus decades-lived ones that cost two or three times as much.
It all adds up. That cheap-ass washing machine you bought that needs constant repair after one year and replacement after five is you paying for it 3 times in 5 years; buy one that costs twice as much instead and lasts a decade. Stop buying crap you don't need, just for a little while; buy yourself a $100 chef's knife or a Wii or a luxury couch later, after you've saved up a little money from not having to replace/repair shit constantly. Yes it's hard to save up to get out of the consumerist society, but once you've made that first little victory it becomes that little bit easier. You did it once, do it again... and again... and again, until you get out of that damned hole and find some sunshine.
The platform is called Palladium and it's sponsored by Microsoft, an attempt to prevent people from running "Dangerous hacking tools" by putting a control chip in the PC to make sure only "approved" operating systems can load, which in turn use the TPM to validate their drivers and load only "secure" software.
Actually, he picked his fights wrongly; got bashed in the head, dragged to a barn, and shown a huge horse cock. "Now see this poor boy hasn't even seen himself a mare in months... now why don't we discuss what we gonna do bout that you and me hmm?" Suddenly this didn't seem like a good idea anymore.
Yes, he paid for and owns a machine which he has full rights to mulch up with a wood chipper. It is illegal for him to make it process certain electronic signals, for example to run Linux locally. One day your home PC will have a TPM, and it will be illegal for you to hack it to bypass the TPM and run your own custom OS, too.
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First let me say I like your shifts in perspective, and the main reason I don't play go is that I feel like I'm out of time to pick up a whole second game competently.
My shifts in perspective are usually due to a failed understanding of the world. My losses in Go, on the other hand, are usually due to personal flaws; but a failed understanding of the game plays a large part. I may be 2 or 3 stones stronger if I wasn't so mindless, and I play sloppy against weak opponents.
A game-level handicap in Chess would be difficult. In Go, every piece does the same thing; whereas in Chess, losing a Queen may be preferable to losing a Knight if I can make a game-winning strategy with no Queen but not without the Knight, despite the Queen being more powerful. Further, having two moves in a row in the beginning of Chess is not necessarily as helpful as you'd like to think, and probably not in any way quantifiable; while two moves in a row in Go is quantifiable, and even devastating (Chinese rules where you can put your handicap stones anywhere; I prefer Japanese fixed handicap positions, because a Chinese style 4 stone handicap to me is 8 stones in strength, as I am really strong at the opening for my level). In Japanese rules, handicap stones are fixed; and a rank is defined by handicap anyway (if you can beat someone on X rank with 2 handicap stones 50% of the time, you are 2 ranks below them).
So of course in Go we have a rough idea of what a handicap does, whereas in Chess there's no such thing. The best you could do is make up a list of standard Chess positions playing off certain openings that are favorable to White by an established value, and play from there (which is roughly analogous to Japanese handicap rules in Go).
You never had time to learn Go. In 4000 years... the first 9 dan was about 50 years ago, nobody had ever advanced to that level of skill yet. And we're still searching. The game is too deep, there is more to know than can be known. That said, a few Chess grand masters were also Go players. I was 10k in Go (fairly competent) in 3 months, but I've been stalled for 2 months now.
That all sounds very complex and confusing. The only thing I got out of your first description was "they're either trying to overwhelm their opponent or trick them into a mistake."
Interesting (to me), Dan level players play mid-kyu and high-dan play high-kyu on high handicap waiting for them to make a mistake, but that's usually the only time that tactic is employed; this is because the handicap gives you an unwinnable game, and the only way to win is for your opponent to fail, so you play patiently and wait for them to play suboptimal moves. The direct strategy for high dan in Go high handicap games is to start complicated fights that they have the technical ability to understand, with the hopes that their lower level opponent won't be able to work it out: every play is a correct play (trick plays, when spotted, are typically devastating for the person trying the smoke-and-mirrors thing), but you're just too weak to respond correctly.
Local scans are also important, and a log-in account allows further auditing.
That "Fire" and "Ice" thing is cute, and immature. Go players who play like that suffer dearly: most high level players will recognize trick plays, and people who try to play based on the opponent's mistakes or weaknesses never progress out of the mid kyu levels (where I am now after 6 months). High level games usually come within a point or two--can you quantify how close the game was in Chess, or is it about "win or lose"? Mind you a 50 point win and a 1 point win are still simply a win.
The best way to study Joseki is to understand the why of each move, the reason and purpose, and then to forget the joseki. Get Strong at Joseki is a good series: it teaches you useful joseki variations, as well as how to punish improper variations. Learning to punish an improper move is excellent: it shows you why the move is wrong, and makes the strengths of the correct moves much more clear.
Winning at any cost is impossible in Go. Everything is an exchange, and a perfect game would be perfectly even. I take a corner on an empty board, you take another corner... two more such exchanges, then an approach, which I defend, taking an enclosure; you chose the joseki, but it will either complete my enclosure and give you a safe extension or give me freedom to play another agile move while leaving both positions weak and open.
In the latter case, I could take the opportunity to approach your approach and strengthen my corner; but this would strengthen your position, causing me trouble later. Even if I kept sente, I'd lose the aji in that area, giving me fewer strategic options later. So I must sacrifice some security to gain a better position elsewhere. Often you will also see even exchanges, and these are simply strategic considerations: protect a corner or extend to the center; diminish the opponent's moyo here or grow your moyo there. You take one, he gets the other; they're roughly miai, and both large.
We have too much winning at any cost here, especially in business and politics.
You have a goal but your opponent has the same goal, the idea is to outwit him to achieve your goal.
This is exactly what I dislike in chess, too. In Go I always examine my games afterwards and cite my flaws: greed, thoughtlessness, arrogance... the moment I assume my opponent is an idiot I let him lead me into the obvious plays, and then he pulls a brilliant tesuji and I lose. There is no opponent; there is only the board, and myself. I must examine the board thoroughly and find the correct play. I prefer to play stronger opponents for this reason.
yeah, like the 3 or 4 people in the world who could pass Harvard's entrance exam out of high school.
Studying Chess is in no way equivalent to studying Go. The study of Chess is about memorizing openings, endgames, game positions, and strategies; the study of Go is about understanding. Some people like to memorize as much Joseki as they can; but most professionals study and understand some Joseki, then abandon memorization of piles of Joseki and all 25,000 variations because they know how moves play out. More importantly, which josek, tesuji, etc to use depends on the whole board position, and (by extension) on the timing of play; the 3-3 invasion behind the 4-4 early in the opening is a mistake. As far as openings go in general, there are some (nirensen, sanrensen, high/low/mini chinese, etc); but they are rather variable, and the decision on how and when to approach, what approach to use, how to extend, etc is a matter of goals.
There is no book of all good Go openings; the openings are a framework, with many variations, responses, etc. What actually happens is a matter of complex strategy.
Go teaches a few lessons as such too. Every play stays on the board: if your stones are captured, you likely lose that entire area of the board. Unless you play a sacrifice stone to capture. Also, attempting to save every stone/not sacrifice anything often ends in disaster, where a quick sacrifice may kill a large group instead. Everything on the board stretches influence across everything else; power, strength, speed, you need a flexible whole-board strategy to handle any and all possible situations.
Chess exercises the logical analysis portions of the brain; but Go makes demands of every level of abstract and logical reasoning, continuously.
When the music labels came in, and the unions came in, the big bands vanished. That big band sound, like the Brian Setzer Orchestra and all, just went away. Losing all this shit will give us back our god damn culture.
How is the PTA full of the most stupid, uneducated people on the planet?
Job skills are not "you know how to build a car, we need that."
Take extremely intelligent people with no social skills. They're irritating, and can't hold a job, even though they can do the job way better than the plebs that actually work there. Why? Because nobody likes them, they don't mesh well, and they don't have the ability to separate what they want to do with what work wants them to do. Worse, they don't have the skills needed to negotiate between what they want to do and what work wants them to do: they may notice something is horribly wrong, and have a solution, but nobody cares because they're spitting out incoherent babble and just demanding they're right, and won't bring the technobullshit down to comprehensible terms.
Technical writing, business speaking, and the like deal with communications issues like this; but still, you can't just fire off a bunch of stuff that's well formed and then totally fall apart when questioned outside your prepared speech. You need those kinds of social skills, the ability to stop and go, "Oh, well shit I don't know that. I'll get back to you." You need to do it in such a way that people respect you for it, rather than ridiculing you.
Argumentative logic and basic philosophy are staples of a good, working society. Politicians bullshit a lot, and people fall for all sorts of stupid scams and logic traps that "make sense" when you're an idiot. The ability to spot the obvious is highly important. One thing that's obvious: our society is a massive entitlement/consumerism society, which is only a bad thing if you happen to want to get into a philosophy discussion. We should take care of everyone, right? That's the core of communism, but why is communism wrong but paying for everyone's healthcare and feeding the poor and everything not wrong? The answers to these questions are actually complex balance systems, not really direct "yes" or "no" binary outputs.
The most useful forms of philosophy for daily life number two. The first is the ability to recognize flaws in argumentation, such that you are not lead as sheep. The second is the ability to recognize that some problems don't have solutions: they have attempts, adjustments, and balance; unlimited costs and limited benefits; they can "save" a few from one terrible outcome while damning the many to a horribly reduced quality of life. Combining both of these moves politics safely to the center, because people do not argue vehemently for or against things (i.e. no government medical assistance vs complete coverage) but rather search for the best answer (what is the least we can do, what is reasonable and affordable, what is the benefit? What more can we do, and what else could we do instead that would supply better benefit?). There will always be people that want to go a little more one way and a little more on the other; we absolutely need both.
That second one, by the way, is largely analogous to the game of Go. I consider Go a decent mental exercise, and a good metaphor to relate such things to; it is extremely difficult to explain stuff like that in terms of raw numbers and make people actually care or understand.
It is my belief that everybody has a little flex. We all get lazy, we all buy fast food, it's never just the dollar menu. Shoes happen to be something the homeless generally wear through and generally buy a lot: you see them with $80 Nikes because the sole on a $40 pair of Converse All-Stars is a Vibram sole that outlasts the shoe by about 10 years, while the shoe itself starts to wear out after a month of that kind of life style. The Nikes actually last several months, a year at best. If they suffered a little longer between buys, with shoes that are barely holding up but at least somewhat protect the feet (better than being barefoot), they could get a $150 pair of military boots and be done with it. Sure that's $80/year maybe, but that's a hell of a lot of money to these people.
That's an extreme example. People who can actually (barely) make their rent are less extreme, and have other options; but it still applies. They can dig themselves out into a comfortable but poor lifestyle; it's unfortunately a daily struggle, in the same way you struggle to become fantastically wealthy. It's not so bad, though: when they actually reach goals like that, it doesn't really matter that it's the goal of "buying a washing machine that won't break in 2 years" or whatever. One burden is gone, and they have claimed victory by their own hand; it's the same feeling you get when you pay off your $30,000 car and decide never to go into car debt like that again.
Wealth is really a factor of person. I have a $150 Shun Premier Santoku, an excellent knife with a VG-10 steel core exposed at the blade and stainless cladding along the body, hand-hammered and hand-forged. A $40 Victorinox is also an excellent knife, will hold its edge for months, will take a new edge easily, and generally will do the same job. If a poor person buys a good Victorinox chef's knife, learns to use it and keep it well maintained, and cooks much at home, they will have satisfaction of person (by the validation of cooking well, daily) without buying expensive $1000 23 piece knife sets. They will also save money preparing their own food.
I bought a $450 bicycle and have been upgrading parts. It's a hybrid road bike (i.e. city bike) with no suspension, so I added a $150 seat suspension and am putting on a $150 leather seat. For the $1000 that went in, I can get to work in 60 minutes instead of 40, 8 miles away. It's cheaper on gas, cheaper than a car (I have one of those too), and more demanding of me personally than of my wallet. You can finance bicycles too, in fact the shop I went to would finance anything above $500 total purchase with 0% interest for 6 months. If a poor person works at like McDonalds or something, probably 3 miles away, he can bike there and lock his bike up (or even bring it inside). Or he can find a bus pass, or (most likely) buy a $2000 used car that he has no idea how to maintain and that breaks so often that he's dumping $500 in every 3-4 months to keep it running, plus insurance. If lifestyle permits, then buying an expensive bicycle is cheaper than buying a more expensive car, and will keep you healthy.
And there is the Ramkin Extension again, isn't it? A $1000 bicycle, holy shit are you rich? Yet these poor fuckers will turn around and buy a $2000, $5000, etc used car that costs an assload to maintain because they have no idea how to shop for or maintain a car--unless their shit-pay job is being a mechanic, in which case they're likely doing extremely well buying $1000 cars that they throw another $1500 into and make run for 5-8 years, and feel quite satisfied and proud as they drive down the street (you've seen these people, they know what they did and it feels good 'cause they did it).
Of note, my bike won't pay for itself; I ride it to work 2 days a week. If I get more endurance maybe I'll do it daily; it'll take roughly 160 total days of bike instead of car to make back the $1000 (completely in fuel costs) I spent on the bike, and I've currently logged 2. But then, I'll also be in much better shape, and have the ability to handle a bicycle well.
Craftsman is a good buy. It's re-branded from some other tool maker I don't know; someone told me once, but also assured me that said tool maker is well known for making good tools. With Craftsman, you buy a wrench and what you get is forged steel instead of stamped; this means the steel flexes better and springs back to its proper shape, rather than snapping off under extreme torque or deforming permanently. All their tools are of this type of quality; they're also of a price absolutely off the scale of Harbor Freight, but if you plan to use a Harbor Freight tool more than once then buy two.
Plasma displays were dumped in the 70s too. As was OLED recently dumped by everyone (until they make their margin on the other incremental technologies anyway).
Actually, just the opposite is true, in a way. Let's say you want to spend money on shoes. You could buy a $40 pair of Converses. I've done this plenty, they fall apart in a year of normal work (I walk up the stairs and up a 1/3 mile hill to my office job 5 days a week). Or you could spend $150 on a pair of military issue (Matterhorn, Bellville, etc; I have Bellville 770, $145 shipped from Botach) boots, waterproof (GoreTex with breathable canvas, not to mention the leather), insulated (200g/m^2 3M Thinsulate), made of quality leather that you can spend 5 bucks a year to maintain (black leather obviously means shoe shine, but rough leather treatments exist too). They'll last you 10 years maybe, maybe more, if you're walking in them a lot (homeless, bike/walk to work, etc), and keep your feet warm, protected, and dry.
More often you see people spending money on shit like Uggs ($150) or Reeboks($100), funny enough these don't hold up to heavy-duty use. The soles fell off my Reeboks after a year! They're hollow, after they wear a little the glue starts giving out and you start getting holes and such and find out there's a large honeycomb structure inside. Uggs don't hold up to anything, at all, and they directly tell you this (not for "heavy walking" or rain or snow). Despite that, poor people buy 'em.
My mom has gone through ... who knows how many $50-$80 juice machines. They break in a year under daily use, sometimes less. I suggested a $200 juice machine of better quality, but the Wal-Mart special is a favorite and shelling out so much money over and over seems like a deal to them. It's odd because they had an Oster Regency kitchen center for like 25 years before the motor wore down, which should have hammered the "Buy Better Shit" thing in.
In some cases the ROI is immediate: socks at $8/8 pair vs (decent, not overpriced quality-fucked designer!) $20/3 pair, the $8 ones will wear down QUICK under normal use and even faster under strained use, getting holes and in general providing no cushion after just weeks; I still have 3 year old pairs of socks that are just now starting to thin out, just a bit, but they still provide cushion and they're long discolored. In other cases, the ROI is slow: appliances that last a year or two, versus decades-lived ones that cost two or three times as much.
It all adds up. That cheap-ass washing machine you bought that needs constant repair after one year and replacement after five is you paying for it 3 times in 5 years; buy one that costs twice as much instead and lasts a decade. Stop buying crap you don't need, just for a little while; buy yourself a $100 chef's knife or a Wii or a luxury couch later, after you've saved up a little money from not having to replace/repair shit constantly. Yes it's hard to save up to get out of the consumerist society, but once you've made that first little victory it becomes that little bit easier. You did it once, do it again... and again... and again, until you get out of that damned hole and find some sunshine.
The platform is called Palladium and it's sponsored by Microsoft, an attempt to prevent people from running "Dangerous hacking tools" by putting a control chip in the PC to make sure only "approved" operating systems can load, which in turn use the TPM to validate their drivers and load only "secure" software.
What the hell gives these "hackers" the right to run Linux on THEIR property?
That is the question.
It's a computer, it's a piece of hardware, it's a tool you own, and you can do what you want with it.
THAT'S ACTUALLY WHAT HAPPENS!
Actually, he picked his fights wrongly; got bashed in the head, dragged to a barn, and shown a huge horse cock. "Now see this poor boy hasn't even seen himself a mare in months... now why don't we discuss what we gonna do bout that you and me hmm?" Suddenly this didn't seem like a good idea anymore.
Yes, he paid for and owns a machine which he has full rights to mulch up with a wood chipper. It is illegal for him to make it process certain electronic signals, for example to run Linux locally. One day your home PC will have a TPM, and it will be illegal for you to hack it to bypass the TPM and run your own custom OS, too.
DIABEETUS from too much sunlight!