I think we have had this conversation in another thread. You believe that there should be no limit on free speech. I believe reasonable limits are good. Neither of us will change our positions therefore there is no reason to continue this thread.
I have just one question. I'm not sure I'd ever agree with your position but I would like to better understand it. I remain open-minded about its potential merits.
Why do you believe that a reasonable legal (i.e. case law) limit is better than any other method of providing an effective limitation?
For example, if the average person learned not to ever believe anything important without first investigating it, then false statements stemming from unlimited free speech would be effectively limited. Such statements would exist but they wouldn't have any power. As a bonus this mentality would be much more resistant to the various marketing and propaganda techniques.
What makes you sure that legal limits would be better than another solution that we've never seriously tried?
They have about 2.9m cable, 6.2m total subscribers, so we are still less than 15% of the population of the US. Cablevision about 3m and the rest are all about 4m, add them up and we are at about 52m subscribers, or about 16.6% of the population. With 83% not subscribing my point still stands, there are anything but a few customers to tap into.
None of that matters if potential new customers aren't interested.
This is like the fact that the vast majority of adult Americans do not currently smoke cigarettes. You might say that's some serious growth area for the cigarette companies, right? Except, that vast majority doesn't want to smoke.
It probably doesn't help that Comcast has such a bad reputation in terms of customer service and in terms of throttling and otherwise manipulating traffic. It only encourages people to do without if they can.
In truth, like System V, it's a set it and forget it sort of thing for most users (or more realistic, never realize it's even there sort of thing). For me, I have about 40 servers, physical and virtual, and about 150 thin clients to manage using various shades of Fedora, CentOS and RHEL. The thin clients boot over pxe to and then connect via xdmcp to a Fedora 19 box for their desktop environment. As Fedora 19 isn't exactly the best, and users do strange things, one will end up getting rebooted every week or so. The thin clients end up getting rebooted all the time (people think they should turn off their computer at night, so they do). Being able to use journalctl to see exactly what process took how much time was instrumental in getting a fast bootup time, which makes users happier. Happy users = happy admin. Happy admin = the building doesn't get burned down in a quest to get back the stapler. Every time I have to mess with anything other than systemd (on the CentOS and RHEL servers) I die a little inside. It's like using ipchains instead of iptables. Yes it worked, but the world moved on (and yes, I know, iptables is archaic at this point in time).
It's a shame that System V became so widespread instead of OpenRC.
Well, the BIG problem is maintenance. SysV scripts have both a S and K variant on when to run when switching levels, and you can bet very few people have it properly set up if you do switch levels. Enough so that switching levels is fraught with danger - you can probably start at level 1 (single user), and switch to 3, 4, or 5. Maybe you can get back to 1 because the extra demons get killed. Maybe.
I know what you mean. I've used Linux systems that were set up that way, and it's messy and a bit of a nuisance to make sure the system is really going to do what I think it's going to do.
Personally I'm a long-time Gentoo user and my system runs OpenRC. Have you ever used it? It eliminates the sources of confusion you illustrate there. It's neat and it's simple and it works and I can forget that it's there. That's what I like about it. There's nothing I want it to do that it doesn't already implement.
Right now Gentoo is one of the few distros that supports a non-systemd installation, mainly because the idea that as little as possible should ever be forced on the user is one of their core principles. Gentoo has very few mandated default anythings and they encourage users to file a bug if they discover an unnecessary one. I am interested in systemd and I acknowledge it probably isn't taking off so well for no reason, but this is why I'm not in any hurry to adopt it.
BTW OpenRC does have a form of state tracking. It simply uses start-stop-daemon for this, so that each initscript doesn't need to worry about it.
So there's a need for people to maintain and repair the garbage robots, but not for garbagemen as such.
Why will we need robot repairmen for mass produced robots as they will assuradly be built by other robots they should be repairable by other robots. We probably will need repairmen for less common or special purpose robots though.
If a robot can automatically replicate, it can automatically replicate completely out of control. Even if it can't strictly self-replicate (maybe it needs to be made by a "builder" robot).
Imagine the first malware to cause that to happen and the chaos it could cause. Having humans involved at some point in the process is a desirable idea.
Re:You wouldn't HAVE to work as a garbage man...
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Star Trek Economics
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Well, of course, unless you think that working automatically brings some sort of nobility to a person, which, judging from most people I know, it doesn't.
It did, back when the average person or family had their own independent livelihood and the people working for somebody else were in the minority (and most of those were apprenticing to eventually have their own livelihood). Then it had connotations of independence, making one's own decisions, passing or failing based on the soundness of those decisions, a sense of having earned the important things one has acquired rather than empty consumerism, etc. That is, in fact, what America used to aspire to. It was the Industrial Revolution with its massive centralized production that changed all of this.
By contrast being a replacable cog in someone else's corporation eliminates most of those benefits. It has definite upsides too, though. The old independent craftsmen weren't likely to produce anything like a microprocessor; that requires too much organization, resources, and concentration of wealth for them even if they had the tech.
Nowadays, you're right. Simply showing up for a job and managing not to get fired doesn't confer any sort of nobility. That's an old-style value that hasn't fully adjusted for the modern era. Actually appreciating what you have and loving those around you is the only way to experience anything like that. That can happen whether or not everything is done by robots.
Also helps explains why some people labeled hipsters are so concerned about music that other people haven't heard before, or hearing it on vinyl. If you pride yourself on your musical tastes, and any Taylor Swift fan like me can come along and download the music you like, that might be damaging to your sense of self. Two solutions are to insist that scarce physical media makes a huge difference, or to only like music that I'm unlikely to have heard of.
That's one of the biggest forms of foolishness that's still widespread in our societies: getting your identity from meaningless externals like this. Hey here's a crazy idea: I listen to what I like based on my own tastes and preferences and celebrate your ability to do the same if you so choose. Oh, that requires fixing one's insecurities instead of pretending they are virtues? Damn, this won't sell at all...
Users rightfully do not care about what init system they use, as long as it works.
But making it work requires time and effort from some people. And we don't live in a world of infinite resources.
By announcing they're switching Ubuntu from Upstart to systemd, Ubuntu aligned themselves with the majority of the developer comunity and Ubuntu reduced the ammount of effort they and others developers have to put in to make it work efficiently as you said.
Ubuntu will not have to write and debug Upstart configuration files for services, they can just the share the same systemd files as Debian.
GUbuntu and KUbuntu developers will have less trouble to make Gnome Shell and KWin, which are moving towards somewhat depending on systemd, work on a Ubuntu derived distribution.
And that means they can actually spend time fixing other stuff.
This is more like the kind of answer I was expecting to my earlier posts in this discussion. It makes a lot of sense. Thank you for that.
It's nice to seen an adult person give a reason that makes sense instead of getting all pissy that everyone doesn't already see it his or her way.
Knowledge of the new software is a separate (easier to cheaply ridicule, stay classy) question. The issue with systemd: it reeks of a solution looking for a problem.
Based on having used it or because your cheese got moved? All these distros wouldn't be adopting it if what you say is true, especially Debian. Get back to me when you have a real argument not cliches.
So you prefer to repeat yourself rather than address the real root cause of the remaining resistance to systemd? You definitely missed an opportunity there.
I said I question systemd's adoption. I didn't say I was against it, nor did I say that other people shouldn't use it. Even that offends you, and you resort to a form of "everyone else is doing it!" (the antithesis of thinking) to justify yourself. This is why you are smug.
I reasonably put a valid question to you and you weren't prepared for that at all. That's a shame, because if systemd is truly so wonderful, its adoption could only be harmed by advocates like you.
"I know nothing about this software but I'm gonna bitch, complain and sling shit at it anyway. How dare they move my cheese!"
- Typical Slashtard
Knowledge of the new software is a separate (easier to cheaply ridicule, stay classy) question. The issue with systemd: it reeks of a solution looking for a problem.
If the existing init systems were causing widespread grief I'd be much more receptive to it. So would just about anyone currently questioning systemd's rapid adoption. Right now the reason for installing it is "everyone else is adopting it as the new standard and it will be increasingly difficult to go against that standard." That's not the best of selling points. It's not like "wow all these problems and limitations I had been experiencing will finally go away!" like you get with truly sensible and evolutionary changes.
If you think that shouldn't matter to anyone, you could explain why you think so. In the meantime, please make an effort to understand the viewpoint of those who disagree with you. Then you stand a real chance of actually addressing the issue, or at least of not embarassing yourself with smug hand-waving and knee-jerk dismissals based on your annoyance that everyone doesn't already agree with you.
Understood, and of course people have a right to make money however they see fit.
Won't stop me from trying to plant the seeds of thought though. I'd be happier if there were fewer people operating from greed and more people trying to enrich themselves and their surrounding in more creative ways, so I don't mind trying to make the point and see if it resonates.
I don't think it's "greed" as much as it's the belief that you're a nobody and a loser if you aren't materialistic, if you don't work so many hours making money that you no longer have the time to enjoy the money you have made, if you don't have the wealth and status to control others. The old vice of greed is really only one component of the problem. A lot of the participants aren't strictly greedy, they just don't know any other way to "be somebody".
In the movie "A Beautiful Mind," actor Russell Crowe plays John Nash, the mathematician behind the "Nash equilibrium." There's a scene in the film where Nash realizes that he and his friends should avoid simultaneously trying to win the heart of the most attractive woman in the bar. He urges them, instead, to confer and woo her less attractive friends. Therefore, everyone leaves the bar happy. In some sense, Chu is John Nash allowing his fellow contestant to leave the bar happy, too.
Heh that's an excellent contribution. The only winner of that scenario is the most attractive woman. Everyone else loses. Even a man who gets her loses, because a woman who accepts being a prize or object of a contest like that is not going to have much beauty beneath the surface.
If the hammer in your new Rock-Paper-Scissors-Hammer game beats rock AND scissors, don't blame the fucking players when they all pick it. They didn't "ruin" anything; your design already did.
That would require a whole moment's reflection on how the situation actually got to be that way. The average person doesn't look even that tiny little bit beyond the most superficial layer of thought. Rather, they decide based on emotion that they like this person or don't like that other person, and then go back and look for ways to justify their stance.
Nah, it could actually increase ratings. People love to have something to be righteously indignant about. They'll watch him just so they can bitch about him.
Do you ever listen to talk radio? The key is not to take it too seriously. The fact is, if I have complete control over the topic, I decide exactly which questions will be asked, which answers will be accepted, and I can mute you anytime I want, I am going to "win" the "debate" every time. A talk show host is like that. There's a reason proper debates have neutral moderators and time limits that are equally applied.
Within the boundaries of that understanding, it's entertaining. What I truly find amusing: the guy who calls the show (probably waiting on hold for 30+ minutes) to bitch about how horrible it is and how offended he is, yet he's intimately familiar with the content of the last several shows.
"I'm offended!" is always a smokescreen for "you need to let me control who you are and how you act". Personally, if I dislike a show, I stop listening to it. For some, this carries the disadvantage of nothing to bitch about.
Jeopardy is not about being smart. It is about memorizing a lot of stuff. The sad thing is that so few Americans seem to know the difference.
From a young age, they've been trained for at least twelve years to believe that rote memorization is the be-all and end-all of knowledge and education, and exactly the same thing as having the courage to be a thinking individual.
The pop-culture questions in Jeopardy seem to be an attempt to throw a bone to the majority who don't like thinking and only do it to the extent that it's necessary for getting what they want. They also ensure that some of the very most intelligent contestants can still be defeated, simply because those who have extensive knowledge of science or history tend not to care too much about meaningless things like how many spouses an actress has had.
How is he unpredictable if he's known to jump categories after knocking off the two hardest questions? Sounds like a storm in a teacup - dumbasses pissed off because the guy isn't playing how they would.
The phoney "controversy" is merely because he formulated and applied a strategy. The mainstream mind has been conditioned to be subconsciously yet deeply resentful of any kind of preplanned strategic thinking. In a different but related observation, simply suggesting that corporations can and will plan several moves ahead in order to maximize their profits or control of a market, or suggeting that powerful people in government will systematically abuse their sweeping powers (hello Snowden) will often cause the small-minded to emotionally respond by calling you a tinfoil-hatter.
The takeaway is that those who live their own personal lives in a haphazard, unplanned, thoughtless manner really want to believe that there is no other way to do things. It's what "protects" them from taking a hard look in the mirror and asking themselves some pertinent and overdue questions.
Historically, all campaign finance reform does is make barriers to anyone who has a voice they wish to get out. Barriers that only the "1%" and their team of lawyers can navigate through. Guess I'm playing my cards as a nut job libertarian here, but this is one area more laws and regulation just make the problem they are trying to solve worse.
What I want is the one kind of campaign financing system we haven't yet tried. All candidates should receive a large, very generous campaign fund from the government. It should be an equal amount for all candidates who meet the criteria of being on the ballot. Then, any additional contributions from any source is considered bribery, with the offering party punished severely with hard prison time, and the candidate also punished if he or she accepts.
That's how you disenfranchise the monied interests and return the campaign back to winning over the voters. An extremely generous, lavish campaign fund that comes from taxpayer dollars would still be very much less expensive than the way we do things now.
But, face it, a person father to the Left and with a greater contempt for what America used to be (and still remains in some places despite his efforts to "fundementally transform" it) than the current President will not soon be elected... And for several years he even had his party's majority in the legislature.
If that were actually true, he would be doing everything possible to reduce the size and power of the federal government. The opposite has happened.
The contempt Obama shows for America and its past is just a propaganda effort designed to appeal to an increasingly impoverished and angry American voter. None of his actions are consistent with it. "I really don't like the way things are and the way things have been... so.. I'll do it even harder! Yeah let's perpetuate the power structure that brought us those things!" makes no sense at all.
On top of that one is forced to believe that today's champions of liberty are being systematically co-opted or eliminated. How else can one explain their complete absence from the scene? Where are today's Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, and Ben Franklin? You sure as hell won't find them anywhere near the political process as dominated by D and R. You won't find them in the press. You won't find them visible anywhere.
There are a few like Ron Paul. No they're not terribly visible because of two reasons. One, the media is not friendly to their message. Two, they say funny things that sound really different from a lot of mainstream thought, so it's fashionable to make fun of them and portray them as looney. It's a bit like being too different in the schoolyard and yes, that's about the level of emotional maturity involved in it.
If you ask me, the OP hasn't learned anything. He used the phrase "need-free future" which pretty much put him somewhere on the intelligence scale between below average and creationist.
You see, I used a little benefit of doubt there. This caused me to assume that perhaps I'm not the only person here who's not a moron. Thus, his words read, to me, like he was talking about a viable future free of human-caused disasters. It didn't occur to me to think he was proposing humans would stop needing oxygen in the future or anything as silly as that, since he plainly made no such claim. In fact I question the security of someone who has to go to such lengths just to make him seem wrong and themselves seem right.
"Need-free" doesn't mean you never have needs, it means those needs are being met. When we say people around the world are starving, it is understood that they have no access to food (poverty, famine, local warlords, etc). It would be asinine to think "heh those dumbasses, why don't they open their fridge?" That's what you are doing here.
You're really coming across as either insecure or smug on this one.
Every utopian prediction for the future from the most authoritarian to anarchist depends on humanity getting very good at recycling. Every new process that can get something valuable from *ahem* unsorted wastes is a step to a positive need-free future.
That would be another case of learning from nature.
Of you want to bellyache, go mod Stratagus or MegaGlest. They are FREE AND OPEN SOURCE... They could use the help!
In what other industry is there so much active hostility and disdain towards paying customers who make their wishes known? In just about every other case, the groupthink would be that the companies are stupid not to listen to what a significant portion of the market is demanding.
Just know what you're purchasing and it's easier to swallow. Don't tell yourself you're buying Starcraft 2, cos you're not. You're buying a passport into Blizzard's exclusive competitive gaming and modding club, and you can't expect the pass to outlive the club itself.
In that case, I believe it would be misleading and unethical not to make this clear to the potential customers prior to purchase.
That's not some mere difference of ideology; that's an expectation of doing business in good faith.
Slashdot Mirror
I think we have had this conversation in another thread. You believe that there should be no limit on free speech. I believe reasonable limits are good. Neither of us will change our positions therefore there is no reason to continue this thread.
I have just one question. I'm not sure I'd ever agree with your position but I would like to better understand it. I remain open-minded about its potential merits.
Why do you believe that a reasonable legal (i.e. case law) limit is better than any other method of providing an effective limitation?
For example, if the average person learned not to ever believe anything important without first investigating it, then false statements stemming from unlimited free speech would be effectively limited. Such statements would exist but they wouldn't have any power. As a bonus this mentality would be much more resistant to the various marketing and propaganda techniques.
What makes you sure that legal limits would be better than another solution that we've never seriously tried?
They have about 2.9m cable, 6.2m total subscribers, so we are still less than 15% of the population of the US. Cablevision about 3m and the rest are all about 4m, add them up and we are at about 52m subscribers, or about 16.6% of the population. With 83% not subscribing my point still stands, there are anything but a few customers to tap into.
None of that matters if potential new customers aren't interested.
This is like the fact that the vast majority of adult Americans do not currently smoke cigarettes. You might say that's some serious growth area for the cigarette companies, right? Except, that vast majority doesn't want to smoke.
It probably doesn't help that Comcast has such a bad reputation in terms of customer service and in terms of throttling and otherwise manipulating traffic. It only encourages people to do without if they can.
In truth, like System V, it's a set it and forget it sort of thing for most users (or more realistic, never realize it's even there sort of thing). For me, I have about 40 servers, physical and virtual, and about 150 thin clients to manage using various shades of Fedora, CentOS and RHEL. The thin clients boot over pxe to and then connect via xdmcp to a Fedora 19 box for their desktop environment. As Fedora 19 isn't exactly the best, and users do strange things, one will end up getting rebooted every week or so. The thin clients end up getting rebooted all the time (people think they should turn off their computer at night, so they do). Being able to use journalctl to see exactly what process took how much time was instrumental in getting a fast bootup time, which makes users happier. Happy users = happy admin. Happy admin = the building doesn't get burned down in a quest to get back the stapler. Every time I have to mess with anything other than systemd (on the CentOS and RHEL servers) I die a little inside. It's like using ipchains instead of iptables. Yes it worked, but the world moved on (and yes, I know, iptables is archaic at this point in time).
It's a shame that System V became so widespread instead of OpenRC.
Well, the BIG problem is maintenance. SysV scripts have both a S and K variant on when to run when switching levels, and you can bet very few people have it properly set up if you do switch levels. Enough so that switching levels is fraught with danger - you can probably start at level 1 (single user), and switch to 3, 4, or 5. Maybe you can get back to 1 because the extra demons get killed. Maybe.
I know what you mean. I've used Linux systems that were set up that way, and it's messy and a bit of a nuisance to make sure the system is really going to do what I think it's going to do.
Personally I'm a long-time Gentoo user and my system runs OpenRC. Have you ever used it? It eliminates the sources of confusion you illustrate there. It's neat and it's simple and it works and I can forget that it's there. That's what I like about it. There's nothing I want it to do that it doesn't already implement.
Right now Gentoo is one of the few distros that supports a non-systemd installation, mainly because the idea that as little as possible should ever be forced on the user is one of their core principles. Gentoo has very few mandated default anythings and they encourage users to file a bug if they discover an unnecessary one. I am interested in systemd and I acknowledge it probably isn't taking off so well for no reason, but this is why I'm not in any hurry to adopt it.
BTW OpenRC does have a form of state tracking. It simply uses start-stop-daemon for this, so that each initscript doesn't need to worry about it.
So there's a need for people to maintain and repair the garbage robots, but not for garbagemen as such.
Why will we need robot repairmen for mass produced robots as they will assuradly be built by other robots they should be repairable by other robots. We probably will need repairmen for less common or special purpose robots though.
If a robot can automatically replicate, it can automatically replicate completely out of control. Even if it can't strictly self-replicate (maybe it needs to be made by a "builder" robot).
Imagine the first malware to cause that to happen and the chaos it could cause. Having humans involved at some point in the process is a desirable idea.
Well, of course, unless you think that working automatically brings some sort of nobility to a person, which, judging from most people I know, it doesn't.
It did, back when the average person or family had their own independent livelihood and the people working for somebody else were in the minority (and most of those were apprenticing to eventually have their own livelihood). Then it had connotations of independence, making one's own decisions, passing or failing based on the soundness of those decisions, a sense of having earned the important things one has acquired rather than empty consumerism, etc. That is, in fact, what America used to aspire to. It was the Industrial Revolution with its massive centralized production that changed all of this.
By contrast being a replacable cog in someone else's corporation eliminates most of those benefits. It has definite upsides too, though. The old independent craftsmen weren't likely to produce anything like a microprocessor; that requires too much organization, resources, and concentration of wealth for them even if they had the tech.
Nowadays, you're right. Simply showing up for a job and managing not to get fired doesn't confer any sort of nobility. That's an old-style value that hasn't fully adjusted for the modern era. Actually appreciating what you have and loving those around you is the only way to experience anything like that. That can happen whether or not everything is done by robots.
Also helps explains why some people labeled hipsters are so concerned about music that other people haven't heard before, or hearing it on vinyl. If you pride yourself on your musical tastes, and any Taylor Swift fan like me can come along and download the music you like, that might be damaging to your sense of self. Two solutions are to insist that scarce physical media makes a huge difference, or to only like music that I'm unlikely to have heard of.
That's one of the biggest forms of foolishness that's still widespread in our societies: getting your identity from meaningless externals like this. Hey here's a crazy idea: I listen to what I like based on my own tastes and preferences and celebrate your ability to do the same if you so choose. Oh, that requires fixing one's insecurities instead of pretending they are virtues? Damn, this won't sell at all...
service is a word. systemctl isn't, and it's 50% more characters to type, too.
I can only imagine your irritation at using non-words like "rm", "cd", "ln", and "ls". At least they're short?
Users rightfully do not care about what init system they use, as long as it works. But making it work requires time and effort from some people. And we don't live in a world of infinite resources.
By announcing they're switching Ubuntu from Upstart to systemd, Ubuntu aligned themselves with the majority of the developer comunity and Ubuntu reduced the ammount of effort they and others developers have to put in to make it work efficiently as you said. Ubuntu will not have to write and debug Upstart configuration files for services, they can just the share the same systemd files as Debian. GUbuntu and KUbuntu developers will have less trouble to make Gnome Shell and KWin, which are moving towards somewhat depending on systemd, work on a Ubuntu derived distribution.
And that means they can actually spend time fixing other stuff.
This is more like the kind of answer I was expecting to my earlier posts in this discussion. It makes a lot of sense. Thank you for that.
It's nice to seen an adult person give a reason that makes sense instead of getting all pissy that everyone doesn't already see it his or her way.
Knowledge of the new software is a separate (easier to cheaply ridicule, stay classy) question. The issue with systemd: it reeks of a solution looking for a problem.
Based on having used it or because your cheese got moved? All these distros wouldn't be adopting it if what you say is true, especially Debian. Get back to me when you have a real argument not cliches.
So you prefer to repeat yourself rather than address the real root cause of the remaining resistance to systemd? You definitely missed an opportunity there.
I said I question systemd's adoption. I didn't say I was against it, nor did I say that other people shouldn't use it. Even that offends you, and you resort to a form of "everyone else is doing it!" (the antithesis of thinking) to justify yourself. This is why you are smug.
I reasonably put a valid question to you and you weren't prepared for that at all. That's a shame, because if systemd is truly so wonderful, its adoption could only be harmed by advocates like you.
"I know nothing about this software but I'm gonna bitch, complain and sling shit at it anyway. How dare they move my cheese!"
- Typical Slashtard
Knowledge of the new software is a separate (easier to cheaply ridicule, stay classy) question. The issue with systemd: it reeks of a solution looking for a problem.
If the existing init systems were causing widespread grief I'd be much more receptive to it. So would just about anyone currently questioning systemd's rapid adoption. Right now the reason for installing it is "everyone else is adopting it as the new standard and it will be increasingly difficult to go against that standard." That's not the best of selling points. It's not like "wow all these problems and limitations I had been experiencing will finally go away!" like you get with truly sensible and evolutionary changes.
If you think that shouldn't matter to anyone, you could explain why you think so. In the meantime, please make an effort to understand the viewpoint of those who disagree with you. Then you stand a real chance of actually addressing the issue, or at least of not embarassing yourself with smug hand-waving and knee-jerk dismissals based on your annoyance that everyone doesn't already agree with you.
Understood, and of course people have a right to make money however they see fit.
Won't stop me from trying to plant the seeds of thought though. I'd be happier if there were fewer people operating from greed and more people trying to enrich themselves and their surrounding in more creative ways, so I don't mind trying to make the point and see if it resonates.
I don't think it's "greed" as much as it's the belief that you're a nobody and a loser if you aren't materialistic, if you don't work so many hours making money that you no longer have the time to enjoy the money you have made, if you don't have the wealth and status to control others. The old vice of greed is really only one component of the problem. A lot of the participants aren't strictly greedy, they just don't know any other way to "be somebody".
When I read the into it made me think of the Nash equilibrium. I wasn't the only one apparently.
'Hero-villain' Jeopardy! contestant returns to game show Feb. 24
In the movie "A Beautiful Mind," actor Russell Crowe plays John Nash, the mathematician behind the "Nash equilibrium." There's a scene in the film where Nash realizes that he and his friends should avoid simultaneously trying to win the heart of the most attractive woman in the bar. He urges them, instead, to confer and woo her less attractive friends. Therefore, everyone leaves the bar happy. In some sense, Chu is John Nash allowing his fellow contestant to leave the bar happy, too.
Heh that's an excellent contribution. The only winner of that scenario is the most attractive woman. Everyone else loses. Even a man who gets her loses, because a woman who accepts being a prize or object of a contest like that is not going to have much beauty beneath the surface.
>Contestant jeered for playing correctly
If the hammer in your new Rock-Paper-Scissors-Hammer game beats rock AND scissors, don't blame the fucking players when they all pick it. They didn't "ruin" anything; your design already did.
That would require a whole moment's reflection on how the situation actually got to be that way. The average person doesn't look even that tiny little bit beyond the most superficial layer of thought. Rather, they decide based on emotion that they like this person or don't like that other person, and then go back and look for ways to justify their stance.
Nah, it could actually increase ratings. People love to have something to be righteously indignant about. They'll watch him just so they can bitch about him.
Do you ever listen to talk radio? The key is not to take it too seriously. The fact is, if I have complete control over the topic, I decide exactly which questions will be asked, which answers will be accepted, and I can mute you anytime I want, I am going to "win" the "debate" every time. A talk show host is like that. There's a reason proper debates have neutral moderators and time limits that are equally applied.
Within the boundaries of that understanding, it's entertaining. What I truly find amusing: the guy who calls the show (probably waiting on hold for 30+ minutes) to bitch about how horrible it is and how offended he is, yet he's intimately familiar with the content of the last several shows.
"I'm offended!" is always a smokescreen for "you need to let me control who you are and how you act". Personally, if I dislike a show, I stop listening to it. For some, this carries the disadvantage of nothing to bitch about.
Jeopardy is not about being smart. It is about memorizing a lot of stuff. The sad thing is that so few Americans seem to know the difference.
From a young age, they've been trained for at least twelve years to believe that rote memorization is the be-all and end-all of knowledge and education, and exactly the same thing as having the courage to be a thinking individual.
The pop-culture questions in Jeopardy seem to be an attempt to throw a bone to the majority who don't like thinking and only do it to the extent that it's necessary for getting what they want. They also ensure that some of the very most intelligent contestants can still be defeated, simply because those who have extensive knowledge of science or history tend not to care too much about meaningless things like how many spouses an actress has had.
How is he unpredictable if he's known to jump categories after knocking off the two hardest questions? Sounds like a storm in a teacup - dumbasses pissed off because the guy isn't playing how they would.
The phoney "controversy" is merely because he formulated and applied a strategy. The mainstream mind has been conditioned to be subconsciously yet deeply resentful of any kind of preplanned strategic thinking. In a different but related observation, simply suggesting that corporations can and will plan several moves ahead in order to maximize their profits or control of a market, or suggeting that powerful people in government will systematically abuse their sweeping powers (hello Snowden) will often cause the small-minded to emotionally respond by calling you a tinfoil-hatter.
The takeaway is that those who live their own personal lives in a haphazard, unplanned, thoughtless manner really want to believe that there is no other way to do things. It's what "protects" them from taking a hard look in the mirror and asking themselves some pertinent and overdue questions.
Point was, you aren't going to get anyone "better" than Obama — with or without "campaign finance" reform.
The two-party system guaranteeing this outcome is a separate discussion.
What finance reform does is reduce the pressure to adhere to the status quo once a major-party candidate is in. This can only help.
Historically, all campaign finance reform does is make barriers to anyone who has a voice they wish to get out. Barriers that only the "1%" and their team of lawyers can navigate through. Guess I'm playing my cards as a nut job libertarian here, but this is one area more laws and regulation just make the problem they are trying to solve worse.
What I want is the one kind of campaign financing system we haven't yet tried. All candidates should receive a large, very generous campaign fund from the government. It should be an equal amount for all candidates who meet the criteria of being on the ballot. Then, any additional contributions from any source is considered bribery, with the offering party punished severely with hard prison time, and the candidate also punished if he or she accepts.
That's how you disenfranchise the monied interests and return the campaign back to winning over the voters. An extremely generous, lavish campaign fund that comes from taxpayer dollars would still be very much less expensive than the way we do things now.
But, face it, a person father to the Left and with a greater contempt for what America used to be (and still remains in some places despite his efforts to "fundementally transform" it) than the current President will not soon be elected... And for several years he even had his party's majority in the legislature.
If that were actually true, he would be doing everything possible to reduce the size and power of the federal government. The opposite has happened.
... so .. I'll do it even harder! Yeah let's perpetuate the power structure that brought us those things!" makes no sense at all.
The contempt Obama shows for America and its past is just a propaganda effort designed to appeal to an increasingly impoverished and angry American voter. None of his actions are consistent with it. "I really don't like the way things are and the way things have been
On top of that one is forced to believe that today's champions of liberty are being systematically co-opted or eliminated. How else can one explain their complete absence from the scene? Where are today's Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, and Ben Franklin? You sure as hell won't find them anywhere near the political process as dominated by D and R. You won't find them in the press. You won't find them visible anywhere.
There are a few like Ron Paul. No they're not terribly visible because of two reasons. One, the media is not friendly to their message. Two, they say funny things that sound really different from a lot of mainstream thought, so it's fashionable to make fun of them and portray them as looney. It's a bit like being too different in the schoolyard and yes, that's about the level of emotional maturity involved in it.
If you ask me, the OP hasn't learned anything. He used the phrase "need-free future" which pretty much put him somewhere on the intelligence scale between below average and creationist.
You see, I used a little benefit of doubt there. This caused me to assume that perhaps I'm not the only person here who's not a moron. Thus, his words read, to me, like he was talking about a viable future free of human-caused disasters. It didn't occur to me to think he was proposing humans would stop needing oxygen in the future or anything as silly as that, since he plainly made no such claim. In fact I question the security of someone who has to go to such lengths just to make him seem wrong and themselves seem right.
"Need-free" doesn't mean you never have needs, it means those needs are being met. When we say people around the world are starving, it is understood that they have no access to food (poverty, famine, local warlords, etc). It would be asinine to think "heh those dumbasses, why don't they open their fridge?" That's what you are doing here.
You're really coming across as either insecure or smug on this one.
Every utopian prediction for the future from the most authoritarian to anarchist depends on humanity getting very good at recycling. Every new process that can get something valuable from *ahem* unsorted wastes is a step to a positive need-free future.
That would be another case of learning from nature.
Of you want to bellyache, go mod Stratagus or MegaGlest. They are FREE AND OPEN SOURCE... They could use the help!
In what other industry is there so much active hostility and disdain towards paying customers who make their wishes known? In just about every other case, the groupthink would be that the companies are stupid not to listen to what a significant portion of the market is demanding.
Just know what you're purchasing and it's easier to swallow. Don't tell yourself you're buying Starcraft 2, cos you're not. You're buying a passport into Blizzard's exclusive competitive gaming and modding club, and you can't expect the pass to outlive the club itself.
In that case, I believe it would be misleading and unethical not to make this clear to the potential customers prior to purchase.
That's not some mere difference of ideology; that's an expectation of doing business in good faith.