If you're white they call it earned income tax credit.
If you're old, they call it Medicare and they call it prescription drug benefits.
They promise to tweak one or those or the others depending on which votes they're lacking in the current campaign. But the old people seem the most popular.
Rationalization is the primary (but not the only) means by which they avoid seeing it. It cushions the full horror, brings it back down to being within the realm of denial. It avoids nasty questions like what responsibility one bears for participating.
You wonder how people can do such stupid things, make such bad decisions, embrace and defend things which are so contrary to their interests? It is not because they don't see what is in front of them. It is because they can lie to themselves about what it means. You think Stockholm syndrome only happens during wartime when the worst atrocities occur? In what you could call micro-transactions average people accept, internalize and identify with external ideas constantly, at which time they sincerely believe it originated with themselves. It takes up residence.
In our society you are rewarded and thought of as "good" and "easygoing" if you are skilled at lying to yourself in this way. If you are blunt and honest without malice about what you see, that makes all but the most noble people uncomfortable. Most would rather forget how much not-seeing they have learned to do and the mess of inner conflict it has implanted in them. Each time they do it, which is on a daily basis, adds to the totality of what they would have to confront at once if they suddenly became aware of it. The longer it goes on the more difficult it is to regain the awareness that can call things exactly what they are. A counter-example makes them feel ashamed and insecure, which is what they have earned for themselves.
Yeah, I mean, just look at how crappy everything is in Europe. A democratic disaster. Obviously public schooling is the root of all evil.
Hehe that's so cute, the way you can write a one-liner dismissing something in a nice smug way instead of informing yourselfabout it. All of that is just too much work! Besides, it makes you feel good about yourself like that other guy must just be such an idiot! I mean, actually putting forth a viewpoint and trying to contribute, what was he thinking?! 'Course, you know that's the only way a lot of people ever feel "good" about anything.
So basically the protesting is all for naught because the same sharing is already happening and has been for years.
That's the usual pattern. During Bush years we saw the same thing with warrantless wiretapping. You do something illegal for a good long time, which is okay as long as it benefits government. Then when it looks like people are becoming aware of it, you go back and make it legal to pretend like it was legitimate all along.
Naturally no one who did it back when it was illegal ever gets prosecuted. That would send the wrong message. That would send the message that you will be anything but rewarded for being compliant and giving the government whatever it wants.
The inverse is when they have all these phony media "debates" concerning something they're going to do anyway, like the Patriot Act or ever-restrictive copyright law. That way it looks less authoritarian. That way it looks more like the decision came from a careful review of opposing positions. But the decision is always in favor of more power and money for the government, more coziness with industry, and less privacy for us.
I love to hear people complain about how corrupt and hopeless government is. And then do nothing about it.
Doing nothing is consistent with beliving that it is hopeless.
Sure, you can't get your politicians to fix it for you because they are the problem.
The single most effective thing the average individual could do about that is to get their children out of the public schools. Large numbers of people not doing this is the origin of the environment in which the politicians we known today are the most successful. We have a majority of people who care more about whether Zimmerman is a racial minority than about whether the nation is going to financially collapse. And we have a system of schooling designed to retard emotional and intellectual maturity which makes this possible (and it's pathetic anyone even considers that controversial -- it is painfully obvious).
The film Network summed it up nicely. The protagonist, Howard Beale, meets with a tycoon named Jesson. Among other things, Jesson says to him:
"YOU HAVE MEDDLED WITH THE PRIMAL FORCES OF NATURE, MR. BEALE, AND I WON'T HAVE IT! Is that clear?! You think you merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity, it is ecological balance!
"You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations! There are no peoples! There are no Russians, there are no Arabs, there are no Third Worlds, there is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?
"You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.
"What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime.
"And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel."
That's how they think. They don't see the dehumanization.
What amuses me about this is the total lack of irony or self-awareness.
Like, say, the irony of accusing me of directing my comment at a single individual, whereas the text of it does not distinguish a particular philosophy, thus indicating that it applies to extremists of all philosophies, then subsequently falling into an extremist rant yourself?
Here, this should help: http://abcteach.com/directory/reading_comprehension/
Hehe yeah, you sure did turn that around on him didn't you? Sure, if you had a solid position you could have falsified what he said, argued against his reasoning, etc., but hey who has time for all of that? Just cut corners, be intellectually lazy, take a shortcut, fail to admit he made a point because you don't have the integrity, or all of the above?
Just say "well Criminal A is a robber and you might think that's bad, but Criminal B is a murderer so obviously Criminal A didn't do anything wrong!" Or if you point out some of Obama's stupidity and someone doesn't like that, they just have to mention some of Bush's stupidity and that magically makes what Obama did ok!
Do you have any idea how fucking infantile that is and how absurd it is for you to think you're making a point here?
Oh, and FYI the -usual- response of proper Linux geeks to something not working isn't "nerd rage", it's an offer to help fix the problem. That's how we built this thing, remember?
I don't usually like "me too" posts. Having said that, when I read the above I have only one response: Fuck yeah.
Most Linux users choose it for practical reasons, a very small and vocal group choose it for ideological reasons. Those like any recent converts are the most zealous.
You know, I have never met a zealot I liked. I appreciate and adore the philosophical foundation of Open Source and the GPL, and if asked about it I can certainly articulate why. But I just don't believe in shoving anything down anyone's throat. Even if successful, it is not genuine. I don't care for people who will change their beliefs and their philosophy simply because some vocal, or charismatic, or strong personality told them it was a good idea. I don't think people like that really understand what it means to believe in anything. They're lemmings, sheep, myrmidons, whatever you want to call them.
I would rather people discover on their own and for themselves what freedom means and why it's important. If I were zealous about it, I would actually deprive them of the meaningful process of obtaining their own understanding. I would rob them of true heartfelt appreciation and gratitude. There is a big, big difference between providing good information to someone who asked for it versus shoving it down the throat of someone who didn't and treating them as some kind of adversary if they don't instantly agree.
I have always viewed it this way because I am a free-thinker and an individual. There was no "conversation" process for me. I embrace GPL and Linux because I think it's a good idea with a noble foundation, because it is a joy to participate in some small way, not because I have some kind of unhealthy emotional attachment to it.
Zealots, read that and tell me I'm wrong. Go ahead; I'd like to see you try. Any twinge of guilt you feel comes from the damage you are doing to something you claim to celebrate. We need less zeal and more reason and it's just that simple.
And yes, Wine is an option, but with the amount of tweaking needed to run most titles, it's a pain in the butt and beyond the average desktop user
Have you heard of PlayOnLinux? For games it supports, it will take care of installing DLLS and tweaking configs for you. It's basically a substitute for manually using Winetricks and regedit.
I don't use it myself but it does mitigate your complaint. It's frequently mentioned in the comments on the Wine AppDB.
So if there is an Ubuntu-centric Steam client, chances are that I will be able to use the Gentoo community docs to troubleshoot it should that need ever arise.
Yes; further still, once you figure that out you could write a little script or create an ebuild so that others need not duplicate your work. That would be trivial or nearly so. I think the original poster in this thread is propagating FUD, though I doubt it's deliberate.
Most stuff isn't distro specific. H*LL. A lot of stuff isn't even specific to Linux.
Right. Many Open Source programs I use are not just for Linux but for any Unix-like OS. This is a solved problem.
Incidentally, you can say hell, shit, fuck, etc. There's no censorship here, which is one thing I like about Slashdot.
However, one thing I cannot comprehend is the attitude that if other people use non-libre software that it could somehow affect my own freedoms. I just don't understand that reasoning.
Honestly, I think it comes from the bitter taste left in the mouths of many former Windows users who switched to Linux. It's not so much about proprietary versus free/open, it's about the way a proprietary vendor with a huge marketshare can exert a great deal of control over said market. That scenario just wouldn't be possible with GPL'd software.
I don't consider it likely with games myself. Game publishers actually do have competition and you can release a game without Steam. While Steam seems dominant now, you could start a competing company and get it off the ground much more easily than you could sell your own proprietary operating system and compete toe-to-toe with Microsoft. Not to mention that it's easier to have a computer and make do without some game titles than it is to have a computer and make do without an operating system. That would also make it more difficult for a monopolistic company to have a real stranglehold, because this is a luxury and not a necessity. Piss off your users badly enough and they will realize that.
The number of games that don't work via Wine is an ever-shrinking list,
Really? My experience was that it was an ever growing list of new games that did not work. Maybe eventually, somewhat with some tweaks you could almost somehow run them eventually, but many stayed unplayable for years. Of course many games do work so you can game on Linux, but this very much depends on whether you find this a glass half full or glass half empty situation...
It's definitely a glass-half-full except I'd say it's more than halfway filled. This is not an exhaustive list, but to name off the top of my head some Windows games I have played via Wine over the years: Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Dungeon Keeper 2, Fable, Fable 2, CoD: Black Ops, Drakensang, Dragon Age: Origins, Bioshock, Mafia, Mafia 2, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Plants vs. Zombies, World of Warcraft, Max Payne, Max Payne 2, F.E.A.R 2, F.E.A.R. 3. I'm sure there are others I don't remember right now.
I'm definitely not the most hardcore gamer, but I am satisfied. Perhaps that is because I tend to focus on games that are known to work and choose from those. I tend not to get my heart set and my mind attached to any particular title that I simply must have, because there are already too many great games than I would ever have time to play even if I didn't have to work for a living. Still, it's definitely a "YMMV" situation...
Whatever distros popular proprietary software is available for become the distros that people use, thus allowing proprietary software vendors to exert control over the community.
They might influence things like whether a given file is in/opt instead of/usr/local but these are not major changes and could be remedied with a few symlinks. All free Linux distros use the same broad (upstream) codebase of Open Source software. The differences between them amount to little more than where certain things are located in the filesystem and what is installed by default. Any dependency this native client requires is either exotic (meaning Valve should provide it themselves) or something you could find in any decent distro repository.
For example, I use Gentoo. I love it, but it's one of the least likely distros for a proprietary software company to standardize on. I'm not worried about this at all, and that's not because I would never consider trying this client.
For that matter, the Valve installer could locate critical dependencies itself instead of assuming they can only be in a single location. This would have to be done one time and from then on it would work until uninstalled. This just isn't a big deal, but tell me if you think I have it all wrong.
I won't.
I'll be dancing in the goddamn street with a crowbar.
I've been watching with interest the burgeoning Linux games industry and it's about to go critical with this, that's for sure.
It's not just Steam, it's Source.
So that's the back library taken care of.
And now I can play keyboard/mouse games again for the first time since I abandoned the Windows world! YAY!
Don't know about you, but I have always had good luck playing Windows games via Wine. That includes Steam games. I'm currently playing Skyrim this way.
The number of games that don't work via Wine is an ever-shrinking list, though you may have to acquaint yourself with Winetricks and the AppDB. While a native Steam/Source client is only going to improve things for you, to speak as though there were no way at all to play keyboard/mouse games without Windows is simply not true. I've been doing it for years now.
Forget the organizational level for a second, and consider on a human level. Officials working for schools and depend on them to put food on the table would have to understand that authoritarian regimes tend to target and eliminate education.
Target and eliminate? No. They aren't that stupid (would that they were). What they do is pervert education and use it for the purpose of social engineering and indoctrination. Any transmission of knowledge or understanding is incidental and only to the extent necessary that the peons/students can perform useful labor, to form the bottom of the pyramid. They would also encourage conformity and permit various bullying and other abuses to ensure that the immaturities of childhood extend well into adulthood. What they absolutely would not do is teach serious, tough-minded critical thinking skills and raise up people who can educate themselves and do not need to depend on an instructor to tell them what is important to learn.
Sounds just like what we have now in the USA. These things happen slowly from the perspective of a human life, but quickly from the perspective of written history. Just consider how much the USA has changed in the last three generations. Then you can get a feel for what's going on, where it is headed, what the ultimate expression of it would be, and why it would be done that way.
The USA's tyranny is not going to be hard tyranny, the kind that waves a gun in your face and demands that you submit. It is going to be a soft tyranny, the kind that knows what's best for you, that you have learned to depend on. That, however, is just a matter of style, the means. The result is the same.
I have to ask, were you trolling or did you truly not understand that? What real tyrants understand is that the average person is so caught up in their day-to-day affairs that they tend not to be long-term thinkers. They are not skilled at seeing the path something is taking and projecting what the end of that path will be and that skill is not taught to them and they are not self-educators who would acquire it on their own. So if you want to implement tyranny, you do it in baby steps, each one carefully justified and defended by its ardent little apologists. After all, you don't want the terrorists to win, do you? After all, you want to protect the children, don't you? After all, you want the poor to be taken care of, don't you?
Unless it happens on school grounds. Then people turn a blind eye.
Especially if other kids are doing it. Then the school administration gives their silent consent by doing nothing about it. Or worse, when it's physical abuse, they punish both the bully who attacked someone without provocation and the one who defended himself, just to add that element of mindfuck to existing injustice.
I am thankful to have had parents who told me I would not be in trouble for legitimate self-defense even if the school system was far less reasonable. What I found was that if you knock out one of them, the rest tend to leave you alone, for the nature of a bully is to find a doormat who will not fight back. I believe the school officials who have no doubt studied child psychology and the like are also aware of this and understand the injustice they facilitate. It is not mere bureaucratic ignorance but some kind of desired effect, a sort of unwritten portion of the curriculum.
People who can and will stand up for themselves, even when a price must be paid, are extremely undesirable to increasingly tyrannical governments. It's something they would discourage and it is not difficult to understand why. It's amazing how hard that is to accept for people who cannot comprehend that organizations, like individuals, can also be selfish and encourage only what is in their long-term interests.
This is a joke, I get it. But if you could keep an child engaged at near 100% of their capacity, what potential.
I believe you're making a fundamental error. You're confusing the ability to detect and predict failure with the ability to cause success.
See the real question is whether significantly less than 100% is a natural state or if it is a product of placing systems ahead of humans. If you really want to revolutionize education, teach them in a way that doesn't suffocate curiosity (see my sig) and doesn't rely so heavily on regimentation and conformity. It would be a matter of helping each person to discover how they learn and how to work with that, so that they can remain self-teachers into adulthood. The status quo is to teach everyone by a single and largely rote method while insisting that everyone remain on the same page at the same time.
The root of the word "education" meant "to bring forth from within". You don't really make a plant grow, because that's in its nature; but you can provide conditions favorable to its growth such as sunlight, fertilizer, and water. That's what education should do. That's all it should do, which is less than it does now.
What I am proposing is education for free-thinkers and psychological-mental independence, instead of the training for dependency and complacency that excess standardization produces.
Ideally you change and challenge each other, in an amicable way. Failing that, you chose a partner who is unworthy of you or vice-versa (she because of her love of money, you because of her allure).
Marry a person you can be honest with. Whether or not they are a bitch is irrelevant. If you are honest, she will be a bitch on your side.
You will find zero or nearly zero overlap between these two groups: the number of women who are bitches, and the number of women who can respect, appreciate, and honor true honesty in a man.
In fact there is zero overlap. You can play games with word definitions of "bitch" and toy with the numbers to make that a trivial, non-zero overlap, but then that would not be the result of reality but of you playing games.
Umm, okay. Completely off topic, but okay. Doesn't mean it is not, in fact, dangerous.
Everything is dangerous. Everything is in some way "entreprenurial".
If you want security, you find that in some form of faith. You will not find that in the natural realm. You will not find that in social affairs. You will not find that in your personal ability, for that may fail.
Real security is different from all of that. It's a form of bravery. It does not come from without. It comes from within.
lying to a wife is, in fact, a dangerous thing to do
Marrying a bitch is a dangerous thing to do (dangerous to one's own sanity). For men, not noticing she's a bitch because you can't look beyond her body, getting her to want you not because of your character (that she is not mature enough to admire) but because you "got game" (put her on a pedestal), that's what puts them in danger.
But marrying a woman who is not a bitch? Then you can be honest with her and she can be honest with you. You don't need her approval for everything you do, nor does she need yours. Sort of like you may read a book I don't like or listen to music I find distasteful and you don't need me to sign off on it. For me this is normal. For some it's sadly "unrealistic".
I notice most people do not relate honestly. They have little white lies and other ways to tiptoe around each other because each person never fully accepted who the other is prior to marriage.
You know, I have 2 children, and I'm f'ing sick and tired of people here on slashdot standing on their pulpits preaching about how others should raise their kids, or what they would do if they 'love' their children. It's the hardest damn job in the world to raise kids, and every single parent (whether you think so or not) loves their children. They do the best they are able and know how. One thing I can practically guarantee: if you haven't actually DONE what you are preaching that others should, then it doesn't work like you think it will. That's a basic lesson in life.
I'm a little tired of something myself: adult people who use emotional "arguments" instead of telling me why they think my position is faulty. Perhaps you would like to start by telling me why you disagree with my statement about waiting until you can afford children before having them? Or perhaps you want to tell me why the public school system is so much better than private or homeschooling even though the facts are strongly against you? Or perhaps you could elucidate for me why a responsible adult should never consider these things prior to creating new life? Didn't think so.
Oh there's another thing too: people who see me making general statements about large groups of people and decide to take it personally, perhaps out of some kind of guilt they feel for not doing so well as they had hoped, as though anything I say were the cause of that.
Rather than use a pulpit, I gave my reasoning and explained what I believe to be best and why I believe that. You? Not so much. We do agree on one thing though: parenting is very hard work. In light of that, why the hell would you want to start doing it at a disadvantage (such as having no second parent, not being able to afford the children you chose to have, etc)?
Oh, and if you really, REALLY don't want other people to comment on parenting, stop expecting other people to help you raise your children. That means you pay for and arrange for their education, not the taxpayers, and it means you equip them to deal with the world instead of trying to childproof the whole world. Then it will truly be none of their business. Until then, others are involved, and since they help pay for things like public schools it is perfectly legitimate for them to articulate a position on them.
Even then I wonder how they can manage to measure "student achievement" if a correct answer turns out to be "wrong".
If they can regard correct answers as wrong, they can also regard incorrect answers as right. In effect, they are assuming the power to make "student achievement" whatever they say it is.
Didn't get the result you wanted? Move the goalposts! Students doing "poorly" means naturally that the schools and your NEA buddies need more money. Students doing "well" when convenient means that you're a competent leader who can successfully manage something important to most parents. That's the problem with politics when it is not divorced from facts.
Everybody gets this confused. All standardized tests for scholastic purposes measure achievement or potential achievement, not how "smart" someone is. That being said, everyone says that these tests measure how smart you are, which isn't true.
Remember that schooling is mostly intended to be preparation for employment. What they really measure is how compliant you are.
They measure that you memorize by rote what you're told to memorize by rote, that you go through the motions and regurgitate this memorized information according to the sequence in which you are instructed. That's why any seriously tough-minded reasoning is glossed over and not properly taught, and any "critical thinking" is framed in narrow terms*.
* Like a debate where you pick "this side" or "this other side" and defend your choice as though there could only be two options -- that's how it was done in the school I attended. Suggesting other views that don't fit that pattern, however politely or respectfully, got you branded as "disruptive". N.B. that this is not the same thing as a teacher explaining "that's mistaken/inaccurate/faulty/doesn't work and here are the logical reasons why". It's much more of a "sit down and shut up and comply" type of deal. Few understand the subtle power of framing what otherwise looks like a fully open, healthy debate.
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they should just pay the voters directly
They do. If you're a minority they call it EBT.
If you're white they call it earned income tax credit.
If you're old, they call it Medicare and they call it prescription drug benefits.
They promise to tweak one or those or the others depending on which votes they're lacking in the current campaign. But the old people seem the most popular.
No, they see it, they just rationalize it
Don't confuse the means with the result.
Rationalization is the primary (but not the only) means by which they avoid seeing it. It cushions the full horror, brings it back down to being within the realm of denial. It avoids nasty questions like what responsibility one bears for participating.
You wonder how people can do such stupid things, make such bad decisions, embrace and defend things which are so contrary to their interests? It is not because they don't see what is in front of them. It is because they can lie to themselves about what it means. You think Stockholm syndrome only happens during wartime when the worst atrocities occur? In what you could call micro-transactions average people accept, internalize and identify with external ideas constantly, at which time they sincerely believe it originated with themselves. It takes up residence.
In our society you are rewarded and thought of as "good" and "easygoing" if you are skilled at lying to yourself in this way. If you are blunt and honest without malice about what you see, that makes all but the most noble people uncomfortable. Most would rather forget how much not-seeing they have learned to do and the mess of inner conflict it has implanted in them. Each time they do it, which is on a daily basis, adds to the totality of what they would have to confront at once if they suddenly became aware of it. The longer it goes on the more difficult it is to regain the awareness that can call things exactly what they are. A counter-example makes them feel ashamed and insecure, which is what they have earned for themselves.
That's the inertia which prevents real change.
Yeah, I mean, just look at how crappy everything is in Europe. A democratic disaster. Obviously public schooling is the root of all evil.
Hehe that's so cute, the way you can write a one-liner dismissing something in a nice smug way instead of informing yourself about it. All of that is just too much work! Besides, it makes you feel good about yourself like that other guy must just be such an idiot! I mean, actually putting forth a viewpoint and trying to contribute, what was he thinking?! 'Course, you know that's the only way a lot of people ever feel "good" about anything.
So basically the protesting is all for naught because the same sharing is already happening and has been for years.
That's the usual pattern. During Bush years we saw the same thing with warrantless wiretapping. You do something illegal for a good long time, which is okay as long as it benefits government. Then when it looks like people are becoming aware of it, you go back and make it legal to pretend like it was legitimate all along.
Naturally no one who did it back when it was illegal ever gets prosecuted. That would send the wrong message. That would send the message that you will be anything but rewarded for being compliant and giving the government whatever it wants.
The inverse is when they have all these phony media "debates" concerning something they're going to do anyway, like the Patriot Act or ever-restrictive copyright law. That way it looks less authoritarian. That way it looks more like the decision came from a careful review of opposing positions. But the decision is always in favor of more power and money for the government, more coziness with industry, and less privacy for us.
I love to hear people complain about how corrupt and hopeless government is. And then do nothing about it.
Doing nothing is consistent with beliving that it is hopeless.
Sure, you can't get your politicians to fix it for you because they are the problem.
The single most effective thing the average individual could do about that is to get their children out of the public schools. Large numbers of people not doing this is the origin of the environment in which the politicians we known today are the most successful. We have a majority of people who care more about whether Zimmerman is a racial minority than about whether the nation is going to financially collapse. And we have a system of schooling designed to retard emotional and intellectual maturity which makes this possible (and it's pathetic anyone even considers that controversial -- it is painfully obvious).
Until you fix that, the rest is indeed hopeless.
who needs laws in a country ruled by money?
The film Network summed it up nicely. The protagonist, Howard Beale, meets with a tycoon named Jesson. Among other things, Jesson says to him:
"YOU HAVE MEDDLED WITH THE PRIMAL FORCES OF NATURE, MR. BEALE, AND I WON'T HAVE IT! Is that clear?! You think you merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity, it is ecological balance!
"You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations! There are no peoples! There are no Russians, there are no Arabs, there are no Third Worlds, there is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?
"You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.
"What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime.
"And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel."
That's how they think. They don't see the dehumanization.
What amuses me about this is the total lack of irony or self-awareness.
Like, say, the irony of accusing me of directing my comment at a single individual, whereas the text of it does not distinguish a particular philosophy, thus indicating that it applies to extremists of all philosophies, then subsequently falling into an extremist rant yourself? Here, this should help: http://abcteach.com/directory/reading_comprehension/
Hehe yeah, you sure did turn that around on him didn't you? Sure, if you had a solid position you could have falsified what he said, argued against his reasoning, etc., but hey who has time for all of that? Just cut corners, be intellectually lazy, take a shortcut, fail to admit he made a point because you don't have the integrity, or all of the above?
Just say "well Criminal A is a robber and you might think that's bad, but Criminal B is a murderer so obviously Criminal A didn't do anything wrong!" Or if you point out some of Obama's stupidity and someone doesn't like that, they just have to mention some of Bush's stupidity and that magically makes what Obama did ok!
Do you have any idea how fucking infantile that is and how absurd it is for you to think you're making a point here?
Oh, and FYI the -usual- response of proper Linux geeks to something not working isn't "nerd rage", it's an offer to help fix the problem. That's how we built this thing, remember?
I don't usually like "me too" posts. Having said that, when I read the above I have only one response: Fuck yeah.
Seriously, that's the real spirit of it.
Most Linux users choose it for practical reasons, a very small and vocal group choose it for ideological reasons. Those like any recent converts are the most zealous.
You know, I have never met a zealot I liked. I appreciate and adore the philosophical foundation of Open Source and the GPL, and if asked about it I can certainly articulate why. But I just don't believe in shoving anything down anyone's throat. Even if successful, it is not genuine. I don't care for people who will change their beliefs and their philosophy simply because some vocal, or charismatic, or strong personality told them it was a good idea. I don't think people like that really understand what it means to believe in anything. They're lemmings, sheep, myrmidons, whatever you want to call them.
I would rather people discover on their own and for themselves what freedom means and why it's important. If I were zealous about it, I would actually deprive them of the meaningful process of obtaining their own understanding. I would rob them of true heartfelt appreciation and gratitude. There is a big, big difference between providing good information to someone who asked for it versus shoving it down the throat of someone who didn't and treating them as some kind of adversary if they don't instantly agree.
I have always viewed it this way because I am a free-thinker and an individual. There was no "conversation" process for me. I embrace GPL and Linux because I think it's a good idea with a noble foundation, because it is a joy to participate in some small way, not because I have some kind of unhealthy emotional attachment to it.
Zealots, read that and tell me I'm wrong. Go ahead; I'd like to see you try. Any twinge of guilt you feel comes from the damage you are doing to something you claim to celebrate. We need less zeal and more reason and it's just that simple.
And yes, Wine is an option, but with the amount of tweaking needed to run most titles, it's a pain in the butt and beyond the average desktop user
Have you heard of PlayOnLinux? For games it supports, it will take care of installing DLLS and tweaking configs for you. It's basically a substitute for manually using Winetricks and regedit.
I don't use it myself but it does mitigate your complaint. It's frequently mentioned in the comments on the Wine AppDB.
So if there is an Ubuntu-centric Steam client, chances are that I will be able to use the Gentoo community docs to troubleshoot it should that need ever arise.
Yes; further still, once you figure that out you could write a little script or create an ebuild so that others need not duplicate your work. That would be trivial or nearly so. I think the original poster in this thread is propagating FUD, though I doubt it's deliberate.
Most stuff isn't distro specific. H*LL. A lot of stuff isn't even specific to Linux.
Right. Many Open Source programs I use are not just for Linux but for any Unix-like OS. This is a solved problem.
Incidentally, you can say hell, shit, fuck, etc. There's no censorship here, which is one thing I like about Slashdot.
However, one thing I cannot comprehend is the attitude that if other people use non-libre software that it could somehow affect my own freedoms. I just don't understand that reasoning.
Honestly, I think it comes from the bitter taste left in the mouths of many former Windows users who switched to Linux. It's not so much about proprietary versus free/open, it's about the way a proprietary vendor with a huge marketshare can exert a great deal of control over said market. That scenario just wouldn't be possible with GPL'd software.
I don't consider it likely with games myself. Game publishers actually do have competition and you can release a game without Steam. While Steam seems dominant now, you could start a competing company and get it off the ground much more easily than you could sell your own proprietary operating system and compete toe-to-toe with Microsoft. Not to mention that it's easier to have a computer and make do without some game titles than it is to have a computer and make do without an operating system. That would also make it more difficult for a monopolistic company to have a real stranglehold, because this is a luxury and not a necessity. Piss off your users badly enough and they will realize that.
The number of games that don't work via Wine is an ever-shrinking list,
Really? My experience was that it was an ever growing list of new games that did not work. Maybe eventually, somewhat with some tweaks you could almost somehow run them eventually, but many stayed unplayable for years. Of course many games do work so you can game on Linux, but this very much depends on whether you find this a glass half full or glass half empty situation...
It's definitely a glass-half-full except I'd say it's more than halfway filled. This is not an exhaustive list, but to name off the top of my head some Windows games I have played via Wine over the years: Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Dungeon Keeper 2, Fable, Fable 2, CoD: Black Ops, Drakensang, Dragon Age: Origins, Bioshock, Mafia, Mafia 2, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Plants vs. Zombies, World of Warcraft, Max Payne, Max Payne 2, F.E.A.R 2, F.E.A.R. 3. I'm sure there are others I don't remember right now.
I'm definitely not the most hardcore gamer, but I am satisfied. Perhaps that is because I tend to focus on games that are known to work and choose from those. I tend not to get my heart set and my mind attached to any particular title that I simply must have, because there are already too many great games than I would ever have time to play even if I didn't have to work for a living. Still, it's definitely a "YMMV" situation...
Whatever distros popular proprietary software is available for become the distros that people use, thus allowing proprietary software vendors to exert control over the community.
They might influence things like whether a given file is in /opt instead of /usr/local but these are not major changes and could be remedied with a few symlinks. All free Linux distros use the same broad (upstream) codebase of Open Source software. The differences between them amount to little more than where certain things are located in the filesystem and what is installed by default. Any dependency this native client requires is either exotic (meaning Valve should provide it themselves) or something you could find in any decent distro repository.
For example, I use Gentoo. I love it, but it's one of the least likely distros for a proprietary software company to standardize on. I'm not worried about this at all, and that's not because I would never consider trying this client.
For that matter, the Valve installer could locate critical dependencies itself instead of assuming they can only be in a single location. This would have to be done one time and from then on it would work until uninstalled. This just isn't a big deal, but tell me if you think I have it all wrong.
I won't. I'll be dancing in the goddamn street with a crowbar. I've been watching with interest the burgeoning Linux games industry and it's about to go critical with this, that's for sure. It's not just Steam, it's Source. So that's the back library taken care of. And now I can play keyboard/mouse games again for the first time since I abandoned the Windows world! YAY!
Don't know about you, but I have always had good luck playing Windows games via Wine. That includes Steam games. I'm currently playing Skyrim this way.
The number of games that don't work via Wine is an ever-shrinking list, though you may have to acquaint yourself with Winetricks and the AppDB. While a native Steam/Source client is only going to improve things for you, to speak as though there were no way at all to play keyboard/mouse games without Windows is simply not true. I've been doing it for years now.
Forget the organizational level for a second, and consider on a human level. Officials working for schools and depend on them to put food on the table would have to understand that authoritarian regimes tend to target and eliminate education.
Target and eliminate? No. They aren't that stupid (would that they were). What they do is pervert education and use it for the purpose of social engineering and indoctrination. Any transmission of knowledge or understanding is incidental and only to the extent necessary that the peons/students can perform useful labor, to form the bottom of the pyramid. They would also encourage conformity and permit various bullying and other abuses to ensure that the immaturities of childhood extend well into adulthood. What they absolutely would not do is teach serious, tough-minded critical thinking skills and raise up people who can educate themselves and do not need to depend on an instructor to tell them what is important to learn.
Sounds just like what we have now in the USA. These things happen slowly from the perspective of a human life, but quickly from the perspective of written history. Just consider how much the USA has changed in the last three generations. Then you can get a feel for what's going on, where it is headed, what the ultimate expression of it would be, and why it would be done that way.
The USA's tyranny is not going to be hard tyranny, the kind that waves a gun in your face and demands that you submit. It is going to be a soft tyranny, the kind that knows what's best for you, that you have learned to depend on. That, however, is just a matter of style, the means. The result is the same.
I have to ask, were you trolling or did you truly not understand that? What real tyrants understand is that the average person is so caught up in their day-to-day affairs that they tend not to be long-term thinkers. They are not skilled at seeing the path something is taking and projecting what the end of that path will be and that skill is not taught to them and they are not self-educators who would acquire it on their own. So if you want to implement tyranny, you do it in baby steps, each one carefully justified and defended by its ardent little apologists. After all, you don't want the terrorists to win, do you? After all, you want to protect the children, don't you? After all, you want the poor to be taken care of, don't you?
Unless it happens on school grounds. Then people turn a blind eye.
Especially if other kids are doing it. Then the school administration gives their silent consent by doing nothing about it. Or worse, when it's physical abuse, they punish both the bully who attacked someone without provocation and the one who defended himself, just to add that element of mindfuck to existing injustice.
I am thankful to have had parents who told me I would not be in trouble for legitimate self-defense even if the school system was far less reasonable. What I found was that if you knock out one of them, the rest tend to leave you alone, for the nature of a bully is to find a doormat who will not fight back. I believe the school officials who have no doubt studied child psychology and the like are also aware of this and understand the injustice they facilitate. It is not mere bureaucratic ignorance but some kind of desired effect, a sort of unwritten portion of the curriculum.
People who can and will stand up for themselves, even when a price must be paid, are extremely undesirable to increasingly tyrannical governments. It's something they would discourage and it is not difficult to understand why. It's amazing how hard that is to accept for people who cannot comprehend that organizations, like individuals, can also be selfish and encourage only what is in their long-term interests.
This is a joke, I get it. But if you could keep an child engaged at near 100% of their capacity, what potential.
I believe you're making a fundamental error. You're confusing the ability to detect and predict failure with the ability to cause success.
See the real question is whether significantly less than 100% is a natural state or if it is a product of placing systems ahead of humans. If you really want to revolutionize education, teach them in a way that doesn't suffocate curiosity (see my sig) and doesn't rely so heavily on regimentation and conformity. It would be a matter of helping each person to discover how they learn and how to work with that, so that they can remain self-teachers into adulthood. The status quo is to teach everyone by a single and largely rote method while insisting that everyone remain on the same page at the same time.
The root of the word "education" meant "to bring forth from within". You don't really make a plant grow, because that's in its nature; but you can provide conditions favorable to its growth such as sunlight, fertilizer, and water. That's what education should do. That's all it should do, which is less than it does now.
What I am proposing is education for free-thinkers and psychological-mental independence, instead of the training for dependency and complacency that excess standardization produces.
Get a prenup anyway.
They CHANGE. Menopause has a large blast radius!
Ideally you change and challenge each other, in an amicable way. Failing that, you chose a partner who is unworthy of you or vice-versa (she because of her love of money, you because of her allure).
Marry a person you can be honest with. Whether or not they are a bitch is irrelevant. If you are honest, she will be a bitch on your side.
You will find zero or nearly zero overlap between these two groups: the number of women who are bitches, and the number of women who can respect, appreciate, and honor true honesty in a man.
In fact there is zero overlap. You can play games with word definitions of "bitch" and toy with the numbers to make that a trivial, non-zero overlap, but then that would not be the result of reality but of you playing games.
Umm, okay. Completely off topic, but okay. Doesn't mean it is not, in fact, dangerous .
Everything is dangerous. Everything is in some way "entreprenurial".
If you want security, you find that in some form of faith. You will not find that in the natural realm. You will not find that in social affairs. You will not find that in your personal ability, for that may fail.
Real security is different from all of that. It's a form of bravery. It does not come from without. It comes from within.
lying to a wife is, in fact, a dangerous thing to do
Marrying a bitch is a dangerous thing to do (dangerous to one's own sanity). For men, not noticing she's a bitch because you can't look beyond her body, getting her to want you not because of your character (that she is not mature enough to admire) but because you "got game" (put her on a pedestal), that's what puts them in danger.
But marrying a woman who is not a bitch? Then you can be honest with her and she can be honest with you. You don't need her approval for everything you do, nor does she need yours. Sort of like you may read a book I don't like or listen to music I find distasteful and you don't need me to sign off on it. For me this is normal. For some it's sadly "unrealistic".
I notice most people do not relate honestly. They have little white lies and other ways to tiptoe around each other because each person never fully accepted who the other is prior to marriage.
You know, I have 2 children, and I'm f'ing sick and tired of people here on slashdot standing on their pulpits preaching about how others should raise their kids, or what they would do if they 'love' their children. It's the hardest damn job in the world to raise kids, and every single parent (whether you think so or not) loves their children. They do the best they are able and know how. One thing I can practically guarantee: if you haven't actually DONE what you are preaching that others should, then it doesn't work like you think it will. That's a basic lesson in life.
I'm a little tired of something myself: adult people who use emotional "arguments" instead of telling me why they think my position is faulty. Perhaps you would like to start by telling me why you disagree with my statement about waiting until you can afford children before having them? Or perhaps you want to tell me why the public school system is so much better than private or homeschooling even though the facts are strongly against you? Or perhaps you could elucidate for me why a responsible adult should never consider these things prior to creating new life? Didn't think so.
Oh there's another thing too: people who see me making general statements about large groups of people and decide to take it personally, perhaps out of some kind of guilt they feel for not doing so well as they had hoped, as though anything I say were the cause of that.
Rather than use a pulpit, I gave my reasoning and explained what I believe to be best and why I believe that. You? Not so much. We do agree on one thing though: parenting is very hard work. In light of that, why the hell would you want to start doing it at a disadvantage (such as having no second parent, not being able to afford the children you chose to have, etc)?
Oh, and if you really, REALLY don't want other people to comment on parenting, stop expecting other people to help you raise your children. That means you pay for and arrange for their education, not the taxpayers, and it means you equip them to deal with the world instead of trying to childproof the whole world. Then it will truly be none of their business. Until then, others are involved, and since they help pay for things like public schools it is perfectly legitimate for them to articulate a position on them.
Even then I wonder how they can manage to measure "student achievement" if a correct answer turns out to be "wrong".
If they can regard correct answers as wrong, they can also regard incorrect answers as right. In effect, they are assuming the power to make "student achievement" whatever they say it is.
Didn't get the result you wanted? Move the goalposts! Students doing "poorly" means naturally that the schools and your NEA buddies need more money. Students doing "well" when convenient means that you're a competent leader who can successfully manage something important to most parents. That's the problem with politics when it is not divorced from facts.
Everybody gets this confused. All standardized tests for scholastic purposes measure achievement or potential achievement, not how "smart" someone is. That being said, everyone says that these tests measure how smart you are, which isn't true.
Remember that schooling is mostly intended to be preparation for employment. What they really measure is how compliant you are.
They measure that you memorize by rote what you're told to memorize by rote, that you go through the motions and regurgitate this memorized information according to the sequence in which you are instructed. That's why any seriously tough-minded reasoning is glossed over and not properly taught, and any "critical thinking" is framed in narrow terms*.
* Like a debate where you pick "this side" or "this other side" and defend your choice as though there could only be two options -- that's how it was done in the school I attended. Suggesting other views that don't fit that pattern, however politely or respectfully, got you branded as "disruptive". N.B. that this is not the same thing as a teacher explaining "that's mistaken/inaccurate/faulty/doesn't work and here are the logical reasons why". It's much more of a "sit down and shut up and comply" type of deal. Few understand the subtle power of framing what otherwise looks like a fully open, healthy debate.