"The RIAA is reinforcing their reputation as greedy bullies, which will serve to exacerbate the problem they're trying to combat."
Perhaps not shockingly, substituting US for RIAA doesn't make this sentance any less insightful.
Communism failed because it was an economic system used as a system of government. It seems that our original Democratic government has been replaced by a Capitalistic one. Suddenly we have the same issue Russia did. We are governing our country via an economic system, and there are very large differences between managing societies and managing money.
This probably shouldn't be surprising since Capitalism's one and only goal is to consume at all costs. It was inevitable that it would eat our government. Now it's starting to try and eat the world. And unfortunately, that single goal doesn't allow it to change the rules and say enough. That's why the RIAA can't change it's path. And it's why the US can't come up with foreign policy other than "take."
What happens when a capitalist system gets trapped in a box, like the RIAA has, and there is nothing more to eat? Oroburos.
Interestingly, this also explains the insane expansion of "intellectual property" laws and concepts in the past 100 years. The system is simply trying to create a new food source. I don't believe that humans are a virus, but I certainly believe Capitalism is.
Capitalism makes the world, freedom, thought, and life itself into a zero sum game, when the stated goal is to do the opposite.
greed and violence is not human nature. there is no such thing as "human nature" - there is just nature. nature, and by extension human nature, is all about joint survival of the species. Every species but us works in some system to make sure their species survives long term.
our culture has somehow moved away from that, and now things that everything is to be taken from other members of our species for ourselves. essentially, greed makes us value our own interests over that of our community and by extention species.
this has not always been the case. it is just escalating, because it has grown to be accepted wisdom. Since the industrial revolution, people simply assume that the end goal should be to make themselves as wealthy as possible, and that the best way to do that is at the cost of others. This has led to the evolution of advertising, and other cultural norms which essentially exist for the sole purpose of making people want what they dont need... in other words, more than they would if left alone.
So basically, greed is a social construct, not some "human nature". Saying it is human nature, and not some radical abnormailty is essentially making excuses. Basically, people say that these things are just human nature. They do this mainly so that they dont have to look at themselves in the mirror and stop doing the things that deep down they know are wrong.
Nature is all about teamwork and preserving a species. We have effectively removed ourselves from nature. In doing so, we are killing ourselves. We are also killing nature in the process by destroying it's cycles. Thing is.. we need nature. Nature, long term, doesn't need us. If I had to bet, I suspect we are going to lose.
Hopefully, as more people realize this, people will stand up and be willing to risk being one of the first to change the way they live, and look for a culture that works according to nature's laws. And once that culture kicks in and becomes self sustaining, our current greedy consumptionist culture will find itself with a new competitor which it simply is not equipped to compete with. It will become less and less as the obvious correctness of working with nature appeals to more and more people who see it working and lose their fear of change. And one day, corporate and personal excessive greed will seem to be nothing but a silly foot note in our history, and a warning of where we can go wrong. And that will be a pretty good day.
In any case, much of this post was brought to you by the concepts in Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Read it. It's worth the time.
Re:Spam is just good business
on
I, Spammer
·
· Score: 1
I don't know that he is doing wrong. He is being annoying, that's true. But censorship is wrong, and I would rather deal with spam than have a system of controls in place based on content. But I suppose there is something morally "wrong" about exploiting any resource to the detriment of that resource.
Ok, He's doing wrong. But so is just about everyone else, in a different medium.
Actually, I just got back from seeing it for the 2nd time (I know, I know, I'm behind the curve.. but trying to catch up)
The Architect says the machines have destroyed zion 6 times already, and are getting quite efficient at it. Which would imply that this is the 7th iteration of Zion.
However, the Merovingian saying 5 predecessors throws that off. The only real way to make them fit is to determine that the first Zion must not have had a "The One" - it just got too big because of the "utopian" nature of the first matrix, so they wiped it and started again, adding a "The One" to the second Matrix. This goes with the Architect saying that the "mother" of the matrix determined how to make people happy within it on the second go-round. It also means that the current iteration of the Matrix is 7th, as is the current iteration of Zion (which i am more and more convinced is just an overflow buffer for the matrix core) - But Neo is only the 6th "The One"
The real question is if the design had him going into the core or back to rescue Trinity. Did he do what they expected or not? The architect says he was supposed to go into the source. But he sounds totally unsurprised and even describes the emotions and such that lead him NOT to go into the core. So maybe that's part of the plan.
All I know is the next one is gonna rock even harder, as we hopefully get some resolution on all this.
Oh - and the screen that the camera goes through into the interogation room in the first one is one of the architects screens. This fact alone is enough to make me believe that they had all this insanity planned from the start. Groovy.
Don't worry, the earth is destroyed several times during the Hitchhiker's Guide series (although obviously really only once).
The first time (which I believe the original poster was referring to) happens right at the beginning of the very first book. Then things start getting interesting.
I was never against a gay game character. I may have implied that with my initial post, but I didn't mean to. I was just commenting on the fact that the title of the game seems odd to me, and likely to be joked about. Unless of course, that is the intention (which I doubt).
As far as content geared towards male homosexual gamers.. the be honest, I don't think I would enjoy it if that was it's main reason for being. I am not against those games existing by any means... I am just not the target audience. I don't play games aimed at teaching kids the alphabet either. That said, if a male homosexual relationship were just one aspect of the game like any other, then I think the rest of the game (plot, gameplay, etc) would be my deciding factors.
Thanks - I actually wasn't able to get the video (though I tried) - I am not about to net-install some random p2p client download thing.
That said, regardless of the contents of the game (eating of said reptile) - The name just brings to mind cheesy middle school jokes. Which are sure to be made, and could be a bad marketing move. i.e. something lost in translation.
I am not "after" a gay game character (but not really against it either.. could be a good sign of social progress)
Guess my point is that I don't really care either way, but the title struck me as a bit odd. But then again, the "Metal Gear Solid 3" part at the beginning should counteract it pretty well.:)
It's unfortunate that it's so unsecure, but that's just the way it is.
I think it's great that it's not secure. Just like every other classic protocol that truly supports the net (tcp, ip, ftp, etc), it's not about what you put over it - it's about moving data as it's told. This distinction is what makes it so difficult to control or "own" the net. I don't believe we could build a "secure" protocol that retains the inbuilt freedom that we have today.
Yes, people abuse that freedom just like they do any other, and yes, spam is so annoying that many who normally fight for freedom now beg to take it away in this instance, but there are solutions that don't involve removing freedom for everyone.
The idea of challenge response is good.. as is baysian filtering.. as is pgp key signing, etc...
And the solution to the abuse of bandwidth on the servers is not to recreate the protocol. it's to make sending spam pointless in the first place - and that happens at the ends. The middle needs to be stupid in order to be smart.
And now my shameless (and probably inaccurate) retelling of "the world of ends" will itself end.
Splinter Cell is supposedly good, but if you go PS2, I recommend Metal Gear Solid 2 - that game rules.
Can't help ya on racing.. Grand Turismo 3 is pretty impressive looking, but too "exact" for my tastes
RPG - Gotta agree with BillYak here - Neverwinter Nights is freakin' awesome. so is dungeon siege, but NWN is much more RPG-y. If you want less of the D&D style RPG, or are sticking with the PS2, get Final Fantasy X. It should last a few weeks, the story is amazing, and in general its just a great great game.
I spent two weeks a few months back playing it.. i actually rearranged my furniture for those weeks so I would have a nice chair and table head on w/ the tv, etc. It was great.:)
Being a wimp, I actually stopped playing that game about 5 minutes after the first ghost.
I didnt know ghosts were involved, so I am playing waiting to kill monsters, robots, whatever... suddenly it goes all poltergeist on me, and I was like - no, this aint gonna happen. I am not gonna spend the next two weeks jumping out of my skin.
Netflix had a big spread in Wired several months back... the business model of the company is such that they are only profitable on accounts which rent 5 or less movies a month. This jives with the linear availability chart at the end of the linked article. When the account had 5 or less rentals in the previous billing cycle, availability of movies in the current cycle is 0-1. But once you pass 5, it decreases.
In other words, as long as your account is 5 or less and you are profitable for them, you will get movies quickly. If you are renting more than 5, it seems they slow you down in an effort to limit you to the 5 through delay tactics.. rather than just saying "up to 5"
Kinda sneaky to pitch unlimited rentals and then use false availability numbers to limit your customers to a preset amount.
I think I will just stick with the local video store. I can rent 4 or 5 movies there for 20 bucks a month without the waiting time OR lies about availability.
Stallman has absolutely no problems with people writing software for money and keeping those parts (both binary AND source) closed.
Um.. what? So what is this whole free software thing then? If he has no problems with proprietary software, why did his first encounter with it via a printer driver lead to him starting an entire movement to free software?
Chandler makes the exchange/server component redundant in the first place. It's purely p2p and all that jazz... there is no need for an exchange server. At least, not according to the design philosophy they are pitching. Which is a good one.
The one thing that will be interesting is what happens when they realize that in most organizations people turn off their machines at night. Will they write a caching server for people's calendars and such? Or will those people's shared resources just vanish?
Before you run off and start investing and "making your money work for you" in the traditional sense, have a look at this. It certainly doesn't fall into the traditional "more more more" mindset of most people - instead if focuses on "what is enough" and making you happy.
In the words of the late, great Douglas Adams - "these people were extraordinarilly unhappy and attempted to correct their problem by spending all their time moving small pieces of green paper around - which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the pieces of green paper that were unhappy."
Just a different perspective from the norm - but one that may do more for you than any book on the money markets ever could.
So why do astronomers always compare the size of meteors to Volkswagen bugs?
Because, interestingly enough, the VW Beetle is the only current automobile which has a size which "The Size of Texas" is evenly divisible by. It just sounds better than saying 1/22349938th the size of Texas.
I purchased one on a few things... sometimes, if you use them, they make sense.
For example, I purchased a handspring visor prism and paid 80$ for a warranty. 1.5 years later, the battery ceased holding a charge. I took it back to my local best buy, and they took it back, and gave me credit for 450$ towards a new handheld. When i picked the sony clie 615c, they rang it up as 450$ instead of 350$, so that I would have the full amount of credit if it ever went bad. I havent had to use that yet, but wouldnt hesitate if i had a problem. It was a completely painless experience.
In fact, it prompted me to spend the money on a plan for my digital camera, because it also covers the batteries and such. So in a year, when the 100$ battery stops charging fully, i can just swap for a new one... all because of a $30 up front plan.
In some cases it doesnt make sense. But in the case of smaller things where some essential component cant be cheaply replaced (i.e. batteries in pdas, digitizers, lenses, etc) it makes a ton of sense... and if you ever need it, they essentially throw in an upgrade for free.
I would have thought that KBabel would refer to the Tower of Babel - you know, the biblical tower to the heavens that supposedly resulted in the creation of all the different languages... I would guess that is also how the Babelfish from H2G2 got its name.
When someone is questioned in a deposition (i.e. out of court, but legally binding testimony as part of the evidence gathering phase of a trial), then they have been deposed.
Sigur Ros is unbeatable. Their old stuff is in icelandic, and the new stuff is in a made up language. So words arent an issue. And they are smooth, and ambient, and generally rule. Definately worth a listen.
I hate the word consumers - it's just a smokescreen to talk about ourselves without emotion. Advertisers don't surround themselves with garish billboards and obnoxious ads to get themselves to spend money on things they don't need. They surround/consumers/ - as though they are exempt from the crap.
What we are really talking about is a group of people scanning peoples brain patterns in reaction to product images to find what can actually make us "behave the way they want [us] to" (direct quote)
There is something wrong about that. It kind of reminds me of the whole Snow Crash thing really.
Advertising is just a way to make something seem like it is worth more than it is. It sucks.
Re:Confidence as the basis for systems
on
Spielberg's Taken
·
· Score: 2
Well, you are in fact correct, but I think the whole internet crash was a good thing. and if television, movies, and music can't adapt their business models to fit in with technology, then they should crash too.
Just for the sake of it, let me say that I think currency and banking are really both directly tracable to confidence in the government. And that confidence mostly comes from the fact that they have guns. Anything less than revolution means jail and or pain. Which makes arranging a revolution decidedly difficult.
Now the dating example is a good one. I find I usually get self-confidence after I start dating a girl. Which means I have needed to develop a new strategy - Unflinching Optimism. It works. And for only 19.95 I will email you the secret as to how.;P
Slashdot Mirror
"The RIAA is reinforcing their reputation as greedy bullies, which will serve to exacerbate the problem they're trying to combat."
Perhaps not shockingly, substituting US for RIAA doesn't make this sentance any less insightful.
Communism failed because it was an economic system used as a system of government. It seems that our original Democratic government has been replaced by a Capitalistic one. Suddenly we have the same issue Russia did. We are governing our country via an economic system, and there are very large differences between managing societies and managing money.
This probably shouldn't be surprising since Capitalism's one and only goal is to consume at all costs. It was inevitable that it would eat our government. Now it's starting to try and eat the world. And unfortunately, that single goal doesn't allow it to change the rules and say enough. That's why the RIAA can't change it's path. And it's why the US can't come up with foreign policy other than "take."
What happens when a capitalist system gets trapped in a box, like the RIAA has, and there is nothing more to eat? Oroburos.
Interestingly, this also explains the insane expansion of "intellectual property" laws and concepts in the past 100 years. The system is simply trying to create a new food source. I don't believe that humans are a virus, but I certainly believe Capitalism is.
Capitalism makes the world, freedom, thought, and life itself into a zero sum game, when the stated goal is to do the opposite.
Maybe it's time to try something new.
greed and violence is not human nature. there is no such thing as "human nature" - there is just nature. nature, and by extension human nature, is all about joint survival of the species. Every species but us works in some system to make sure their species survives long term.
our culture has somehow moved away from that, and now things that everything is to be taken from other members of our species for ourselves. essentially, greed makes us value our own interests over that of our community and by extention species.
this has not always been the case. it is just escalating, because it has grown to be accepted wisdom. Since the industrial revolution, people simply assume that the end goal should be to make themselves as wealthy as possible, and that the best way to do that is at the cost of others. This has led to the evolution of advertising, and other cultural norms which essentially exist for the sole purpose of making people want what they dont need... in other words, more than they would if left alone.
So basically, greed is a social construct, not some "human nature". Saying it is human nature, and not some radical abnormailty is essentially making excuses. Basically, people say that these things are just human nature. They do this mainly so that they dont have to look at themselves in the mirror and stop doing the things that deep down they know are wrong.
Nature is all about teamwork and preserving a species. We have effectively removed ourselves from nature. In doing so, we are killing ourselves. We are also killing nature in the process by destroying it's cycles. Thing is.. we need nature. Nature, long term, doesn't need us. If I had to bet, I suspect we are going to lose.
Hopefully, as more people realize this, people will stand up and be willing to risk being one of the first to change the way they live, and look for a culture that works according to nature's laws. And once that culture kicks in and becomes self sustaining, our current greedy consumptionist culture will find itself with a new competitor which it simply is not equipped to compete with. It will become less and less as the obvious correctness of working with nature appeals to more and more people who see it working and lose their fear of change. And one day, corporate and personal excessive greed will seem to be nothing but a silly foot note in our history, and a warning of where we can go wrong. And that will be a pretty good day.
In any case, much of this post was brought to you by the concepts in Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Read it. It's worth the time.
I don't know that he is doing wrong. He is being annoying, that's true. But censorship is wrong, and I would rather deal with spam than have a system of controls in place based on content. But I suppose there is something morally "wrong" about exploiting any resource to the detriment of that resource.
Ok, He's doing wrong. But so is just about everyone else, in a different medium.
Actually, I just got back from seeing it for the 2nd time (I know, I know, I'm behind the curve.. but trying to catch up)
The Architect says the machines have destroyed zion 6 times already, and are getting quite efficient at it. Which would imply that this is the 7th iteration of Zion.
However, the Merovingian saying 5 predecessors throws that off. The only real way to make them fit is to determine that the first Zion must not have had a "The One" - it just got too big because of the "utopian" nature of the first matrix, so they wiped it and started again, adding a "The One" to the second Matrix. This goes with the Architect saying that the "mother" of the matrix determined how to make people happy within it on the second go-round. It also means that the current iteration of the Matrix is 7th, as is the current iteration of Zion (which i am more and more convinced is just an overflow buffer for the matrix core) - But Neo is only the 6th "The One"
The real question is if the design had him going into the core or back to rescue Trinity. Did he do what they expected or not? The architect says he was supposed to go into the source. But he sounds totally unsurprised and even describes the emotions and such that lead him NOT to go into the core. So maybe that's part of the plan.
All I know is the next one is gonna rock even harder, as we hopefully get some resolution on all this.
Oh - and the screen that the camera goes through into the interogation room in the first one is one of the architects screens. This fact alone is enough to make me believe that they had all this insanity planned from the start. Groovy.
"I'd rather have choice than freedom"
That is painful to read, on so many levels.
Don't worry, the earth is destroyed several times during the Hitchhiker's Guide series (although obviously really only once).
The first time (which I believe the original poster was referring to) happens right at the beginning of the very first book. Then things start getting interesting.
Just read them. Nothing has been ruined.
I was never against a gay game character. I may have implied that with my initial post, but I didn't mean to. I was just commenting on the fact that the title of the game seems odd to me, and likely to be joked about. Unless of course, that is the intention (which I doubt).
As far as content geared towards male homosexual gamers.. the be honest, I don't think I would enjoy it if that was it's main reason for being. I am not against those games existing by any means... I am just not the target audience. I don't play games aimed at teaching kids the alphabet either. That said, if a male homosexual relationship were just one aspect of the game like any other, then I think the rest of the game (plot, gameplay, etc) would be my deciding factors.
Thanks - I actually wasn't able to get the video (though I tried) - I am not about to net-install some random p2p client download thing.
:)
That said, regardless of the contents of the game (eating of said reptile) - The name just brings to mind cheesy middle school jokes. Which are sure to be made, and could be a bad marketing move. i.e. something lost in translation.
I am not "after" a gay game character (but not really against it either.. could be a good sign of social progress)
Guess my point is that I don't really care either way, but the title struck me as a bit odd. But then again, the "Metal Gear Solid 3" part at the beginning should counteract it pretty well.
I suspect something got lost in the translation of the subtitle. Because, wow... imagine the jokes.
I am ashamed that my mind works this way, but I can't help it. Forgive me.
It's unfortunate that it's so unsecure, but that's just the way it is.
I think it's great that it's not secure. Just like every other classic protocol that truly supports the net (tcp, ip, ftp, etc), it's not about what you put over it - it's about moving data as it's told. This distinction is what makes it so difficult to control or "own" the net. I don't believe we could build a "secure" protocol that retains the inbuilt freedom that we have today.
Yes, people abuse that freedom just like they do any other, and yes, spam is so annoying that many who normally fight for freedom now beg to take it away in this instance, but there are solutions that don't involve removing freedom for everyone.
The idea of challenge response is good.. as is baysian filtering.. as is pgp key signing, etc...
And the solution to the abuse of bandwidth on the servers is not to recreate the protocol. it's to make sending spam pointless in the first place - and that happens at the ends. The middle needs to be stupid in order to be smart.
And now my shameless (and probably inaccurate) retelling of "the world of ends" will itself end.
very good point. I would mod you up if I could.
You can't have an automated challenge/response system, because that defeats the point.
You can't have a non C/R address for the challenges to be sent to, because it would end up getting spammed.
Basically, there is a no communications barrier in place until they communicate.. which makes no sense.
Splinter Cell is supposedly good, but if you go PS2, I recommend Metal Gear Solid 2 - that game rules.
:)
Can't help ya on racing.. Grand Turismo 3 is pretty impressive looking, but too "exact" for my tastes
RPG - Gotta agree with BillYak here - Neverwinter Nights is freakin' awesome. so is dungeon siege, but NWN is much more RPG-y. If you want less of the D&D style RPG, or are sticking with the PS2, get Final Fantasy X. It should last a few weeks, the story is amazing, and in general its just a great great game.
I spent two weeks a few months back playing it.. i actually rearranged my furniture for those weeks so I would have a nice chair and table head on w/ the tv, etc. It was great.
Being a wimp, I actually stopped playing that game about 5 minutes after the first ghost.
:)
I didnt know ghosts were involved, so I am playing waiting to kill monsters, robots, whatever... suddenly it goes all poltergeist on me, and I was like - no, this aint gonna happen. I am not gonna spend the next two weeks jumping out of my skin.
Then i turned it off.
Netflix had a big spread in Wired several months back... the business model of the company is such that they are only profitable on accounts which rent 5 or less movies a month. This jives with the linear availability chart at the end of the linked article. When the account had 5 or less rentals in the previous billing cycle, availability of movies in the current cycle is 0-1. But once you pass 5, it decreases.
In other words, as long as your account is 5 or less and you are profitable for them, you will get movies quickly. If you are renting more than 5, it seems they slow you down in an effort to limit you to the 5 through delay tactics.. rather than just saying "up to 5"
Kinda sneaky to pitch unlimited rentals and then use false availability numbers to limit your customers to a preset amount.
I think I will just stick with the local video store. I can rent 4 or 5 movies there for 20 bucks a month without the waiting time OR lies about availability.
Stallman has absolutely no problems with people writing software for money and keeping those parts (both binary AND source) closed.
Um.. what? So what is this whole free software thing then? If he has no problems with proprietary software, why did his first encounter with it via a printer driver lead to him starting an entire movement to free software?
Chandler makes the exchange/server component redundant in the first place. It's purely p2p and all that jazz... there is no need for an exchange server. At least, not according to the design philosophy they are pitching. Which is a good one.
The one thing that will be interesting is what happens when they realize that in most organizations people turn off their machines at night. Will they write a caching server for people's calendars and such? Or will those people's shared resources just vanish?
Before you run off and start investing and "making your money work for you" in the traditional sense, have a look at this. It certainly doesn't fall into the traditional "more more more" mindset of most people - instead if focuses on "what is enough" and making you happy.
In the words of the late, great Douglas Adams - "these people were extraordinarilly unhappy and attempted to correct their problem by spending all their time moving small pieces of green paper around - which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the pieces of green paper that were unhappy."
Just a different perspective from the norm - but one that may do more for you than any book on the money markets ever could.
So why do astronomers always compare the size of meteors to Volkswagen bugs?
Because, interestingly enough, the VW Beetle is the only current automobile which has a size which "The Size of Texas" is evenly divisible by. It just sounds better than saying 1/22349938th the size of Texas.
I purchased one on a few things... sometimes, if you use them, they make sense.
For example, I purchased a handspring visor prism and paid 80$ for a warranty. 1.5 years later, the battery ceased holding a charge. I took it back to my local best buy, and they took it back, and gave me credit for 450$ towards a new handheld. When i picked the sony clie 615c, they rang it up as 450$ instead of 350$, so that I would have the full amount of credit if it ever went bad. I havent had to use that yet, but wouldnt hesitate if i had a problem. It was a completely painless experience.
In fact, it prompted me to spend the money on a plan for my digital camera, because it also covers the batteries and such. So in a year, when the 100$ battery stops charging fully, i can just swap for a new one... all because of a $30 up front plan.
In some cases it doesnt make sense. But in the case of smaller things where some essential component cant be cheaply replaced (i.e. batteries in pdas, digitizers, lenses, etc) it makes a ton of sense... and if you ever need it, they essentially throw in an upgrade for free.
Not a bad deal really.
I would have thought that KBabel would refer to the Tower of Babel - you know, the biblical tower to the heavens that supposedly resulted in the creation of all the different languages... I would guess that is also how the Babelfish from H2G2 got its name.
deposed.
When someone is questioned in a deposition (i.e. out of court, but legally binding testimony as part of the evidence gathering phase of a trial), then they have been deposed.
Just to add to the music thing:
Sigur Ros is unbeatable. Their old stuff is in icelandic, and the new stuff is in a made up language. So words arent an issue. And they are smooth, and ambient, and generally rule. Definately worth a listen.
It seems apple is now pushing it's own X11 implementation at: http://www.apple.com/macosx/x11/
Not announced, but still quite interesting. Its X11, but with all the OS X look on the windows (shadows, genie, etc)
I hate the word consumers - it's just a smokescreen to talk about ourselves without emotion. Advertisers don't surround themselves with garish billboards and obnoxious ads to get themselves to spend money on things they don't need. They surround /consumers/ - as though they are exempt from the crap.
What we are really talking about is a group of people scanning peoples brain patterns in reaction to product images to find what can actually make us "behave the way they want [us] to" (direct quote)
There is something wrong about that. It kind of reminds me of the whole Snow Crash thing really.
Advertising is just a way to make something seem like it is worth more than it is. It sucks.
Well, you are in fact correct, but I think the whole internet crash was a good thing. and if television, movies, and music can't adapt their business models to fit in with technology, then they should crash too.
;P
Just for the sake of it, let me say that I think currency and banking are really both directly tracable to confidence in the government. And that confidence mostly comes from the fact that they have guns. Anything less than revolution means jail and or pain. Which makes arranging a revolution decidedly difficult.
Now the dating example is a good one. I find I usually get self-confidence after I start dating a girl. Which means I have needed to develop a new strategy - Unflinching Optimism. It works. And for only 19.95 I will email you the secret as to how.