alexakarpov's comments

Instead of the article, better read Vonnegut: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_%28novel%29

A much better, if also significantly longer, exposition.

Can't believe no one mentioned the best work on 'bullshit jobs' out there - "Player Piano" by Kurt Vonnegut. Back in 1952 he already guessed it all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel)

That. Also, this: http://this-plt-life.tumblr.com/post/55420560033/when-somebo...

sorry, didn't realize this was the main point

I've never read the Olympics code, list of principles etc, but I can imagine there's something about human dignity and freedom and liberty? Well, liberty should be a lowest common denominator. I.e. -- your culture allows some people to enslave and oppress other people, and deny them life, property and dignity? Well your culture is a piece of shit and you don't host Olympics. Easy! Cultural bias? Sure - cultural bias of human against blood-sucking goblins doesn't sound too bad.

"Make sports even more political" -- this is our disagreement, yes. You think sports and politics are somehow 'independent things' -- but they aren't. Best parallel would be: money and wealth and private property and capital and production are all connected. Communists said they really aren't, and should be made 'less connected' - somehow, they want to have production without everything else. Well, we all know it doesn't work this way. Same here -- you can't artificially disconnect 'politics' from 'sport'. It will remain connected... because it is connected!

Do understand, that no "traditionalist values" can contradict the principle of liberty. People should be free to follow whatever values they want to follow. Heck, I'm an ultra-traditionalist Orthodox Christian, and I consider Pussy Riot to be the best thing that happened to Russia in decades. I chose my traditionalism freely - there can be no real traditionalism without freedom, only slavery and deformity.

Google for his approval rating - it's high, even if you adjust it for all the rigging and such. Short story is: collapse of USSR brought a lot of suffering and despair to Russians (of course, there was no other way for it to end, but it's not something most Russians acknowledge or even think about -- "no time to think, gotta work, feed my kids"). Putin succeeded in building on this fear and nostalgia for times of security (which USSR did offer, however monstrously unsustainable). And one of the main unofficial slogans was, and is -- "liberty is bad for Russia; evil people, especially Americans, use it to poison our people". Of course, NSA spying or drone killings makes it harder to fight the propaganda -- all these grotesquely anti-American thing are pictured as the "real face of America" -- and good luck defending liberty in that light...

There's an old joke from Communist times. It goes like this -- and old communist argues:

- What do you mean, we don't respect human rights? Of course we respect human rights! Why, I can provide the name of that human right now!

Same goes for 'celebrating human achievements' you've mentioned. No such thing will happen. There's only one achievement allowed into the celebration - the achievement of United Russia Party and its leader. Whatever the emotional positive externalities these Game might produce, all will be harvested by state propaganda.

..and that's why Fry mentions that:

"The idea that sport and politics don’t connect is worse than disingenuous, worse than stupid. It is wickedly, wilfully wrong. Everyone knows politics interconnects with everything for “politics” is simply the Greek for “to do with the people”.

(Russian here) - Fry is 100% correct in his assessment. I pay a lot of attention to the wickedness of Russian politics, and, quite frankly, LBGTQ are right there at the very edge of Russian political struggle, being one of the very few groups whose very survival demands liberty (others may get by through kowtowing to the political powers, but they don't have that option). They are hated by an overwhelming majority of Russians in the province (same majority that keeps voting Putin into power), because of all the fear, lies and propaganda spread by the state. These Games must be stopped, indeed.

Can't agree more (Russian here). In Russia it's all about putting up a show of anti-americanism, because that's what the voters like (the one thing that brings back memories of relative security of late Soviet days). Think Osama bin Laden granting asylum to Snowden in some remote Taliban camp.

This should not be news, though, right? Consumers can only be trusted to be concerned for their own best interests. More than that -- only about their own immediate and simple best interests (i.e. we consumers will totally vote for a destructive political initiative, if it promises short-term gain for us personally, while crippling the economy for decades).

So, any advocacy of free software ideology which is aimed at the 'masses' and the 'people' is doomed to fail. It has to be aimed at the minority of more responsible and educated agents - who, in turn, can (and should!) care about these more distant and noble and sophisticated goals, while not being angry or judgmental toward the 'consumer', who isn't championing such lofty goals.

You have to walk alone, and should expect isolation and hardship, essentially. Wasn't it always the case?

...to expand on other answers - I encourage you to ask the same question, but about Lisp (Scheme, Clojure) =)

I just got 'Test-driven web development with Python" from this sale. Django feels awesome! Got 'Two Scoops", too =P

It's an odd argument to make - that is, yes, of course the web is now better in many aspects than what it was 10 years ago -- but what makes you think that without Google the progress would stop, or even stall? If you think about it, anything that a lot of people care about and work on will get better after 10 years of work. You don't need a dictator, even a supposedly benevolent one, to have progress.

> Money is about power and is a zero sum game. > If someone increases their share of the pie, > then someone else necessarily loses out.

Except this is plain wrong. I know a Wikipedia link may offend some people, but then again, calling economics a zero-sum game can, too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero%E2%80%93sum_game#Economics

Wow. How did you know all about me?

couldn't say it better!

HR =) he generated quite some interest among our Seattle folks, so most likely they already knew about him

not sure what kind of statistics would be good and not violate the NDA =) but our internal rubyhackers mailing list is one of the busiest lists that I'm on. I myself am not a Ruby fan, so don't know any details.