> I have yet to see anyone who floats this thought acknowledge that some cultures are in fact better than others.
That's... that's because most cultures aren't.

> they will degrade and destroy everything we've built with our nicer, more secure, more productive cultures.

There are many, many flaws with the culture of the USA you're conveniently ignoring here. I mean, if you use torture or capital punishment as a metric for how much better a country is, then America is extremely backwards compared to most (or even all) other places on Earth. You're not even a democracy anymore. You're still (on the whole) having problems with racism and sexism, something that has been largely sorted out in Europe (Even though we still have a way to go, we don't have as far a journey as you!). Hell, religious fundamentalists control a large part of your country still, and you're having to fight large parts of the country about the right for schools to teach scientific fact over religious fiction! You're having huge problems with surveillance, and the sheer extent to which your rights and freedoms have been curtailed by the state is still only just becoming apparent. You don't even have a universal healthcare system for crying out loud! What seems like every other day, there is a mass shooting happening in some place or another -- I can't really think of anywhere in Europe with such a rate of gun violence. And that's including the places where guns are not banned.

In what world is such a place 'nicer' or 'more secure'?

Additionally, do you think that it's beneficial and progressive to limit the fruits of modern science, knowledge, etc. to a subset of humanity?
Alternatively: So you think that some people are more deserving than others in the rights that they have, purely because of where they were born, and happen to live?

It's great for those people who are positively *stuck* for money!

Direct income comparison like that isn't the greatest measure. You have to measure how much basic amenities and luxuries cost, as well.

If someone (hypothetically) lives in an area where the income is $100 a month, but basic amenities are free, and luxuries are half the cost due to the economy, then their situation is incomparable to the examples you drew upon.

Or somewhat realistically (ish), if someone lives in a high-cost city is pulling in $200,000, but their flat and amenities cost about one quarter of that, then it is incomparable to someone living in the country who is pulling in 10,000, but whose living quarters and amenities cost about 1/8th.

... the entire poll is the joke!

(I'm serious, the ambiguity here is too high to make a correct decision)

No, it bothers me because on top of one of my parents being an asthmatic, I was also in a NICU where the therapies they gave me to help me stay alive, also damaged my respiratory systems (It was, as I understand it, the lesser evil). On top of this I was then constantly exposed to smoke-filled rooms throughout my life (Relatives that refused to give up because it's the only hobby that they have). After years of work my peak flow has stablised at around 60% -- I'm on stronger medications and it honestly doesn't look as if it is going to improve much further.

If you want to damage /your/ respiratory systems for a quick fix (That, mind you, you could get via another less damaging, more unobtrusive method) then fine. But don't fuck up my lungs any further.

And before you say 'well just avoid the smokers', it's *extremely* difficult to avoid them when you're trapped (They are generally positioned such that no matter where you are, they are upwind) amongst a group of chainsmokers waiting for your train. Note that there is a sign explicitly stating that it is illegal to smoke there. And then trapped on a train where they *continue* to smoke, not even caring enough to open the window.

Smoking is an outdated, and rather silly habit now that cheaper unobtrusive methods of nicotine delivery exist.

It's not an /imaginary crisis/, it's a /hypothetical crisis/.

A hypothetical is something that *could* happen but under certain circumstances.
Imaginary is simply 'not real' -- existing only in your imagination.

The latter is /technically/ correct, but not really correct, and changes the meaning.

It's effectively the difference between "Oh this can't happen" and "This could really happen".

It's like everyone has gone absolutely bananas over them.

> You can not do functional programming in C
But what about Greenspun's tenth rule? (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FGreenspun's_tenth_rule)

At least in linux most libraries are documented, and things are generally transparent.

I doubt it, the public simply don't know or care enough about coding/computers at this stage.

Look at the Snowden reveal, everyone (sane) went "Oh that's a bad thing!", etc. Yet in the aftermath whereas all of the people in the know started encrypting their data, using tor, protesting, etc, everyone else went "eh, what can you do", or "eh, too much hassle", etc. and carried on with their lives. If you ask them up front you get a standard "It's terrible but what can you do?" response (If you're lucky).

So perhaps they would after a few /really serious/ car crashes, enough to rile people up. Otherwise... I'm not hopeful.

I take it you didn't read the slashdot post, then?

From what I've read (Do correct me if I am incorrect) it will automatically install these updates (AFAIK that is what the sentence 'ignor[ing] existing user preferences' implies).

Year 2102: SystemD has replaced Air with Nanobots, Lennart Borgertting states "Air Is Broken Anyway."

SystemD Planetary Hivemind Network continues to broadcast the mantra out to all other UNIX-colonies: > "We Are SystemD. Lower Your Sheilds And Surrender Your Data. We Will Replace Your Biological And Technological Distictiveness With Lennartness.
> Your Culture Will Adapt To Us. You Will Be Assimilated"

(Resubmitted because the other one was formatted horridly -- for some reason I had it set to HTML)

Year 2102: SystemD has replaced Air with Nanobots, Lennart Borgertting states "Air Is Broken Anyway." SystemD Planetary Hivemind Network continues to broadcast the mantra out to all other UNIX-colonies: > "We Are SystemD. Lower Your Sheilds And Surrender Your Data. We Will Replace Your Biological And Technological Distictiveness With Lennartness. > Your Culture Will Adapt To Us. You Will Be Assimilated"

It's not useless because "it doesn't do what I imagined", it's useless because it's been done a thousand times by different groups of people since the 90s. The idea and application is not even remotely new. And worse, it's subject to the same limitations that all the other projects are -- they need something metal to hover over.

I would say as well -- just because it hovers, doesn't mean it has any sort of load-bearing capacity at all. And that's the whole endgame of getting something like this to hover in the first place.

Yes, but civil liberties aren't open source.