> The Mario franchise has two distinct logo styles. The first began with the Mario Bros. arcade game and is mostly used for side-scrolling Super Mario Bros. games, though not all of those games use that style. The second is a multicolor polygonal style, and though it’s primarily used for 3D Mario adventures now, it was introduced with Super Mario World.
I believe the polygonal logo style was first used by super mario bros. 3 (at least for the shape, it didn't have the alternating colors yet as it was all blue). It isn't on the nes boxes but it is on the title screen and on the famicom box.
It's also important to consider how what you view as a bug might not be one from the point of view of the person treating your issue. It is so, so infuriating to receive a "bug" report asking you to "fix" something that is in fact a feature request for something that is not implemented yet.
Even if you get an error from the software, consider that you might not be using it as intended or setup properly.
Oh it's not just Xi. He likes dictators and human rights abusers, even those that no one will touch with a ten foot pole. Most recently, he received Mohammed bin Salman at the Élysée.
There is definitely a tendency to authoritarianism and confusionism from the current government, directed at political opposition.
"Security" laws extending the powers of the police and creating new ways to criminalize protest have been passed at a constant rhythm over the years since Sarkozy's time. After the state of urgency of 2015, part of the dispositions where simply put into law permanently.
Police has been increasingly violent during protests, bringing back old forbidden tactics and squads formerly dissolved for their violence (voltigeurs).
While there has been no dissolution of leftist movement and no political violence from the left since "action directe" in the 80's, there have been multiple ones (or attempts) in recent times, like the one from yesterday of an ecological movement.
Anti-terrorist laws are used to detain ecologists or protesters indefinitely, like in the case of the "8th november" affair from this topic, which has seen a person kept in solitary (hence, tortured) for 16 months without even being convicted.
And you are arguing with fallacies and emotion. Asking broad question to bring emotion without actually backing that up factually. Straw manning the others argument by reducing it to dislike of physical appearance, or simply directed stupidity. And then making vague assertions that they are "missing the big picture".
Please, friend, instead of attacking the man you should attack the argument. Give us the why to all of these assertions. What is the bigger picture? What actually could go wrong? Argue with facts please. Let's not turn this into a flame war
I agree my tone is inappropriate. I just can't help it, when it's about completely missing the big picture, blaming the wrong persons, and falling into fascist-like tactics and traps.
Here's a copy paste of my other comments, I hope it gives some elements of answer:
1. Just google Melenchon and Bolivarian alliance. Melenchon dreams of making France be part of an alliance with Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, to name a few, with Iran and Russia as observer members. Sounds like he loves "democracy". He also had some crazy outbursts, screaming things like, "I AM THE REPUBLIC", on camera, that would have ended any other politician career. But he gets a pass, somehow.
2. In February 2022, Zemour, MLP and Mélenchon were all supporting Putin, his stance against the "evil US", saying that Putin would never invade Ukraine, that it was all US propaganda being spoon-fed to Europe. Then the invasion happened. Then they blamed the invasion on US, of course, and questioned the reports of war crimes, and justified Russia invasion by saying it was defending against "NATO aggression". But then, when Russia started to loose, they became "pacifists", saying NATO was prolonging the war by helping Ukraine...
If they were Russian assets, they wouldn't behave much differently, would they?
Same smell on both sides of the political spectrum. Who would have thought? Crazy, right? Like, imagine if far-right Hitler made a secret pact with the communist Soviet Union. Sounds familiar?
Not sure what Melenchon is doing in its list as one of it core element of its political platform is to have a new constitution with less power to the president, more counter powers, more power "to the people"
Just google Melenchon and Bolivarian alliance. Melenchon dreams of making France be part of an alliance with Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, to name a few, with Iran and Russia as observer members. Sounds like he loves "democracy". He also had some crazy outbursts, screaming things like, "I AM THE REPUBLIC", on camera, that would have ended any other politician career. But he gets a pass, somehow.
I am not a fan of Melenchon. I find problematic his taste for the Bolivarian alliance, or his defense of Cuba. I find problematic the lack of democracy in his political party.
But a new constitution with more democracy is still one of the center piece of his political agenda, and the political agenda of his party. That is not the case of any other major party I think. And there is no reason to believe his party would not act at least partially on it if elected.
He's been mocked big time for his "support" of Venezuela or his outbursts... But Macron and many other French political figures faced bigger scandal without having their career ended ! Why such a focus on Melenchon ?
His views about a new constitution with more democracy are worthless to me, as I see him as a bad faith actor, exploiting the usual populist tactics such as permanent outrage, inflammatory discourse, obstruction of debates, conflictualization of everything, exacerbating existing social tensions, defining democracy around concepts like "the revolution", "the people", etc.
How is it not obvious to everyone? It's obvious to me that would this guy be president, his already very authoritarian tendencies would only get worse. How comes his political agenda is relevant?
He rules his political party as a Great Leader while having no democratic relevance, as he got rejected at all past elections. Not to mention his ridiculous PR stunt when he was boasting about being the next prime minister. He is so full of shit, I'm astonished he still is listened to. He can't get to govern from elections, so he fantasizes about bypassing all that with a good'ol Socialist Revolution™.
So I think there are LOTS of reasons to believe his party (so basically himself) would not act as promised if elected. I think he would quickly identify countless enemies of the People. I think disagreeing with him would make anyone an enemy of the People. Today, it's already quite courageous for any journalist to disagree with him in front of him. The guy has serious anger management issues, and usually addresses such journalists with threats and accusations. Seeing how he behaves on camera, I can only imagine how it is to disagree with him privately.
Now, not saying Macron is perfect by any means, but I'd be curious to hear about these bigger scandals that didn't end his career.
To me your first sentence basically describe so many politicians on the French political scene from all parties ! (except for the "revolution" part which I am deeply surprise to read here) So why do you have such focus on Melanchon ?
Melenchon is not alone, he is with a party with many different people, deagreing on some subject, but tending to agree on a new "more democratic" constitution. Furthermore he would need to ally with other parties, like the Green, who have a strong democracy and pro-democracy tradition.
Furthermore Melanchon himself will probably "retire", does your argument still stand when he goes, or is this FRance Insoumise that scares you ?
I see you switch from defending him (as it's impossible) to "both-siding" it, and pretending I have a "focus" on him, and then hinting that I'm just scared... Sounds like a typical LFI politician. It's disappointing.
So, let's start with "Why do I have such focus on Melanchon?"
That one is just dishonest. Let me remind you of your own answer that started this focus on Mélenchon:
"Not sure what Melenchon is doing in its list as one of it core element of its political platform is to have a new constitution with less power to the president, more counter powers, more power "to the people""
I'm just answering your question and staying on topic... But you try to turn this around as me being a maniac. Just like Mélenchon, you aren't really interested in an honest debate, are you?
You also reach to the disappointing "All politicians are the same to me" argument when the guy you defend is exposed as the imposture he is.
As to your deep surprise about the "revolution" part, I think you might not know about Mélenchon true ideas and background. Here's a talk he gave in 2012, in Venezuela when Chavez won his 5th term: https://www.facebook.com/StopCaSuffit/videos/extrait-dun-dis...
Here's a small part of it: "Qu'est ce qu'on fait, camarades, ça c'est un cas concret de révolution. La révolution, c'est pas un sujet de, heu... C'est un sujet concret! C'est une stratégie qu'il faut mener comme nous meme nous en avons une en France. Et après, il faut, non seulement conquérire le pouvoir mais également l'exercer de manière révolutionnaire!"
In English this would be something like "What are we doing, comrades? This is a concrete case of revolution. Revolution is not just a topic, uh... It's a concrete matter! It's a strategy that needs to be pursued, just like we have our own in France. And afterwards, not only do we need to conquer power but also exercise it in a revolutionary manner!"
That's appealing to me. You can see what I assume is Chavez supporters in the background. Chavez was en-route to his 5th term, closer and closer to achieving President-For-Live. That seems to speak a lot to Mélenchon.
Now, you say that he's not alone, and that other people in his party disagree on some subject, but that they agree on a new "more democratic" constitution. Yeah. Sure. These people define "democracy" in their own vague and populist way. "power to the people" is a overused catch phrase that's usually not precisely defined. It very quickly turns into the various parody of socialist democracies that are just dictatorships disguised as "People Democracy". You know that, right? Do I even have to explain all of that? When you here "People" too much in a politician mouth, you know he's just a conman.
You are acting like an apologist of what clearly is a dishonest megalomaniac with serious anger management issues, using the word "democracy" and "people" to justify anything without ever defining it.
Finally, it doesn't matter if I'm scared by this "FRance Insoumise", as a matter of fact he built this party around his big personality, and made it a nest of populists, opportunists and generally confused people, but nevertheless revolted, angry, chaotic and proud of it. I'm yet to hear anything honest, relevant, or interesting from them. It's just accusations, threats, whataboutism, bad faith and obstruction of debate. They are not "Insoumis", they are angry bigots, ready to be completely "soumis" to their Great Leader in exchange of some revenge against "the wealthy", capitalism, and some vague notion of a conspiracy of "the west" / US / Europe. I guess they are bored of their normal lives, they fantasize of being oppressed to justify their hunger for chaos / revolution / violence but it's really boredom from highly privileged people that think they are slaves, somehow.
It's easy being a communist in a free country. Try being free in a communist country.
Now, I'm not focusing on Mélenchon, you just happened to ask specifically about him. I'd be happy to discuss other disgusting politicians, such as, as I mentioned, Le Pen, or Zemour. There are other bad actors, of course, but these 3 are the most known and the most dangerous. Macron has done/said several thing I don't like (removing ISF taxes, his backward views on cannabis, his recent licking of Elon's ass), but he's not in the same ballpark. I persist: anyone pointing him as THE threat to democracy is completely missing the big picture.
--- clarification and details of my initial point ---
The starting point of this exchange is me saying that I can see Le Pen or Zemmour as a potentiel threat to the current French democracy, but not Melenchon.
Le Pen is from a political party that has a long history of wanting less counter power (ending the "republic of the judge" for example") and more "authority'. And in places where her party got power, there're been some issues with NGOs or political opponent.
Zemmour clearly said that he wants less counter power, and want to care less about human rights for example.
A big part of the conservative right (they need them to get the power) agree with them on those topic. They can have the support of some influential billionaires and medias.
Melenchon and his party clearly said for several years that he wants more democracy with a concrete proposal... In his party there are a strong minority that don't want a less authoritative French state (some used to like Chevenement..) but they are a minority, and they don't want a more authoritative state. None of his allies (he needs them to access and keep power) want a more authoritative state, and some allies want a more democratic state. There is no know authoritative leftist billionaire of influential media.
I don't know how many of them vote for the far right, but why on earth would they vote for NUPES? Mélenchon constantly attacks them, he's on auto-blame mode.
The main point here is that when you don't have the support of police and military at all, the risk for democracy is lower... when you have their support, it is easier to be more authoritative. Do you agree with this ?
To me " permanent outrage, inflammatory discourse, obstruction of debates, conflictualization of everything, exacerbating existing social tensions" or using "vague" undefined word or using "overused catch phrase" can definitely apply to Macron, Darmanin, Ciotti, Valls, Rousseau, Wauquiez... and many others. All mainstream political party. Most of mainstream politicians doing good in the medias in 2023. And I guess we can also say they are "dishonest megalomaniac", and many have as "serious anger management issues".
All mainstream political parties (except perhaps the Greens) have had serious internal democracy problems (including falsifying votes in PS, UMP, LR).
This is bad. This does not give faith in politicians. But it seems that for you this represent a danger for democracy when it comes to Melanchon, but not when it comes to centrists or politician from the right.
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2- About the revolution.
You said he is "defining democracy around concepts like "the revolution" ; that is absolutely not the case, especially not in the video you sent.
As I said in a previous comment, I find problematic his defense of Chavez or Castro. And this support is of course a little scary when it comes to democracy into the adversity. But Melenchon program being so different (nothing really radical in his platform - especially compared to Cuba or Venezuelan situation), in a country with much more counter power than Cuba or Venezuela, with a political plateform with a more democracy as center piece, and allies strongly against anything more authoritative in the current state... Well, that is not cool, but I don't see a real risk here
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3 - New democracy and being vague
Most politician are often "vague". This includes la France Insoumise. Still tehy tend to produce a lot of written stuff explaining their positions for the last presidential election for exemple. Including testing their economical scenario with the Banque de France model, or detail plan about army...
Here is one thing about the new constitution https://lafranceinsoumise.fr/2023/05/02/passer-a-la-6e-repub...
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4. La France Insoumise
Your view of la France Insoumise can explain why you fear for democracy... But how did you came to this conclusion ??? That is surprising. I would not be able to say this about any political party in France. Do you know their are business owner, startupers, economists, rich people... supporting La France Insoumise ? I really think you don't know them enough. Know your enemy ;)
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5- Communism
Melenchon is not communist and his polical plateform is not communist, why this quote ?
1- There's no comparing Macron and Mélenchon. Macron is not anywhere close regarding inflammatory discourse, and conflictualization of everything. Imagine if Macron had screamed "I AM THE REPUBLIC" on camera like Mélenchon did.
I'm sorry but if you can't at least admit this, there's nothing we can gain from this conversation.
2- Did you watch the video? It's clear that his idea of governing is "conquer[ing] power but also exercise it in a revolutionary manner!". If he's not talking about his understanding of democracy, then I don't know what he's talking about. In any case he's explicitly supporting using "revolution" and "conflictualization of everything" to "conquer power" and "exercise it in a revolutionary manner". If that doesn't scare you, I don't know what will.
3- I'm sorry but I won't bother read stuff from LFI, they so often fail to be relevant, throwing nice-sounding ideas around, they don't care if they work, everything sounds so easy, "pay people more", "more money to education", "more money to health care", "lower retirement age", "more democracy", "more power to the people". All of that we can't have because of [some target group]. [some target group] are conspiring against "the people". Can't you see it's just a "nice" and empty ideology? It has a name: demagogy and populism.
4- I'm not surprised some powerful people support a demagogue. While it'll be bad for most people, opportunists can really profit from such a regime.
5- This quote is just there to remind you that LFI have it very easy, they point at "authoritarian" Macron, while they burn mannequins of him, threaten to behead him like Louis XVI, put his head on footballs, etc. They can do all that borderline stuff with no consequences. They just support these massive hate campaigns. Which is maybe ok? Because it's free-speech? I don't know, it sounds like hate speech to me. But in any case they have it soooooo easy, compared to any country with actual authoritarian leaders. It's easy being InSoUmIs in a free country. They are just highly privileged people, pretending to be oppressed and revolting against an imaginary "dictatorship". Can't you see that? It's so obvious to me.
Let me add a 6th point. The way Mélenchon blames Ukraine, apologizes Putin, his completely ridiculous stance just before the war started, saying that Russia would never invade and that it was all a big plot from US/NATO as always... He was soooooo wrong on that one, it's just embarrassing. He's wrong on so many things, but he just angrily moves forward, finding new enemies to denounce, new polemics to surf on, never acknowledging his spectacularly failed predictions. I simply can't understand for the life of me how can educated and honest people fall for such an obvious fraud.
1- Macron is known for his inflammatory and regular "petites phrases" (but often said more calmly than Melenchon), like "people who are success, and people who are nothing"... Some of his minister (eg. Darmanin) too, with some fake news sometimes.
And there are discourses and there are actions... Even journalists of le Figaro (right, with far right journalists and guests) had to publicly protest several times against Macron and his police because of stuff linked to democracy.
2. Your initial post where mentioning defining democracy around the term of revolution. This is not the case. Note that most violent revolution were to bring more democracy (even if does not end well all the times) and he seems to use the word in a very broad sense, including winning election. I did say this point is in a way scary, but gave you detailed explanation why in this context it is not that scary at all. You did not answered to any of those points.
3. I you don't read their detailed stuff, how do you know it is "a "nice" and empty ideology" ?
4. Why you call him a demagogue (even without reading any detailed stuff) ? and on what base you you say it will be bad for most people ?
More importantly as we were talking about democracy, how do you see Melenchon managing to reduce democracy, while his political plateform is more democracy, his party and people voting for him want more democracy, while his allies he need does not want less democracy, while there are important safeguard in France, while counter powers does not want less democracy, while army, police, companies and press does not like him and would oppose any move toward more autoritarism ???
5 - Your answer is off-topic... Still answering it :
Protesters did a lot of things, not LFI (except for ONE elected representative saying something one time)...
The discourse of LFI is the recent protest the not centered around the lack of democracy but about retirement, and more broadly about work and money.
No LFI leader compared the French situation with Russia ! But indeed some pointed that democracy moved back a bit... And indeed even journalist from Figaro had to mobilize several times against Macron for stuff link to democracy... And I am sometimes afraid to go protest (and I do respect the law) having been attacked several times by the police... And the recent twist to prevent the parliament to vote a law is lawful but is seen as going against "democracy" by a majority of French people.
6 - Here again a new off topic subject... You are grossly caricaturing his position, but what is the link with democracy in France ??? (note that only USA predicted that Russia will attack)
7- If you are around Lille, let's have a drink if you want :-)
1- could you give me an example from one of his "petites phrases" that would compare to "I AM THE REPUBLIC!!"? I think the words are important, but the telling of it also. Melenchon not only say ridiculous things, but he tends to scream those with visceral hatred. Let's be honest, it just can't come close to any "petites phrases" from Macron.
2- Hmmm. More often than not, "revolutions" have put merciless dictators into power instead of actually liberating anyone. A revolution in a free country usually is bad news. A country where you can freely parade with drawings of the beheaded president is not a country that needs a revolution to me.
3- There are way too many red flags, I won't waste my time reading their stuff. I know I'll just roll my eyes at each one of their "y'a-qu'à-faut-qu'on" claims. Sorry but you don't need to taste a cake when it smells like shit 10 meters away.
Do you read Zemour's books? No, you don't need to, if you have any critical thinking and heard him about 3 times, you know he's a fraud, a liar, a populist surfing on racism, hatred, fear, and national pride. And probably backed by the Kremlin.
4- I call him a demagogue because, again, he just makes random promises, like double the minimal salary / universal salary / prevent old people from voting (what???), without knowing how it would actually work, and he doesn't care anyway, he just targets some left-leaning audience, say whatever he thinks they would like to hear, and blame everything on Macron. He appeals to the lowest instincts. Envy, pride, hatred. What he says is worthless, he's not playing the game, he bullshits his way through everything. And when confronted, he doesn't have arguments, he just counter-attacks, it's a smoke-screen, because he's a fraud. Macron might be somewhat pretentious/pedant, but when confronted he's not afraid of staying on topic, he has a point, and consistent argument. You might disagree with him, I do on several topics, but he usually knows what he's talking about and don't need to use diversions/accusations/obstruction like Melenchon or MLP.
And then, if elected, maybe he would fail at turning France into the "Bolivarian dream", but why would you support him in the first place??
5- I'm sorry but the discourse of LFI recently was not particularly centered around one topic, it was centered around getting outraged with anything, given it comes from Macron, and Hijacking any "fait divers" to blame it on him. Some guy got almost hit by a car because he wasn't paying attention? Of course he wasn't paying attention because he was so upset with all the things Macron has done to The French People, damned Macron! He did so much harm, we need to put him in jail! Sounds ridiculous? It is, but I've heard such comments from LFI supporters. Those were completely brainwashed :(
Now, you say that people noticed democracy moved back a bit, so we need to attack the "extreme centrists" (I've heard this as well) and push to elect an angry dictatorship-loving guy? Are you serious??
Also, not sure what the recent "twist" was, but I'm sorry, it's meaningless to me. Again, either it's lawful, either it's not. I find this constant questioning of our constitution and rules very concerning. It's not attacked because of the rules themselves, it's attacked when it allows the current government to... govern. It's not fair. Did you notice that the constitution and rules are not attacked when it allows the opposition to do obstruction with dozens of motions de censures, with thousands of sloppy change-requests to proposed laws, etc. I think it's sad that the current opposition act like they aren't interested in honest debates. Yet, you don't hear Macron attack the rules.
6- Why is it off topic?? I thought the topic was "why is mélenchon in the same list as zemour and MLP". All of them were admiring the "stance" of Putin against NATO "aggression", bashing the US for "disinformation" about an imminent invasion. Sure, other actors mispredicted, even zelensky, but then, there's being wrong, and there's being wrong about something you were loudly using to prove your whole ideology and world view is THE correct one and everyone else are dumb and evil supporters of some western conspiracy which raison d'être is to destroy our Kremlin friends and enslave the world into CaPiTaLiSm. Of course I'm caricaturing, but I don't think I'm caricaturing that much. I can't find the tweet anymore, but it was the usual outraged, bold, harshest possible tone. Maybe for once he could have shown a little bit of humility when proven spectacularly wrong? Of course not, when proven wrong, he just doubles down. It's who he is, that's what he does.
Now if the topic is just democracy, then, I think his support of invaders and totalitarian war criminals is still completely on topic.
7- Sure, I'm sure this debate would be much more constructive in person :)
I still appreciate the way you deescalated the conversation. I admit I loose my temper way too fast, and that's bad.
I would be a terrible politician.
Or... would I?
;-)
We have a different sensibility when it comes to words ; for example I personally find Macron's "petites phrases" more problematic than Melenchon's ones, and I find both as good (but with different style) debaters, able to use facts, arguments and figures.
We both agree that word and discourse are important. But I think going deeper than what you heard on mainstream media is important to have a clearer picture. I think that concrete situation (eg. who are in their parties, who are their allies, what is the power dynamics...) is important. And I think that what people do is often more important than what people says. My argumentation was mostly based on this ; and I felt that your answers were mostly based on some "words" you heard on some medias, and often your "feeling" about it.
We both hate and fight against Zemmour. But while I did not read entire books of him, I am reading media not aligned with my conviction for years, I spent many hours reading and listening Zemmour, Zemmour supporters, and people putting work to describe Zemmour situation. I talked with far right people. I am not hating them and find them dangerous just because this smell shit from a distance, I have argument. I know they are not some crazy incoherent dudes. I know them enough to be able to easily be the devil advocate if I wanted.
When it come to LFI or Melanchon, you are just saying things so distorted, showing that you really don't know them. They wanted to increase the minimal salary by 15% (what a revolution), you think they want to double the minimal salary... We can argue about their program, but some serious economists backed it. You really have a grotesque view of LFI and their program (note that like any party, there are many different people in LFI). And I personally don't really like them (but voted for them once). I don't have a grotesque view of Zemmour I think.
Our last source of disagreement is I guess Democracy. Your definition of democracy seems to be "what is lawful under the 5th French Republic" ; even when it is against the vast majority of what French people want, even when it is against what 100% of the elected union want, against the elected parliament, and even Le Figaro journalists (and most other journalist) have to mobilized themselves several times because of the threats against freedom of the press. Personally I want more democracy.
> You are attacking the wrong target. You are missing the big picture.
This is rich comming from someone putting Melenchon, basically an old school socialist (in the werstern Europe sense), in the same bag as Le Pen and Zemmour who are as far-right as it gets in Europe.
I agree that the situation is not very readable, but at least let's try to have a point of view consistent with the political history of the last few decades.
Yet there are lot of striking similarities. Lying, distorting reality to the absurd, openly supporting dictators, smoke-screen tactics, obstruction, inversion of reality, accusing others of things they are guilty. "Macron is a wanabee dictator!!".
In February 2022, Zemour, MLP and Mélenchon were all supporting Putin, his stance against the "evil US", saying that Putin would never invade Ukraine, that it was all US propaganda being spoon-fed to Europe. Then the invasion happened. Then they blamed the invasion on US, of course, and questioned the reports of war crimes, and justified Russia invasion by saying it was defending against "NATO aggression". But then, when Russia started to loose, they became "pacifists", saying NATO was prolonging the war by helping Ukraine...
If they were Russian assets, they wouldn't behave much differently, would they?
Same smell on both sides of the political spectrum. Who would have thought? Crazy, right? Like, imagine if far-right Hitler made a secret pact with the communist Soviet Union. Sounds familiar?
Le Pen is not "as far-right as it gets" and neither is Zemmour.
Melenchon is very left-wing, started as a Trostkist and is good friend Venezuela's Maduro, against the capitalist system, etc. So if you think Le Pen is extreme on one side then Melenchon has to be equally extreme on the other side.
So did more than half of the socialist party elit (elephant du PS), even freaking Cambadelis, are you suggesting he’s far left to ?
> against the capitalist system
Well yes, almost by definition of being on the left I would argue.
> So if you think Le Pen is extreme on one side then Melenchon has to be equally extreme on the other side.
No, this is a false equivalence. I mean the far-left as a political position does exist in France, but it is not represented by Melenchon who is still largely a socialist, although the actual socialist party has significantly shifted rightward in the 10's so there is a perception issue there.
The socialist party effectively no longer exists because its right wing has been absorbed by Macron and its left wing by Melenchon and friends. So now we're left with a large effectively far left group with Melenchon, Communist Party, LFI, etc.
My take on left-wing politics since the 1990s is that the fall of Communist/Solialist countries has made the old agenda difficult to sell so it's rehashed, repackaged, but at its core it's still the same. We've also seen that in the UK with Corbyn and McDonnell.
One thing in France is that it is usually better viewed to be far on the left than far on the right. For instance, the Communist Party are almost seen as nice guys these days...
Another point is that you do not explain why Le Pen is more extremist than Melenchon/LFI, etc.
There is a "Système D" DIY magazine here in France, since 1924. I don't know if it is predated by the term or originated it. I remember that there is a big pile of old issues in my grandfather attic.
Can you please not post unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait? We're trying for something different here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Incidentally, HN has had countless wonderful and interesting threads about things from outside "the anglosphere". As HN is an English-language site one would expect those to be less common, but they are well-represented, well-loved, and welcome.
Good one. That as well, and the reason why I'm still first trying "shutdown -r now", and if that doesn't work cautiously type in "reboot --help" (hoping that it parses the argument and does nothing at first), even on busybox.
reboot and halt used to do the instant thing on Linux too, it was essentially a lot of drift and well meaning fixes for desktop users (because actually invoking emergency halt or reboot might have been more useful for remote machines that you couldn't power cycle with a finger)
Towards 2014 or 2015 my previous work (some hosting company) had some AIX, Solaris and SCO, as well as some IBM i (aka OS 400) which isn't a Unix. AFAIK they were used because of choices of slow-moving/risk-averse big corps, mostly to run some java software or oracle/postgres/sybase databases that could just as well run on Linux.
My take on each of the OSes was:
AIX and the associated IBM stuff is kind of a mess. I encountered a bug where /etc/filesystems (fstab equivalent) was parsed differently during boot than when using the mount command manually. The focus seemed to be on the use of the menu-driven smit utility as the primary admin tool, with automation of admin tasks an afterthought. The builtin commands are often not very practical, requiring multiple steps to do things that you're used to do in one on Linux. Installing some open-source tools is essential to sanity. Some of IBM's own tools are using expect on their own software (looking at you lpar_netboot).
SCO is clearly unmaintained stuff that looks like it dates from 30 years ago. At least it's simple to use.
Solaris had some nice features, like Zones or ZFS, but much to my dismay I couldn't play with them as I was made to install an old version of the OS as the newer version wasn't listed as supported by the version of Sybase that was to be installed on it.
The thing I loved about AIX is SMIT (System Managment Interface Tool). Available both from the command line and GUI, you could completely manage the AIX system from it, but at any point, you could also have it print out what commands it was going to run (yes, it built a shell script as you navigated through the system). I've never seen a system like it anywhere else.
> I don't trust Poetteringware. Poettering's team has a record of foisting technology on users, resulting in the need for e.g. the Devuan fork.
They have been developing software, that enough people have deemed useful to include it in their distributions. Some have disagreed, and have made other choices. No one was forced to do anything, there have been no "foisting" and the "need" for Devuan is a subjective opinion.
There is really no need to transform purely technical arguments into personal attacks. This just discourages participating into free software development.
Systemd was designed in a way that was more tightly coupled than the alternatives and made adopting it an all-or-nothing proposition, and other projects (particularly Gnome) were also tightly coupled to it. It was absolutely foisted on people: a lot of people didn't want it but found they were nevertheless obliged to install it. The whole thing abused the goodwill of the free software community: systemd folks added systemd-dependent patches to other software, taking advantage of the norm of accepting such contributions, while refusing patches that made systemd compatible with other systems (e.g. non-Linux). And the end result was a state where you can no longer fork and replace components piecemeal - the whole free software ethos, the very reason GNU was built as a Unix-like system in the first place - which does far more to discourage participating in free software development than any mere internet argument.
The tight coupling, the non-portability, all of that are technical choices, that can be debated on their own merit without the need to attribute malevolent intentions to the developers.
Projects merged changes because they wanted them, not because their goodwill was abused to make them merge anything. People got systemd on their OSes because they chose OSes whose developers chose to move to systemd.
It's not like Lennart comes to your home with a gun if you install OpenBSD.
> all of that are technical choices, that can be debated on their own merit without the need to attribute malevolent intentions to the developers
The ramifications of those technical choices on the software ecosystem are so well understood [0], that there is no point in discussing "their own merits" in a vacuum.
What's most relevant to my professional and waning hobbyist interests are the shape and trajectory of the software ecosystem as a whole. To talk about systemd without talking about how it's developers interact with the software ecosystem is to talk about nothing.
[0] I graduated before systemd was a glint in Pottering's eye, but we somehow still covered it in school. Not only coupling vs cohesion in the abstract, but also how various design decisions (including init system arguments of old!) interacted with the ebb and flow of unix-like OS evolution.
> The tight coupling, the non-portability, all of that are technical choices, that can be debated on their own merit
They can't. GNU was a political project from day 1, with explicitly political goals; the unix-like design is for political, not technical, reasons.
> Projects merged changes because they wanted them, not because their goodwill was abused to make them merge anything.
Citation needed. If you maintain a widely-used open-source project there's a pretty strong social norm/pressure to merge contributions that don't have anything obviously wrong with them, even if the functionality they implement is something you don't actually want or need.
> People got systemd on their OSes because they chose OSes whose developers chose to move to systemd.
Because they chose OSes whose non-technical leadership chose to move to systemd, in violation of the project constitution, and then had the rump technical committee rubber-stamp it once the principled technical leadership had resigned in disgust and the decision was already a fait accompli, the way I remember it.
> It's not like Lennart comes to your home with a gun if you install OpenBSD.
Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen. No, Lennart won't hack into your computer with an SSH exploit, but he'll get the software you're using (like Gnome) to push updates that stop it working on your computer, and so the end result ends up much the same.
> There is really no need to transform purely technical arguments into personal attacks. This just discourages participating into free software development.
While I agree with you in general, for some reason this particular developer tends to take decisions that have very extensive consequences and make choice extremely difficult.
There is a huge difference between a developer who creates a superior project that everybody loves to use so it gets mass
adoption and one who makes a product that gets pushed by their employer on everyone whether they want it or not. I don't want to get into details as the subject has been beaten to death but as for Systemd* there was the case of integration with graphical login that made choice difficult. Had the author been more sensitive to this issue and cooperated a bit without being stubborn we wouldn't have had Devuan and all that mess. This is exactly NOT the way to do things in open source.
*PulseAudio was simply broken but it's not the fault of the author distros picked up aplha-quality software
For applications, tools, even most libraries - yes. But this was one of the critical elements of the system and they had to fork the entire distro because the way it was done actually made the choice more limited.
>But this was one of the critical elements of the system and they had to fork the entire distro because the way it was done actually made the choice more limited.
This isn't very accurate. When Debian decided to switch to systemd, they also agreed to support other inits in the distribution.
This wasn't good enough, so Devuan itself was forked before this decision was made. The end result is that Debian had less people to support the init script alternatives. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I'm confident Debian could support other inits if there was more Debian devs available to work on it. But because people left for Devuan the pool becomes smaller.
Even the last decision on inits from Debian says that the focus should not solely be on systemd.
> they also agreed to support other inits in the distribution.
That's true, but with systemd being the only init that packages had to support. Accordingly many package maintainers choose to only support systemd.
So if you want to run Debian without systemd, you have to be prepared for your fave packages to drop support for the other inits. It follows that you can't rely on the Debian package repository. So to support a Debian-like system without systemd, you have to fork the whole repository.
Devuan has init-script support for the packages in its repository. So it's open to the Debian maintainers to pull the scripts in; but they only want to support one init system, understandably. And the fact that nearly all other distros have systemd as a default init, it's natural that developers and maintainers are pleased with the systemd hegemony.
I'm just sorry that Debian made the decision it did. But Debian has always been the developers and maintainers; only incidentally the users. They were entitled to make that decision, and I think their process was exemplary.
[Edit] That "exemplary" process: actually I think it shouldn't have been pushed to the technical committee. It should have been a simple general resolution from the start. But I think the result would have been the same, and I found the debates very illuminating.
I didn't make a personal attack on Poettering; my objection is to the software his team produces. And I wasn't making any technical argument; I don't know enough about TPM and secure boot to do that.
My point was a political one, I guess: this is more software that runs very deep in the system, coming from a team that has a record of producing software that is hard to opt-out of.
For PulseAudio on Debian, you have to take firm steps to ensure the package manager doesn't reinstall it. Much the same goes for systemd. I assume it will be much harder to opt-out of a secure boot released by that team. I believe that's on purpose: they could have made it easier to run without those packages, if they'd wanted to. I think it's clear that they wanted the opposite.
> Think e.g. one of Loki games like SimCity. The audio will not work (and this will be a kernel ABI problem...). The graphics will not work. There will be no desktop integration whatsoever.
I have it running on an up to date system. There is definitely an issue that it's a pain to get working, especially for people not familiar with the cli or ldd and such, as it wants a few things that are not here by default. But once you get it the few libs it needs and ossp to emulate the missing oss in the kernel, there is no issue with gameplay, graphics or audio aside from the intro video that doesn't run.
So I guess the issue is that the compatibility is not user friendly ? Not sure how that should be fixed though. Even if Loki had shipped all the needed lib with the program, it would still be an issue not to have sound due to distro making the choice of not building oss anymore.
It would seem from your example that the issue is a lack of overall commitment to compatibility. There are Windows games from 1990s that still run fine w/sound - which is not surprising, given that every old Win32 API related to sound is still there, emulated as needed on top of the newer APIs. It sounds like Linux distros could do this here as well, since emulation is already implemented - they just choose to not have it set up out of the box.
> So I guess the issue is that the compatibility is not user friendly ?
I don't understand this point -- this is like claiming Linux has perfect ABI compatibility because at the end of the day you can run your software under a VM or a container. Of course everything has perfect compatibility if you go out of your way using old installations or emulation layers -- people under Windows actually install the Wine DX9 libraries since they have better compatibility than the native MS ones. But this means nilch for Windows' ABI compatibility record (or lack thereof).
I believe the polygonal logo style was first used by super mario bros. 3 (at least for the shape, it didn't have the alternating colors yet as it was all blue). It isn't on the nes boxes but it is on the title screen and on the famicom box.