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Billionaires, blogs, and bugfixes
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| 1/13/2005 |
Billionaire
I read somewhere that everyone hates "reality TV", but everyone
has one reality show they make an exception for. Mine this year was the
Rebel Billionaire. Ever since announcing Virgin Galactic, Richard
Branson can do no wrong by me. Apparently the show was a flop, which is
strange to me but not surprising. The hit reality shows always seem to
include lots of yelling, conflict and pointless melodrama; conversely,
I prefer watching shows where people mostly get along, and are civil to
each other. I enjoyed the first season of Big Brother, too, which was a
huge flop because all the people in the house joined in opposition to
the producers of the show instead of against each other. I thought that
turning of the tables of power was wonderful, but apparently America
disagreed with me: subsequent seasons became reality-standard
bitchfests that were (of course) huge hits.
Since nobody, apparently, was actually watching Billionaire, I guess I
need to give some background if I want to talk about the finale. The
show was like "The Apprentice" except that instead of selling lemonade
the contestants had to perform a wide range of challenges, ranging from
the physical (walk across a plank between two hot air balloons) to
promotional (do a publicity stunt of your choice with the one getting
the most publicity winning; produce an ad for Virgin Galactic) to
organizational (find a way to improve life for an African village;
decorate a hotel room) to psychological (climb into a barrel that's
going to be dropped over a waterfall - the evil trick here was that the
winner was the person who was smart enough to figure out that this was
a really bad idea and refuse to do it).
One of the things I liked about this show was that I usually agreed
with Branson's choices. The last two constestants were exactly the two
I would have picked. Shawn was practically a mini-me of Branson
himself: slightly brash and cocky with a flair for adventure and a
canny business sense. Sarah demonstrated her courage and determination
in the very first challenge, overcoming a fear of heights to not only
brave the inter-balloon plank but then master an elimination challenge
that involved climbing a hundred-foot ladder to a tea party on top
of the balloon. She was also the only contestant that was never on a
losing team. I supported both these contestants and in fact I couldn't
choose between them which one I preferred.
The eventual winner was Shawn, which left me somewhat ambivalent,
because I still felt that Sarah was equally deserving. The final twist
was that Shawn could either accept an instant million dollar check or
flip a coin for a chance at a "much greater prize". After much
agonizing and captions like "30 minutes later", "45 minutes later"
appearing on screen a few times, he decided to take the million, much
to the dismay of all the viewers, until Branson revealed that this was
in fact another test. "If you'd taken the coin toss I would have lost
all respect for you, and wouldn't have offered you what I'm now
offering" - presidency of the entire worldwide Virgin group (as well as
the million dollars). Sarah got $750,000 to start a charity which left
me feeling better about the fact that such a deserving candidate hadn't
won.
But the thing that left me happiest about the outcome (yeah, I know
it's just a TV show, but my dreams for the entire human race's future
in space seem to be resting on Branson's ability to make good
decisions) was that while agonizing about his final decision, Shawn
asked Branson something like "is this another barrel-over-the-waterfall
thing?" - which is exactly, of course, what it turned out to be. He
clearly demonstrated not just the characteristics that Branson was
looking for with the challenge, but enough insight into Branson's
(twisted) mind to ask the key question. That, IMO, made him the best
choice to fill Branson's shoes.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
... but it will be blogged. Any potential revolutionaries out there, make sure you have RSS feeds ;)
Free Alternatives to the Java platform[1]
Apparently the ecj developers read my last post and fixed the screwy
dependency between "compiler" and "model". You can now skip step 3
entirely and remove all references to "modelhack". I'm working on
trying to make further progress in a few directions before I update the
instructions, but if I manage it, the next update to the instructions
will be pretty cool.
[1]Apparently we aren't allowed to say "Free Java" for trademark
reasons, despite the fact that it's the most concise and correct
description of what we're trying to do. Perhaps we should coin a phrase
ourselves that describes what we're doing without infringing Sun's
trademark. "Alternatives to the Java Platform" is, I'm pretty sure,
fair use of the mark because it's very clear that what we're doing
isn't the trademarked Java thing, but rather an alternative to it.
Should we start saying we're working on free AJPs?
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