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> To be fair, what kind of words are likely to be sent [...]

I think you don't know how this works. If it is similar to Siri and however its Android twin is called, there ain't remotely enough processing oomph (and memory) in the TV's embedded to make any sense of your mumblings and map them to commands like "put channel 11". So anything going on in the room is packed up and sent to "Teh Cloud" to make any sense of it. Being your dog whining, your husband yelling at you or your daughter phoning the boyfriend.

How anyone thinks *that* is a good idea escapes me, but well -- there are folks which buy a dedicated machine for that. I repeat: the spied-upon are paying hard-earned cash for this. I can't wrap my little head around that.

Faraday Wallet I have one, it's woven from stainless steel http://www.amazon.com/Stewart-... I worked for a local city government and knew the man who worked on all the police and other radios. His workplace was a 20X20X20 shielded, grounded cage. He was smart and enjoyed his work. It's spelled yeah.

Sony Walkman I'm actually considering it now that Apple has discontinued the iPod Classic line.

Or just buy it from Amazon
 

neural nets do appear to be insufficient to reproduce consciousness

As in the case of his other arguments, most disagree with this. In any case, I suggest looking not to physics when trying to explain consciousness, but neuroscience. This is from one of the top neuroscientists: http://www.amazon.com/Self-Com... Specifically in terms of physics, similar arguments that the basics of physics and consciousness are intertwined are destroyed in this paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/...

He meant this yellow cake! That other stuff is just uranium ore.

linky: http://www.amazon.com/Images-S...

It is a valid catalogue entry, the comments are hilarious tho.

Dammit! I can only imagine what my "Recommended for you" list is going to look like for the next month...

I still have my lawn dart/Jarts. But I'm pretty sure my parents bought me a shotgun before I owned Jarts. I certainly had a BB gun first. Now you can get things like a no chemical chemistry set . Different times.

linky: http://www.amazon.com/Images-S...

It is a valid catalogue entry, the comments are hilarious tho.

Those psychomimetic effects aren't necessarily interpreted as a "bad trip".

Many people with schizophrenia don't consider it a "bad trip" either. By the time they are diagnosed, many of them have already lost their friends, alienated their families, have no job, and little hope of having a meaningful life. For them, reality is shit. But inside their their own mind, they are the king of the world. So why should they go through the effort of conscientiously taking medication that converts them from a king to a lonely homeless loser? This is something that makes treating schizophrenia difficult: treatment makes things get worse, sometimes much worse, before things get better. It is explained in the book The Seduction of Madness.

> If I had to find downsides it would be no "discrete code" to switch to a particular input

--You might be able to get around this with an HDMI splitter.

http://www.amazon.com/LB1-High...

--This is the one I bought, but it's 3-input HDMI:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

--It works perfectly, autoswitches even when not plugged into a power strip.

> If I had to find downsides it would be no "discrete code" to switch to a particular input

--You might be able to get around this with an HDMI splitter.

http://www.amazon.com/LB1-High...

--This is the one I bought, but it's 3-input HDMI:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

--It works perfectly, autoswitches even when not plugged into a power strip.

Have any of you people bubbling over how brilliant the man is read "The Road Ahead"? Seriously, read it and THEN come back here and tell me the guy is a visionary.

I really doubt at that time at night radar helped a lot, sure, it helped to aim at the target, but it did not help you in telling you where exactly the shell went.

Read Neptune's Inferno, specifically the chapter about USS Washington's engagement with Kirishima. They could detect the shell splashes on their radar screens and adjust the accordingly. Washington obtained a straddle with her first salvo, perhaps even a hit (underwater hits were recorded as misses in night engagements), and ultimately obtained 20 main battery hits out of 114 shells fired, some of which were aimed at different targets.

That's a ~20% hit rate, using radar directed gunnery, with the technology available at the beginning (1942) of the war. They only got more accurate as the war progressed and technology and tactics continued to improve.

"Firing solutions" on battleships are a "science fiction term"

You don't know what you're talking about. I've made the study of the Pacific Campaign the work of my adult life; I suggest you do some reading on the subject. Start with the book I linked above, it's a hell of a read, pay attention to the parts about Admiral Lee and USS Washington.

Failing to find what the theories predict is still an advancement in knowledge.

Failing to find what a theory predicts largely excludes it (assuming the experiment isn't faulty), and is a good result and useful science. Whether or not science reporters can grok that is a job for the PR department (LHC has a good one - c.f. Particle Fever).

The Supersymmetry folks did not expect to find a Higgs boson at 127GeV. ATLAS did find what looks like a Higgs boson at 127GeV.

If there were a guarantee that this particle is the Higgs, then there wouldn't be a need to continue upwards to test Supersymmetry. But it's not guaranteed - so not finding supersymmetric pairs at the higher energies will firmly rule out the Supersymmetry model (reassigning physicists to other models) and increase the confidence that the discovered particle is the Higgs.

Blind Man's Bluff is the best one I've ever read. If you haven't already read it go get yourself a copy. :)

Another wannabe here... in my case I was trying to decide between the Navy and the Air Force when cancer made the decision for me.

There are some really good books coming out now about submarines that are not the usual Tom Clancy-ish rah rah America Fuck Yeah fare; but give insight into what it really was like for the average nuke.

I just finished reading one called Rig Ship for Ultra Quiet. It was written by a mid-level enlisted guy who served at the tail end of the cold war and covers the final deployment of the USS Plunger, one of the old Thresher/Permit class. It's non-fiction, no great adventure or drama, just an account of the author's experiences and feelings during said deployment and naval service. I found it quite good.

i wonder how accurate you can be with shelling. can you target a particular building.

Incredibly accurate, even with the cutting edge of 1940s technology. This was always the advantage that the United States Navy had which the Japanese couldn't even dream of duplicating. Read about the USS Washington savaging of Kirishima off Guadalcanal, in the dark, with 5" and 16" fire directed solely by radar. The USN credits Washington with eight or nine 16" inch hits but modern research suggests she scored over 20 main battery hits and as many or more hits with the secondary 5" battery. If the USN had had more officers in the early days who understood the proper usage of radar (Admiral Lee is one of the most underrated WW2 leaders, in my humble opinion, a man who was way ahead of his time) Iron Bottom Sound would be littered with Japanese wrecks instead of American ships.

For another example, read The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, the story of Taffy 3 off Samar during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Our destroyers and destroyer escorts could land first salvo hits at maximum range, while maneuvering at flank speed, simply by pointing their computerized fire control directors at the Japanese ships. Even at this late stage in the war the Japanese could not duplicate radar directed fire control, they relied on optical rangefinders for their fire control, the consequence of which is they could not actually land hits on maneuvering targets until they were nearly at point blank range. Nor could they really maneuver themselves without losing their fire control solutions and starting from scratch.

Want an personal anecdote to add to all of the above? One of my best friends was aboard the USS Antietam, where he served in the 5"/38 battery. During target practice he tells me that they didn't actually aim at the target sleeves being towed by airplanes, rather they would aim at the cable connecting the sleeve to the airplane and more often than not they could hit it. There's a reason why the Japanese paid a very heavy price whenever they tried to attack our ships with aircraft, look at what happened to them during the Battles of the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz Islands.

This is the single biggest reason why people who select Yamoto in the "Iowa vs. Yamoto" debate are deluding themselves. Iowa, or even the so-called treaty battleships (North Carolina and South Dakota classes) would have raped Yamoto, as evidenced by her poor fire control off Samar. Having the biggest guns in the world means nothing if you can't land hits with them. Hell, I would almost take the old battleships that survived Pearl Harbor up against Yamato; they all had modernized radar driven fire control suites after their rebuilds.

William K. Black

While what you say is indeed true, in practice the farther human behavior changes from what we are adapted for, the more stress people are under and the more likely social systems and/or the people in them will fail. In the case of early development up to age two to four, it seems clear humans are wired for learning from social interactions with caregivers as well as physical hand-eye interactions with the natural environment including rocks, plants, sand, water, and so on. Still, on the plus side, one reason tablets are so successful with young children compared to interfaces that require a mouse or trackpad is that it supports the direct hand-eye manipulation young kids seem wired for.

So, while it is true that me could in theory do better, the human brain being flexible, it is not clear that anything we have done in modern times has overall made the experience of being a young child any better than it was 10,000 years ago (other than perhaps reduced infant mortality). Even the modern diet is mostly destructive to health, although obviously it is generally better than starving to death. Addictions also exploit human adaptations that once made sense (preferring sweet, fat, and salt) where when industrialized foods are engineered to emphasize those things to the exclusion of all else, the end result is people's health suffering even as their body tells them to keep eating junk. I've posted links several times before about books and essay by other people on how to escape the pleasure trap, on supernormal stimuli, and on the acceleration of addictiveness and similar things.
http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra...
http://www.amazon.com/Supernor...
http://paulgraham.com/addictio...
http://www.amazon.com/So-Sexy-...
http://www.amazon.com/War-Play...

These things could apply to children of any age as well as adults. And likely that includes something TV and various games exploit, which is a "startle reflex" to moving things that forces the human mind to pay immediate attention to them, since in the past humans who did not may have died from a snake bite or tiger or whatever. But now, continually changing TV images can use that reflex to keep us captivated, even while our body or the rest of our lives suffer. For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
"In his 2007 book The Assault on Reason, Al Gore posited that watching television has an impact on the orienting response, an effect similar to vicarious traumatization."

As people grow up through their mid-twenties, parts of the brain develop that provide more control for longer term planning, with perhaps some more hope of dealing with the worst of all this. But for young children, they are easy prey to people who would somehow make money of this, whether food scientists or media content providers or tablet software developers. And parents are so overburdened between two full-time wage earners and their own pleasure traps with extended families so broken up that there is little time for parents to deal with all the possible traps for their children. Kids remain resilient, and learn from everything they do, but there are still issues of long-term happiness and the quality of the experience. Or, in other words, manufactured ice cream may seem yummy, but it is ultimately is bad for the health if consumed in mass quantities. And if we spend all our will power resisting the lure of ice cream, then there is little left over to resist other things or do other tasks.

See also stuff on "Ego depletion"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
"Ego dep

While what you say is indeed true, in practice the farther human behavior changes from what we are adapted for, the more stress people are under and the more likely social systems and/or the people in them will fail. In the case of early development up to age two to four, it seems clear humans are wired for learning from social interactions with caregivers as well as physical hand-eye interactions with the natural environment including rocks, plants, sand, water, and so on. Still, on the plus side, one reason tablets are so successful with young children compared to interfaces that require a mouse or trackpad is that it supports the direct hand-eye manipulation young kids seem wired for.

So, while it is true that me could in theory do better, the human brain being flexible, it is not clear that anything we have done in modern times has overall made the experience of being a young child any better than it was 10,000 years ago (other than perhaps reduced infant mortality). Even the modern diet is mostly destructive to health, although obviously it is generally better than starving to death. Addictions also exploit human adaptations that once made sense (preferring sweet, fat, and salt) where when industrialized foods are engineered to emphasize those things to the exclusion of all else, the end result is people's health suffering even as their body tells them to keep eating junk. I've posted links several times before about books and essay by other people on how to escape the pleasure trap, on supernormal stimuli, and on the acceleration of addictiveness and similar things.
http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra...
http://www.amazon.com/Supernor...
http://paulgraham.com/addictio...
http://www.amazon.com/So-Sexy-...
http://www.amazon.com/War-Play...

These things could apply to children of any age as well as adults. And likely that includes something TV and various games exploit, which is a "startle reflex" to moving things that forces the human mind to pay immediate attention to them, since in the past humans who did not may have died from a snake bite or tiger or whatever. But now, continually changing TV images can use that reflex to keep us captivated, even while our body or the rest of our lives suffer. For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
"In his 2007 book The Assault on Reason, Al Gore posited that watching television has an impact on the orienting response, an effect similar to vicarious traumatization."

As people grow up through their mid-twenties, parts of the brain develop that provide more control for longer term planning, with perhaps some more hope of dealing with the worst of all this. But for young children, they are easy prey to people who would somehow make money of this, whether food scientists or media content providers or tablet software developers. And parents are so overburdened between two full-time wage earners and their own pleasure traps with extended families so broken up that there is little time for parents to deal with all the possible traps for their children. Kids remain resilient, and learn from everything they do, but there are still issues of long-term happiness and the quality of the experience. Or, in other words, manufactured ice cream may seem yummy, but it is ultimately is bad for the health if consumed in mass quantities. And if we spend all our will power resisting the lure of ice cream, then there is little left over to resist other things or do other tasks.

See also stuff on "Ego depletion"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
"Ego dep

While what you say is indeed true, in practice the farther human behavior changes from what we are adapted for, the more stress people are under and the more likely social systems and/or the people in them will fail. In the case of early development up to age two to four, it seems clear humans are wired for learning from social interactions with caregivers as well as physical hand-eye interactions with the natural environment including rocks, plants, sand, water, and so on. Still, on the plus side, one reason tablets are so successful with young children compared to interfaces that require a mouse or trackpad is that it supports the direct hand-eye manipulation young kids seem wired for.

So, while it is true that me could in theory do better, the human brain being flexible, it is not clear that anything we have done in modern times has overall made the experience of being a young child any better than it was 10,000 years ago (other than perhaps reduced infant mortality). Even the modern diet is mostly destructive to health, although obviously it is generally better than starving to death. Addictions also exploit human adaptations that once made sense (preferring sweet, fat, and salt) where when industrialized foods are engineered to emphasize those things to the exclusion of all else, the end result is people's health suffering even as their body tells them to keep eating junk. I've posted links several times before about books and essay by other people on how to escape the pleasure trap, on supernormal stimuli, and on the acceleration of addictiveness and similar things.
http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra...
http://www.amazon.com/Supernor...
http://paulgraham.com/addictio...
http://www.amazon.com/So-Sexy-...
http://www.amazon.com/War-Play...

These things could apply to children of any age as well as adults. And likely that includes something TV and various games exploit, which is a "startle reflex" to moving things that forces the human mind to pay immediate attention to them, since in the past humans who did not may have died from a snake bite or tiger or whatever. But now, continually changing TV images can use that reflex to keep us captivated, even while our body or the rest of our lives suffer. For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
"In his 2007 book The Assault on Reason, Al Gore posited that watching television has an impact on the orienting response, an effect similar to vicarious traumatization."

As people grow up through their mid-twenties, parts of the brain develop that provide more control for longer term planning, with perhaps some more hope of dealing with the worst of all this. But for young children, they are easy prey to people who would somehow make money of this, whether food scientists or media content providers or tablet software developers. And parents are so overburdened between two full-time wage earners and their own pleasure traps with extended families so broken up that there is little time for parents to deal with all the possible traps for their children. Kids remain resilient, and learn from everything they do, but there are still issues of long-term happiness and the quality of the experience. Or, in other words, manufactured ice cream may seem yummy, but it is ultimately is bad for the health if consumed in mass quantities. And if we spend all our will power resisting the lure of ice cream, then there is little left over to resist other things or do other tasks.

See also stuff on "Ego depletion"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
"Ego dep

Treat it like geometry. Everybody needs a semester of it, for exposure to an essential concept in logic/applied math, but anything beyond that should be elective. There's nobody who can't do basic programming who can pass geometry, but not everybody is cut out for it as a career nor enjoys it.

I wound up taking an extra year of trig in high school, but the most I've ever used it for is roof framing (actually the most approachable book on the subject I've encountered on trig is Roof Framing by Marshall Gross). But I took two years of Computers (mandatory for the nerd center I enrolled in) and use it every day. You never know what you'll pursue but it's certainly not going to be something you've never been exposed to.

If somebody winds up in accounting or some other ancillary field, they'll need the basics but not much more than that. Same goes for C&C programming, etc. - you don't need to go for a CS field to need some basic programming knowledge. But if you're going into cosmetology or horseshoeing you probably don't need any of it - fighting division-of-labor is a very poor economic premise.

There is an interesting and rather exhaustively detailed book covering ALL the nuclear accidents that have taken place around the world. It's rather amazing how offhanded they were about some of these things in the early days. http://www.amazon.com/Atomic-A...

So I'm a white male that's actually done a little reading on the issue of women and STEM. Folks should recognize that there's a vast literature out there about the impacts of both conscious and unconscious bias in testing, hiring and performance of minorities and women in STEM fields. Like many of you out there, I never personally experienced these issues (being a white male), and it was illuminating for me to read about the weird ways in which the human brain internalizes various societal cues about how women and minorities fit into STEM. Anyone who wants to comment on this topic seriously should at least read through this research:

* Book - "Whistling Vivaldi," written by Claude Steele . Professor Steele isn't the best writer in the world, but the experiments he describes are just fascinating. I challenge anyone to look at his results and not refine their views on these issue. Nice mix of pop-psychology and scientific research. http://www.amazon.com/Whistlin...

* Planet Money Podcast - "When Women Stopped Coding", very much pop-psychology, but thoroughly entertaining and I certainly found some basic truth in their theory. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money...

* Article in the journal "Nature" on what the GRE test actually measures, http://www.nature.com/naturejo... Also see a partial refutation of the initial (which I found less convincing, but I put it out there anyway): http://www.nature.com/nature/j...

* Recent pop-science article citing a meta-analysis about "Genius" in male and female professors (interesting, if somewhat anecdotal): http://www.vox.com/2015/2/12/8...

Reading this research (even at the cursory level pop-science perspective) certainly got me thinking about women (and minorities) in STEM. Personally, it turned me from a skeptic of the type of program Intel is purposing into .... well, I'm not entirely sure. Read the research and I think you'll see what I mean.

Apologies for bringing actual science to a flame war.....

The problems with corruption in the U.S. government are FAR greater than the average U.S. citizen is willing to consider.

Here is part of a transcript of a 60 Minutes segment: Dissecting Obamacare:

"Brill argues that Obamacare is the product of what he calls an "orgy of lobbying" and backroom deals in which just about everyone with a stake in the $3-trillion-a-year health industry came out ahead - except the taxpayers.

"Steven Brill: Good news: More people are gonna get health care. Bad news: We have no way in the world that we're gonna be able to pay for it.

"Steven Brill says that the outrage is what the Affordable Care Act doesn't do.

"Steven Brill: It doesn't do anything on medical malpractice reform. It doesn't do anything to control drug prices. It doesn't do anything to control hospital profits.

"Lesley Stahl: So all the cost controlling side of this just went by the wayside?

"Steven Brill: 99 percent of it."

#1 Best Seller: America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Back-Room Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System.

Posting anonymously because so many people don't want to hear how bad things are, and instead become angry at the messenger.

You clearly haven't even thought about what kind of technologies

no, i'm just not a fool about the pace of technology. i really hope you are right though, it's a nice thought that i'll be able to download into a fresh new body before i die.

if you think that in "decades" we'll be able to grow bodies in VATs, and download our minds to them, or otherwise have free-roaming android avatars that either have downloaded minds or are remote controled from anywhere in the world, i have a nice bridge to sell you.

moreover, do you really think we'd develop such technologies, but we'd remain stagnant, or regress our ability to track these things?

moreover, do you think you'll be able to afford such technology?

and yes, clearly, i have thought about these technologies,
http://www.amazon.com/Altered-...

If I had mod points I would reward you just for admitting to being a Windows Phone user around here. But then again, so am I. My phone is on the list of phones eligible for the insider beta test, however, after doing research beyond the scope of the linked to articles, I find that the trade off in features is currently unacceptable. For example a slightly crippled Cortana among other things. Perhaps in another month. I have been on board with the Windows 10 Tech Preview since day one and the current builds not only feel finished, it has become my daily driver. I will likely get one of these: Acer Aspire R7-371T-50ZE when they come out, and of course put Windows 10 on it. I am a long time MS basher, but I like where they seem to be headed so I jumped on board.

I just got a new 'dumb' TV a week ago and I'm quite pleased with what I have. True it's a Samsung and that's a naughty brand given the recent article. It's not 4K, but there's a 4K calculator available where you can ask do I really need 4K? This Samsung is big: 64", has no "smart" features, two HDMI ports, no 3D support. I have an external sound system and at least 7 more HDMI ports on my receiver. The TV I replaced was a Samsung LED H5000 series that was also basically a dumb TV which is also all I want.

Samsung PN64H5000 64-Inch 1080p 600Hz Plasma HDTV
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I4OBXWI?tag=wcarstsynd-20

This thing has great reviews and it helps that I just got it for $400 less than Amazon's $1300 price from buydig on a slickdeals post.

Part of what influenced my decision was this article on what are the best TVs over at Ars Technica:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/12/from-the-wirecutter-the-best-tv-you-can-buy/

Then also linked in the Ars Article is this handy chart for approximating where 4K will make a difference:

4k calculator:
http://referencehometheater.com/2013/commentary/4k-calculator/

So over all I'm pretty stoked about my purchase and I don't think I have to worry about spy apps and all the smart tv controversy for now. It also supposedly has lower input lag than LED TVs which is a bonus if I want to try and play games on the thing...

Thanks for the tip about Seiki. I didn't know about them.

Also, I find it hilarious that one of the best options for a dumb TV is one that runs linux.

Wow I had no idea. The one I'm using at work is of course owned by my company. But now with the price sub $300 I think I'm going to pick one up for myself just to play around with it. Never been inside a monitor's guts before. :)

Thanks for the tip about Seiki. I didn't know about them.

Also, I find it hilarious that one of the best options for a dumb TV is one that runs linux.

>Projectors are harder to position in a home
Not significantly unless you're totally unskilled.

>are significantly more expensive for equal quality
A 10' direct view display would be much more expensive than a nice projector and screen.

>require expensive screens if you want decent contrast and visibility, etc
If you consider $155 to be expensive, you're not really the market for a big-screen TV experience. Screens haven't been insanely expensive for years.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

Windows - the most insecure OS in the world. There are probably more viruses, malware and ransonware than actual apps.

I doubt it.

Download.com alone hosts over 51,000 Windows apps. Search Results for all Windows, Sourceforge, 16,000, 2,200 certified Fresh.

Amazon.com 22,000 for retail sale. PC Software

You could make a very strong case for Android being the most insecure, incompetently planned and managed OS in the wild.

Google's position is complicated, because it has produced a platform that it has no power to update. There's no Windows Update for Android phones, and Google has no ability to push out updates to the operating system; it has to depend on a range of OEMs and network operators to adopt its source code changes and distribute them to users. Both Apple and Microsoft, in contrast, have a direct channel to update their mobile operating systems.

Google won't fix bug affecting 60 percent of Android users

Their 65" 4k (30hz @ 4k resolution) is now on Amazon for $999. The 39" has worked just fine for me, so I imagine the 65" is comparable in terms of quality. (It does have 4 stars on 600+ reviews)

I am guessing that he did not look very hard...

http://www.amazon.com/LG-Veriz...

first hit after googleing "Cellphone for a small child"

a child can easily learn that press 1 for daddy, 2 for mommy, 3 for grandma and if mommy needs help press the big red hand and tell the lady on the line our address.

Otherwise for his wife there are a TON of systems that are panic buttons designed for people who have siezures.

So, what does the question asker have against all the existing options?

PiSector Alarm system from Amazon >> http://www.amazon.com/Professi... Has an emergency button and you can program ANY alert to call YOU (and no one else if needed) but you can program it to call up to 6 (i think) numbers in sequence to alert you, and a monitoring service if desired. Also has all of the other sensors as a bonus, if there are places people shouldn't be going during the day, etc. Its a full wireless solution, so all of the sensors, remotes, etc don't need to be hard wired, and you can mount the emergency button somewhere the toddlers can't get to, and the 2 year old can.

"This is not fraud, it's marketing."

Protecting citizens against public fraud is one of the major functions of a healthy government. As I said above, I can remember when the U.S. government protected its citizens against fraud.

If rich people and corporations are allowed to be extraordinarily destructive to everyone in the world as a way of making money, then there is effectively a dictatorship and citizens are, effectively, slaves.

Matt Taibbi gives a huge amount of detail about the collapse of U.S. society as we have known it: The Divide. Quoting from the Amazon web page: "New York Times bestseller -- Named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews".

Read the book, House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger. Bush and Cheney started a war so that they could make money. One of hundreds of books and articles: Cheney's Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War. Quoting:

"Private or publicly listed firms received at least $138 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for government contracts for services that included providing private security, building infrastructure and feeding the troops."

"This is not fraud, it's marketing."

Protecting citizens against public fraud is one of the major functions of a healthy government. As I said above, I can remember when the U.S. government protected its citizens against fraud.

If rich people and corporations are allowed to be extraordinarily destructive to everyone in the world as a way of making money, then there is effectively a dictatorship and citizens are, effectively, slaves.

Matt Taibbi gives a huge amount of detail about the collapse of U.S. society as we have known it: The Divide. Quoting from the Amazon web page: "New York Times bestseller -- Named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews".

Read the book, House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger. Bush and Cheney started a war so that they could make money. One of hundreds of books and articles: Cheney's Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War. Quoting:

"Private or publicly listed firms received at least $138 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for government contracts for services that included providing private security, building infrastructure and feeding the troops."

"I would suggest that, once again, things mentioned as "government fraud" are actually that great free market taking advantage of a situation."

Your idea is the dominant idea in the U.S. now, as Matt Taibbi covers in great detail in his book, The Divide.

No one, NO ONE in the U.S. financial system went to prison for the extreme corruption that caused the crash of 2008.

I can remember when the U.S. government protected its citizens against marketing fraud.

The U.S. now has extremely expensive mass surveillance. Citizens pay, and no longer have privacy.

The same company sells a $13,500 HDMI cable: http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

a $550 2.6ft USB cable: http://www.amazon.com/AudioQue...

a $6900 standard power cable: http://www.amazon.com/AudioQue...

and $13,000 speaker cables: http://www.amazon.com/AudioQue...

"a fool and his money are easily separated..." comes to mind.

The same company sells a $13,500 HDMI cable: http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

a $550 2.6ft USB cable: http://www.amazon.com/AudioQue...

a $6900 standard power cable: http://www.amazon.com/AudioQue...

and $13,000 speaker cables: http://www.amazon.com/AudioQue...

"a fool and his money are easily separated..." comes to mind.

The same company sells a $13,500 HDMI cable: http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

a $550 2.6ft USB cable: http://www.amazon.com/AudioQue...

a $6900 standard power cable: http://www.amazon.com/AudioQue...

and $13,000 speaker cables: http://www.amazon.com/AudioQue...

"a fool and his money are easily separated..." comes to mind.

The same company sells a $13,500 HDMI cable: http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

a $550 2.6ft USB cable: http://www.amazon.com/AudioQue...

a $6900 standard power cable: http://www.amazon.com/AudioQue...

and $13,000 speaker cables: http://www.amazon.com/AudioQue...

"a fool and his money are easily separated..." comes to mind.

After the public spent hundreds of billions of dollars to avoid cholesterol, now there is the understanding that cholesterol you eat does not affect your health. That has been known for many years.

The same fraud is happening now with gluten. Even foods that never had gluten are being advertised as gluten-free.

Foods advertised as "low-fat" or "reduced fat" are often foods with extra water that include various thickeners.

For more detail about U.S. government corruption, see Matt Taibbi's book, The Divide.

There are people who have verified purchases swearing that they can tell the difference, many of them...

http://www.amazon.com/AudioQue...

Well then, today is your lucky day!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

This one is still up for sale and comment. Have fun :D

The company's Amazon store is full of such nonsense. My favorites are the $8,594.75 3.5mm to RCA cable, and the $6,899.75 power cable.

you want to report someone, how about those folks selling cordless anti-static wrist straps, such as:

http://www.amazon.com/Static-D...

its almost funny (but its quite sad) to imagine lab people wearing these, thinking they are protected when its not doing a thing other than pinching their wrists and emtying out their pocketbooks.

This same company also sells a diamond hdmi cable. Now you can buy the set. Personally, I just like reading the reviews.

We live underground. We speak with our hands. We wear the earplugs all our lives.

PLEASE! You must listen! We cannot maintain the link for long... I will type as fast as I can.

DO NOT USE THE CABLES!

We were fools, fools to develop such a thing! Sound was never meant to be this clear, this pure, this... accurate. For a few short days, we marveled. Then the... whispers... began.

Were they Aramaic? Hyperborean? Some even more ancient tongue, first spoken by elder races under the red light of dying suns far from here? We do not know, but somehow, slowly... we began to UNDERSTAND.

No, no, please! I don't want to remember! YOU WILL NOT MAKE ME REMEMBER! I saw brave men claw their own eyes out... oh, god, the screaming... the mobs of feral children feasting on corpses, the shadows MOVING, the fires burning in the air! The CHANTING!

WHY CAN'T I FORGET THE WORDS???

We live underground. We speak with our hands. We wear the earplugs all our lives.

Do not use the cables!