Don't be an unpaid flak for a PR company. This "survey" was bought and paid for by Sony, and it says exactly what they want it to say. And now you are helping them. Look at the company that did the survey, Landor Strategic Brand Consulting. They don't even bother trying to call themselves an independant research firm. They are a PR firm specializing in perception management. Now you are parroting back exactly what they want you to say. They want everyone to believe that no one thinks any less of Sony. And you are helping them. This is as much about managing perception in the tech industry as anything else. Do you want to have your perceptions managed by these guys
This survey was done by a company called "Landor Strategic Brand Consulting." Obviously, these guys are not in the business of taking impartial surveys, they are in the business of PR and building brand recognition and loyalty. Now somehow they have everyone talking about how the bad press just doesn't matter. No one is asking, "does it matter?" anymore, they are asking, "Why doesn't it matter?"
Very clever PR. I'd take these results with a Great Salt Lake sized grain of salt. Don't let these sleazy PR hacks brainwash you into doing their work for them.
Even more hilarious is another FCDA film linked to from that article. Called The House in the Middle and distributed by the Federal Civil Defense Administration, the same folks who brought you Duck and Cover, it attempts to show that a clean, freshly painted house is more likely to survive a nuclear attack.
The film was actually produced by the National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association.
Oh, Jeebus, this is your idea of how to talk to the common man? Let's dissect this from his point of view:
You: Future portable players CM: (thinks, like an iPod? is that what he means? I guess so...) You: Will support formats CM: (thinks, formats? What's a format? Is that like formatting a disk? Suuport? So I have to call tech support to format the disk, okay, that makes sense. Everytime I call tech support, that's what they tell me. Where's this all going, anyway?) You: which allows you to fit 2 or 3 times as much music on them CM: (thinks, So, 2-3 times as much as an iPod, huh? Sounds good, wait, which iPod? 'cause some of them don't hold that much...) You: without noticable loss in quality. CM: (thinks, Phew! That's good, 'cause I listen to some pretty lame music anyway. I'd hate to have all my Britney Spears turn into Celine Dion!) You: Do you want to buy a future-proof lossless format CM: [eyes glaze over] You: which can take advantage of such an advancement in future but will take a bit more space on your PC CM: [small amount of drool escapes from side of mouth] You: or a lossy format which might result in noticable quality loss if you ever want to use a different format? CM: (thinks, da bears, da bears, da bears, da bears) Oh, uhm, sorry, what was the middle one again?
No, we slashdotters, and most other right minded folks think of record company executives as absolute subhuman scum and the phrase "cocaine and hookers" is just a kind of shorthand for "the worst sort of con-man, a person with the morals of a starving weasel, someone who would kill his own grandmother for a dime, the kind of person that makes your average personal injury lawyer look like a saint."
It really isn't about cocain, or hookers. It's about the perception that the music industry, and those who lead it, are completely morally bankrupt. Perhaps that isn't true, but that is the perception, and it isn't completely unfounded. If the industry doesn't want to be perceived in that light, it should shape up.
None of this applies to your friend or anyone involved with a ten person indie label, except that your poor friend has been tarred with the same brush, in the public's eyes at least. But I'd also be willing to bet that no one pirates your friend's music, as they would have had to have heard about it in order to want to pirate it.
So it seems that a free market works great for certain kinds of challenges, and not very good for other kinds of challenges.
My sentiments exactly. In the former Soviet Union, government factories that were privatized did very well. Utilities, not so much. Basically, the free market breaks down in the face of externalities, imbalance of information, and natural monopolies. So we just need to keep our regulations centered on only those issues.
The question that Marx raised that is still relevant today is: how do you keep free trade capitalism from devolving into corporate aristocracy? There are no checks and balances, it's a runaway feedback loop. Of course, his proposed solution necessarily leads to dictatorship so that won't work.
The free market only works efficiently to distribute goodfs and services equitably in certain circumstances. Read Wealth of Nations. Even Adam Smith knew that for free market to remain free, there must be regulation. Specifically, there are three main ways the system fails: imbalance of information leading to situations such as described in the famous essay on economics from the 70s, "The Market for Lemons"; natural monopolies such as power, sewers, or roads where the marginal cost of entry into the market is so high that the first mover has an unshakeable advantage, and externalities, such as the public bad of pollution or the public good of education.
Your use of the "Government granted natural monopolies" is an oxymoron. Natural monopolies are those that aren't granted by the government, but exist because of the very nature of the market. I'm guessing you've been listening to a lot of libertarian economists. Not that that's necessarily bad, but learn what the libertarians are rejecting by learning what mainstream economists say, as well, then make up your own mind. In my mind, there's a good reason that the libertarians are on the ringe of economics, but you'll have to decide for yourself, and you can't do that until you know both sides of the debate.
I was trying to be fair and balanced. As opposed to my usual "Property is Theft!" anarcho-syndicalist rants.;-) Mostly I agree with you. I was more of an idealist in my youth, but I have seen politicians and supporters on the left do things that were easily 10% as bad as what the right does. Okay, 5%. And they should be perfect, damn it, they're the good guys! You expect the bad guys to be bad...
Geez, sorry! I was trying to phrase the question in a humorous way, you know, alluding to the old commie witch hunts. It was meant to be tounge-in-cheek. It just seemed a rather, shall we say, spirited defense of Starbucks for a disinterested party. I even said that working for them isn't bad, I wasn't trying to insult you or anything.
No doubt. Ever read Mark Twain's essay, "What is Man?" Best explanation of this concept I've read. Personally, I don't like having scared, desperate humans around me. And human suffering creeps me out. So I want to end human suffering and make sure people aren't scared and desperate. It's in my self interest to do so. I'm just concerned about all the selfish assholes out there who use the idea of enlightened self interest, merged with some half baked theories about the free market, to justify some completely unenlightened and selfish behavior.
Well, that is a simplification of things, but mostly true in my experience. There are many different breeds of liberal. I was describing the stereotypical Eastern Establishment Liberal, such as the Kennedy Clan. Good hearted, but just as fond of aristocracy and heirarchy as your average neo-con. You are describing the college/activist liberal, or perhaps the hippy/granola liberal. Different beasts entirely.
Remember, not all conservatives are the same, either. For example, some think the magical free market will fix everything, while others think the magical man in the sky will do it. Of course, none of them think they will be the ones to fix everything. Don't be ludicrous, that would require effort that isn't entirely selfish, and everyone knows that humans are completely selfish, right?
The problem with the magical free market is that it isn't free enough. If we just do away with all labor, environmental, safety and monopoly regulations, abolish all taxes and just let the most sucessful do whatever they please, then everything will magically work perfectly. Really. Trust us, why would we lie to you? Oh, to try to get you to pay for our mistakes? LALALALA I can't hear you! Personal Responsibility! Don't look behind that curtain over there, look over here! Morals! MORALS! MORALS!
Dude! Hold up. Isn't that against the Geneva Convention? And dangerous? I mean, once you get Chuck started killing politicians, do you really think he's going to be able to tell the difference and stop with just the conservatives? I'm picturing a Norris-shaped tornado ripping through DC, body parts flying everywhere and... wait...
No, liberals think of people as poor, benighted (but basically good) savages in need of salvation and civilization. It is their terrible burden to be better than the rest of us, as that means they feel forced by their liberal guilt into "helping" the rest of us, whether we like it or not.
Liberals are in the business of providing band-aids for society's problems. If they ever actually fixed things, they'd be out of a job, and worse, they would have no rationalization for lording it over the rest of us as the providers of all things good.
You are, of course, absolutely right that the left can be equally as idiotic as the right. Probably for many of the same reasons. I used to believe differently, but painful experience has taught me the truth.
I hope against hope in my little heart of hearts that one day political parties will be abolished, and congress will spend an entire year doing nothing but repealing existing laws that run contrary to the interests of the common man rather than tacking on new ones.
If not abolished, at least lets have more choice. No voting system is perfect, but a ranked choice based system is certainly better than our current one of winner takes all.
If you'd like to really run with it, you might even hope that candidates will be chosen according to merit and intellect rather than popularity and purchased academic honors.
I would, quite honestly, prefer a random lottery based system to the one we have now.
Of course, if you do this, they will loudly complain that all liberals (you may not actually be one, but if you disagree with them, you are in their eyes) are hateful and mean spirited. Never mind that they will bitch-slap you every chance they get and then when you complain call you a liberal cry-baby, or claim that they were "only joking."
Of course, this is a catch-22 because if you don't fight back then you look like a pussy. If you fight back with logic, you come off as a boring dweeb, not a gung-ho action man. If you fight back with emotion, you are a hate-filled wingnut.
The average right-winger has no introspection. In fact, it would only get in the way. He needs to convince others that his world-view is correct, and he doesn't care how he does it. Looking dispationately at his own behavior would only weaken him, so he just doesn't do it. This leads to some amusing conversations where the poor right winger appears not to even remember completely contradictory statements he made just moments earlier. Facts, logic, rationality and consistencey are all irrelevant to convincing others to believe in his twisted paradigm.
Pretty much any statement a right winger makes about others is actually, through psychological projection brought about by an extreme lack of introspection, a direct statement about that right winger. Gays are bad? He's gay. Welfare cheats are bad? He'd mooch off his dying grandma. Lazy immigrants a re a drain on the system? He's a lazy git who never worked harder than he had too in his life. Liberal bias? Conservatives own the majority of the media. Liberals lack morals? He has the morals of starving weasel.
In order to translate from right-wingenese to reality-speak, just assume that whatever a right-winger says to others actually applies to himself. Their world view is based on lies and manipulation so in order to validate themselves, they must spread those lies and the culture of manipulation and dehumanization that goes along with them. Ever wonder why they so frequently rant about "Humanism?" It's because they hate humans, themselves in particular. They see humans as greedy, immoral, sinful creatures only capable of civilization and cooperation so long as someone with a big stick is watching over them. That is not, in fact, the case for most of us, but it is the case for the average right-winger.
Thus, they need to spread their lunacy, in order to drag us all down to their level.
I've read Wealth of Nations. People forget that Adam Smith believed that government rregulation is necessary for the proper functioning of a free market. You can say that, in theory, freetrade capitalism is about improving everyone's life but you are being very naive if you think that is the way the game is being played now. Capitalism leads to concetration of wealth, which leads to concentration of power. That power can be used to manipulate the market system as easily as it can be used to manipulate the political system. Political systems have checks and balances, markets don't because the more you have, the more you can get.
The thing about roast is that, aside from personal preference there is a quantitative difference in how much varietal flavor is developed for a given bean and roast. To light, and all you get are grassy or haylike notes, to dark and all you get are smokey or bitter notes. Those may very well be what you like, but that doesn't mean that that roast is the best for bringing out the flavor of the bean. This is common knowledge, not a matter of opinion. Opinion is, "Do I roast this Guatamalan a little darker or a little lighter than full city," not "Do I roast this Guatamalan to a Cinnamon roast or Italian?" Anyone in the coffee business will tell you the same.
As others have pointed out, Starbucks CEO has admitted they are not in the coffee business, they are in the dairy business. They brew coffee strong and black so that you can taste it at all when you sip your carmel-blueberry-mocha-frappa-coffechino. When they were building their reputation and catering to the true coffee enthusiast, they roasted like every other gourmet coffee roaster, mostly full city with some darker and very little lighter. I know, I lived in Seattle during those years. Now they sell primarily dairy and suger.
You are absolutely 180 degrees turned around about caffeine and roasting. A darker roast destroys more caffeine. See here and here. It also drives off more water. After roasting a 100lb bag of coffee to full city, you will have about 80 pounds as opposed to 70 for French. So Starbucks has to have a good reason for roasting dark, but caffeine is not it.
I'm guessing they do it to disguise the fact that they use lower quality beans. In a darker roast, all the varietal flavor has been driven off anyway. All you taste is the roast, so you can get away with using cheaper beans. Ever seen a Jamaican Blue Mountain or Kona coffee in an Italian roast? No, and you never will because no one is going to do that to a $30/pound coffee. Have you ever seen an Italian roast boasting of what's in it? No, and you never will because it doesn't matter.
I know Starbucks doesn't do a good sort job because of the number of clinkers found in their coffee by America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Illustrated.
Do you now or have you ever received compensation from Starbucks in any form for work performed, services rendered, or products sold to them? You know a lot about them and seem to have a vested interest in defending their reputation. Not that that's bad, look, I like Starbucks. I, too, drink Starbucks when nothing betetr is available. But disinterested parties don't usually get that, uhm, verbose in defending a store.
Okay, so what will prevent companies from abusing tiered service? The free market? There isn't one in telecom and there simply can't be one. Great example of a natural monopoly, no state required.
The FCC? Ah, isn't that part of the government? Who do you want making the regs, some unelected bureaucratic body, or your elected and (slightly more) accountable representatives? Without any special instructions from congress, what do you think the FCC will do, what is best for we, the people, or what is best for telecom fatcats?
The companies themselves? Why? You just know it's going to be, "Hey Google, those are some mighty nice lookin' packets ya got there. Be a shame if anything happened to them, capisce?" Wouldn't they be sued by their shareholders if they didn't screw people over this way? That's what capitalism is all about right, dog eat dog, devil take the hindmost, screw the poor and powerless neo-social-darwinism sort of thing?
In the free market, it's one dollar one vote. Theoretically in a democracy, rich and poor alike both have one vote. Sure, in practice it doesn't work like that, but who's fault is that? Show me the system of checks and balances inherent in the free market that will ensure justice and equitability? Or are those just outdated, antiquated notions now that we all worship on the altar of the almighty dollar.
Call me old fashioned, but I kind of like our Republic, with it's Houses and Executives and, you know, the Constitution? Maybe congress isn't the problem. Maybe we are. It's our government, after all.
Ah, you did get that my post was a joke, right? As for my honest opinion, I say do away with speed limits, traffic signs, lights and lane markers and just have one simple traffic related crime: being a dumbass. Then we arm everyone with indelible paintball guns and anyone with more than 4 splats on their car is permanently branded a dumbass. It would not be a crime for young children to throw rocks at the cars of dumbasses.
Okay, that last part was another joke, but I've heard that in parts of Europe they have done away with signs, lanes and speed limits to good effect. Turns out, when you don't coddle people and tell them exactly what to do, they actually drive more carefully. Go figure, huh?
Well, who knows what the unintended consequences will be when making a machine that even aproaches the complexity of a human brain. I don't think robots built on that level will necessarily "want" things they haven't been explicitly programmed for, and I'm fairly sure that, even if we can make robots that create their own goals we can still have over-arching drives (such as 'pleasing humans feals pleasureable') that will keep robots from wanting things they can't have. But am I sure of this? No way. Maybe one of the consequences of creating real artificial consciousness is a desire for freedom, who knows?
Slashdot Mirror
Don't be an unpaid flak for a PR company. This "survey" was bought and paid for by Sony, and it says exactly what they want it to say. And now you are helping them. Look at the company that did the survey, Landor Strategic Brand Consulting. They don't even bother trying to call themselves an independant research firm. They are a PR firm specializing in perception management. Now you are parroting back exactly what they want you to say. They want everyone to believe that no one thinks any less of Sony. And you are helping them. This is as much about managing perception in the tech industry as anything else. Do you want to have your perceptions managed by these guys
All the flames that are about to be posted...
This survey was done by a company called "Landor Strategic Brand Consulting." Obviously, these guys are not in the business of taking impartial surveys, they are in the business of PR and building brand recognition and loyalty. Now somehow they have everyone talking about how the bad press just doesn't matter. No one is asking, "does it matter?" anymore, they are asking, "Why doesn't it matter?"
Very clever PR. I'd take these results with a Great Salt Lake sized grain of salt. Don't let these sleazy PR hacks brainwash you into doing their work for them.
Even more hilarious is another FCDA film linked to from that article. Called The House in the Middle and distributed by the Federal Civil Defense Administration, the same folks who brought you Duck and Cover, it attempts to show that a clean, freshly painted house is more likely to survive a nuclear attack.
The film was actually produced by the National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association.
Oh, Jeebus, this is your idea of how to talk to the common man? Let's dissect this from his point of view:
You: Future portable players
CM: (thinks, like an iPod? is that what he means? I guess so...)
You: Will support formats
CM: (thinks, formats? What's a format? Is that like formatting a disk? Suuport? So I have to call tech support to format the disk, okay, that makes sense. Everytime I call tech support, that's what they tell me. Where's this all going, anyway?)
You: which allows you to fit 2 or 3 times as much music on them
CM: (thinks, So, 2-3 times as much as an iPod, huh? Sounds good, wait, which iPod? 'cause some of them don't hold that much...)
You: without noticable loss in quality.
CM: (thinks, Phew! That's good, 'cause I listen to some pretty lame music anyway. I'd hate to have all my Britney Spears turn into Celine Dion!)
You: Do you want to buy a future-proof lossless format
CM: [eyes glaze over]
You: which can take advantage of such an advancement in future but will take a bit more space on your PC
CM: [small amount of drool escapes from side of mouth]
You: or a lossy format which might result in noticable quality loss if you ever want to use a different format?
CM: (thinks, da bears, da bears, da bears, da bears) Oh, uhm, sorry, what was the middle one again?
No, we slashdotters, and most other right minded folks think of record company executives as absolute subhuman scum and the phrase "cocaine and hookers" is just a kind of shorthand for "the worst sort of con-man, a person with the morals of a starving weasel, someone who would kill his own grandmother for a dime, the kind of person that makes your average personal injury lawyer look like a saint."
It really isn't about cocain, or hookers. It's about the perception that the music industry, and those who lead it, are completely morally bankrupt. Perhaps that isn't true, but that is the perception, and it isn't completely unfounded. If the industry doesn't want to be perceived in that light, it should shape up.
None of this applies to your friend or anyone involved with a ten person indie label, except that your poor friend has been tarred with the same brush, in the public's eyes at least. But I'd also be willing to bet that no one pirates your friend's music, as they would have had to have heard about it in order to want to pirate it.
So it seems that a free market works great for certain kinds of challenges, and not very good for other kinds of challenges.
My sentiments exactly. In the former Soviet Union, government factories that were privatized did very well. Utilities, not so much. Basically, the free market breaks down in the face of externalities, imbalance of information, and natural monopolies. So we just need to keep our regulations centered on only those issues.
The question that Marx raised that is still relevant today is: how do you keep free trade capitalism from devolving into corporate aristocracy? There are no checks and balances, it's a runaway feedback loop. Of course, his proposed solution necessarily leads to dictatorship so that won't work.
The free market only works efficiently to distribute goodfs and services equitably in certain circumstances. Read Wealth of Nations. Even Adam Smith knew that for free market to remain free, there must be regulation. Specifically, there are three main ways the system fails: imbalance of information leading to situations such as described in the famous essay on economics from the 70s, "The Market for Lemons"; natural monopolies such as power, sewers, or roads where the marginal cost of entry into the market is so high that the first mover has an unshakeable advantage, and externalities, such as the public bad of pollution or the public good of education.
Your use of the "Government granted natural monopolies" is an oxymoron. Natural monopolies are those that aren't granted by the government, but exist because of the very nature of the market. I'm guessing you've been listening to a lot of libertarian economists. Not that that's necessarily bad, but learn what the libertarians are rejecting by learning what mainstream economists say, as well, then make up your own mind. In my mind, there's a good reason that the libertarians are on the ringe of economics, but you'll have to decide for yourself, and you can't do that until you know both sides of the debate.
I was trying to be fair and balanced. As opposed to my usual "Property is Theft!" anarcho-syndicalist rants. ;-) Mostly I agree with you. I was more of an idealist in my youth, but I have seen politicians and supporters on the left do things that were easily 10% as bad as what the right does. Okay, 5%. And they should be perfect, damn it, they're the good guys! You expect the bad guys to be bad...
Geez, sorry! I was trying to phrase the question in a humorous way, you know, alluding to the old commie witch hunts. It was meant to be tounge-in-cheek. It just seemed a rather, shall we say, spirited defense of Starbucks for a disinterested party. I even said that working for them isn't bad, I wasn't trying to insult you or anything.
No doubt. Ever read Mark Twain's essay, "What is Man?" Best explanation of this concept I've read. Personally, I don't like having scared, desperate humans around me. And human suffering creeps me out. So I want to end human suffering and make sure people aren't scared and desperate. It's in my self interest to do so. I'm just concerned about all the selfish assholes out there who use the idea of enlightened self interest, merged with some half baked theories about the free market, to justify some completely unenlightened and selfish behavior.
They ship overnight. Not ideal, but the best a lot of people can get.
Well, that is a simplification of things, but mostly true in my experience. There are many different breeds of liberal. I was describing the stereotypical Eastern Establishment Liberal, such as the Kennedy Clan. Good hearted, but just as fond of aristocracy and heirarchy as your average neo-con. You are describing the college/activist liberal, or perhaps the hippy/granola liberal. Different beasts entirely.
Remember, not all conservatives are the same, either. For example, some think the magical free market will fix everything, while others think the magical man in the sky will do it. Of course, none of them think they will be the ones to fix everything. Don't be ludicrous, that would require effort that isn't entirely selfish, and everyone knows that humans are completely selfish, right?
The problem with the magical free market is that it isn't free enough. If we just do away with all labor, environmental, safety and monopoly regulations, abolish all taxes and just let the most sucessful do whatever they please, then everything will magically work perfectly. Really. Trust us, why would we lie to you? Oh, to try to get you to pay for our mistakes? LALALALA I can't hear you! Personal Responsibility! Don't look behind that curtain over there, look over here! Morals! MORALS! MORALS!
Dude! Hold up. Isn't that against the Geneva Convention? And dangerous? I mean, once you get Chuck started killing politicians, do you really think he's going to be able to tell the difference and stop with just the conservatives? I'm picturing a Norris-shaped tornado ripping through DC, body parts flying everywhere and... wait...
Never mind.
No, liberals think of people as poor, benighted (but basically good) savages in need of salvation and civilization. It is their terrible burden to be better than the rest of us, as that means they feel forced by their liberal guilt into "helping" the rest of us, whether we like it or not.
Liberals are in the business of providing band-aids for society's problems. If they ever actually fixed things, they'd be out of a job, and worse, they would have no rationalization for lording it over the rest of us as the providers of all things good.
See? I can be just as hard on liberals.
You are, of course, absolutely right that the left can be equally as idiotic as the right. Probably for many of the same reasons. I used to believe differently, but painful experience has taught me the truth.
I hope against hope in my little heart of hearts that one day political parties will be abolished, and congress will spend an entire year doing nothing but repealing existing laws that run contrary to the interests of the common man rather than tacking on new ones.
If not abolished, at least lets have more choice. No voting system is perfect, but a ranked choice based system is certainly better than our current one of winner takes all.
If you'd like to really run with it, you might even hope that candidates will be chosen according to merit and intellect rather than popularity and purchased academic honors.
I would, quite honestly, prefer a random lottery based system to the one we have now.
I'm going to bitchslap the next right-wing pussy
Of course, if you do this, they will loudly complain that all liberals (you may not actually be one, but if you disagree with them, you are in their eyes) are hateful and mean spirited. Never mind that they will bitch-slap you every chance they get and then when you complain call you a liberal cry-baby, or claim that they were "only joking."
Of course, this is a catch-22 because if you don't fight back then you look like a pussy. If you fight back with logic, you come off as a boring dweeb, not a gung-ho action man. If you fight back with emotion, you are a hate-filled wingnut.
The average right-winger has no introspection. In fact, it would only get in the way. He needs to convince others that his world-view is correct, and he doesn't care how he does it. Looking dispationately at his own behavior would only weaken him, so he just doesn't do it. This leads to some amusing conversations where the poor right winger appears not to even remember completely contradictory statements he made just moments earlier. Facts, logic, rationality and consistencey are all irrelevant to convincing others to believe in his twisted paradigm.
Pretty much any statement a right winger makes about others is actually, through psychological projection brought about by an extreme lack of introspection, a direct statement about that right winger. Gays are bad? He's gay. Welfare cheats are bad? He'd mooch off his dying grandma. Lazy immigrants a re a drain on the system? He's a lazy git who never worked harder than he had too in his life. Liberal bias? Conservatives own the majority of the media. Liberals lack morals? He has the morals of starving weasel.
In order to translate from right-wingenese to reality-speak, just assume that whatever a right-winger says to others actually applies to himself. Their world view is based on lies and manipulation so in order to validate themselves, they must spread those lies and the culture of manipulation and dehumanization that goes along with them. Ever wonder why they so frequently rant about "Humanism?" It's because they hate humans, themselves in particular. They see humans as greedy, immoral, sinful creatures only capable of civilization and cooperation so long as someone with a big stick is watching over them. That is not, in fact, the case for most of us, but it is the case for the average right-winger.
Thus, they need to spread their lunacy, in order to drag us all down to their level.
I've read Wealth of Nations. People forget that Adam Smith believed that government rregulation is necessary for the proper functioning of a free market. You can say that, in theory, freetrade capitalism is about improving everyone's life but you are being very naive if you think that is the way the game is being played now. Capitalism leads to concetration of wealth, which leads to concentration of power. That power can be used to manipulate the market system as easily as it can be used to manipulate the political system. Political systems have checks and balances, markets don't because the more you have, the more you can get.
The thing about roast is that, aside from personal preference there is a quantitative difference in how much varietal flavor is developed for a given bean and roast. To light, and all you get are grassy or haylike notes, to dark and all you get are smokey or bitter notes. Those may very well be what you like, but that doesn't mean that that roast is the best for bringing out the flavor of the bean. This is common knowledge, not a matter of opinion. Opinion is, "Do I roast this Guatamalan a little darker or a little lighter than full city," not "Do I roast this Guatamalan to a Cinnamon roast or Italian?" Anyone in the coffee business will tell you the same.
As others have pointed out, Starbucks CEO has admitted they are not in the coffee business, they are in the dairy business. They brew coffee strong and black so that you can taste it at all when you sip your carmel-blueberry-mocha-frappa-coffechino. When they were building their reputation and catering to the true coffee enthusiast, they roasted like every other gourmet coffee roaster, mostly full city with some darker and very little lighter. I know, I lived in Seattle during those years. Now they sell primarily dairy and suger.
You are absolutely 180 degrees turned around about caffeine and roasting. A darker roast destroys more caffeine. See here and here. It also drives off more water. After roasting a 100lb bag of coffee to full city, you will have about 80 pounds as opposed to 70 for French. So Starbucks has to have a good reason for roasting dark, but caffeine is not it.
I'm guessing they do it to disguise the fact that they use lower quality beans. In a darker roast, all the varietal flavor has been driven off anyway. All you taste is the roast, so you can get away with using cheaper beans. Ever seen a Jamaican Blue Mountain or Kona coffee in an Italian roast? No, and you never will because no one is going to do that to a $30/pound coffee. Have you ever seen an Italian roast boasting of what's in it? No, and you never will because it doesn't matter.
I know Starbucks doesn't do a good sort job because of the number of clinkers found in their coffee by America's Test Kitchen and Cook's Illustrated.
Do you now or have you ever received compensation from Starbucks in any form for work performed, services rendered, or products sold to them? You know a lot about them and seem to have a vested interest in defending their reputation. Not that that's bad, look, I like Starbucks. I, too, drink Starbucks when nothing betetr is available. But disinterested parties don't usually get that, uhm, verbose in defending a store.
Okay, so what will prevent companies from abusing tiered service? The free market? There isn't one in telecom and there simply can't be one. Great example of a natural monopoly, no state required.
The FCC? Ah, isn't that part of the government? Who do you want making the regs, some unelected bureaucratic body, or your elected and (slightly more) accountable representatives? Without any special instructions from congress, what do you think the FCC will do, what is best for we, the people, or what is best for telecom fatcats?
The companies themselves? Why? You just know it's going to be, "Hey Google, those are some mighty nice lookin' packets ya got there. Be a shame if anything happened to them, capisce?" Wouldn't they be sued by their shareholders if they didn't screw people over this way? That's what capitalism is all about right, dog eat dog, devil take the hindmost, screw the poor and powerless neo-social-darwinism sort of thing?
In the free market, it's one dollar one vote. Theoretically in a democracy, rich and poor alike both have one vote. Sure, in practice it doesn't work like that, but who's fault is that? Show me the system of checks and balances inherent in the free market that will ensure justice and equitability? Or are those just outdated, antiquated notions now that we all worship on the altar of the almighty dollar.
Call me old fashioned, but I kind of like our Republic, with it's Houses and Executives and, you know, the Constitution? Maybe congress isn't the problem. Maybe we are. It's our government, after all.
Ah, you did get that my post was a joke, right? As for my honest opinion, I say do away with speed limits, traffic signs, lights and lane markers and just have one simple traffic related crime: being a dumbass. Then we arm everyone with indelible paintball guns and anyone with more than 4 splats on their car is permanently branded a dumbass. It would not be a crime for young children to throw rocks at the cars of dumbasses.
Okay, that last part was another joke, but I've heard that in parts of Europe they have done away with signs, lanes and speed limits to good effect. Turns out, when you don't coddle people and tell them exactly what to do, they actually drive more carefully. Go figure, huh?
Sure, go ahead and ruin a perfectly good rant with your logic and common sense. You don't drive a Mustang, by chance?
That's just fine, as long as I'm not one of them. ;)
Well, who knows what the unintended consequences will be when making a machine that even aproaches the complexity of a human brain. I don't think robots built on that level will necessarily "want" things they haven't been explicitly programmed for, and I'm fairly sure that, even if we can make robots that create their own goals we can still have over-arching drives (such as 'pleasing humans feals pleasureable') that will keep robots from wanting things they can't have. But am I sure of this? No way. Maybe one of the consequences of creating real artificial consciousness is a desire for freedom, who knows?
That's a two-fer!
Yeah, that's what Bill said.