Sorry, but every time I dig into this, it seems to reduce to a complicated version of trying to get something out of a balanced system which won't budge due to the Laws of Reality.
If you could just get one of those fridge magnets to turn off for half the engine cycle, you could build a truly awesome car! But fridge magnets don't give free lunches.
Similarly, if try to pull a measurement out of your q-bit, it stops being in super position and just becomes another dumb binary switch.
Solving a problem is the same as trying to sneak an observation of particles acting as waves.
If your quantum computer solves a problem, an encryption riddle, for instance, then that proves its q-bits were in superposition, which instantly means they weren't.
I thought the double slit experiment adequately demonstrated this.
I suspect that the only solutions to this reality gridlock can be found by the likes of Douglas Adams. Though, spending billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of research hours on the problem is pretty close to the kind of narrative Douglas Adams enjoyed telling.
They have a job to do, which is to stop various hostile groups from harming American citizens. While it's true the backdoor thing is stupid for technical reasons, I'm not sure we want to be in a situation where security services are so blind it's impossible for them to detect the next big Islamist attack.
It's easy for them to detect the next big Islamist attack.
-After all, they're the ones financing, training and overseeing its coordination through proxies and even directly with fake uniforms and mustaches.
And yet, astonishingly enough, there are more than 130 comments from people involved in this discussion, coming from the tried & true Slashdot user perspective.
Funny, that.
I've been reading this site for over 15 years, and not a week goes by when somebody doesn't make that same general complaint. It's a cliche at this point. A super cliche. A human behavioral bug. Predictable mechanical behavior which has no effect other than to broadcast one's Missing The Point.
That's always been true. It's about the medium, literally.
But if you are in the business of channeling folks into sitting idle while programming floods across their brains, I suppose it helps to have a variety of specific messages tuned to every basic personality type. Helps keep everybody hypnotized and separated from each other.
Back in the days of just a few channels and just a few programs, we had common stories everybody had seen, and from this drew our modern mythology. A good mythology makes for a healthy culture.
Now there are one of two basic conditions in effect; no culture, because the message is so fragmented, resulting in personal isolationism, OR the effort to tune into everything drains people so much that they are useless to the world.
Bread and circuses.
Both are toxic, it seems.
Re:This isn't about the Logo. It's about control.
on
Google Changes Logo
·
· Score: 1
Even the introductory animation was done with the "for Babies" directive in mind.
Remember what it was? Go look.
This isn't about the Logo. It's about control.
on
Google Changes Logo
·
· Score: 1
Only two people pointed out that a logo change is *not* the item worth paying attention to.
It's about changing the company's operating philosophy while shifting public perception so as to make the transition comfortable.
However, several people here *did* pick up on the psychological association, which is almost absolutely deliberate...
It looks like a pre-school, Fischer Price toy store logo.
It's for babies.
Now ponder *that*.
Also, pay attention to the new style of filtering. For instance, a month ago you could search for the word, "Torrent" and get a bunch of results. That doesn't work today.
Google is angling towards DRM friendly; it's going to be a safe, coddling place where you are treated like an infant, (while they mine your data and observe your "growth").
The public perception is being managed in such a way that this insulting approach makes you feel like it's being done with good intentions. Makes you feel all warm and cuddled and taken care of while your brain is monitored and directed.
I know so many people with cool ideas who can't do anything with their lives other than treadmill because they are anchored to debts.
I've got a long list of names of all the people I've met over the course of my life whose debts I'd wipe out with anonymous gifts should I ever come into the money. I'd spend on that project until everybody is in the clear, or until half the money is gone; whichever comes first. I've never thought in terms of billions before, so you could probably lift a whole lot of people out of slavery and still have plenty left over for the next stage...
Start up a foundation, (or a series of them. Why not?). -Maybe the kind with twenty million sitting pat, collecting interest, and you only spend the interest, (except interest bearing projects are sort of the problem which put everybody into debt in the first place. Going all Batman on the banking elite isn't really an option, so I'm not 100% clear on how to proceed with regard to that philosophy. However...)
Foundations. Fixed budget groups with one or two captains heading up each with mandates like, "Seek out cool stage productions and finance them!" "Promote Maker Spaces and the ability to learn, build and fix tech for people of all ages!" "Awesome private schools where earnest disadvantaged kids can afford to be!" "Set up systems your community can use to establish and maintain their own food security!" "Off the grid, one home at a time..!"
Stuff like that.
It'd be fun to imagine new ways to make the world more awesome and less miserable for lots of people; to give people the chance to spread their wings and really use their gifts rather than burn all their energy just treading water.
Fame is not something that bothers me. That's why you hire secretaries.
Get started right now. Sounds like the law would be on your side. Maybe decide that you're okay with losing your job and finding a new one, so the fear of want is gone.
He sounds like an evil ass. Smush him. It's easier than you think, because you'll have pretty much everybody on your side, even people you may not know about yet.
The goal of the energy companies is to maximize profit while minimizing expenses. The delivery of energy is just their method of making money, and they're pretty cozy with it. Change requires learning new things, and that takes work. Work frightens people.
The problem is that many elites have their fortunes and power tied up with the current model. When society starts to monkey with that system, powerful people get upset because it means they might not maintain control over their fiefdoms.
Fusion technology is not being developed by the energy companies, which means if it becomes viable, it would allow for young, spirited competing agencies. That could easily result in a big market shake-up and lots of established people feeling threatened.
The power delivery/distribution systems, via the electricity grid, might be willing to adapt as it wouldn't immediately affect their relationship with money, but they're small players by comparison to fossil fuel interests.
Also, there are military and covert agencies tied up in geo-politics. The face of the world, whole national agendas, are driven by oil. I can't even begin to guess how they might react to the sea change Fusion would cause in that regard. Imagine Saudi Arabia's reaction to having its cash cow threatened. Just for starters.
In any case, I don't think it's quite as cut and dried as you suggest. People would bleed and run around and be frightened while everybody plays musical fusion chairs on the world stage.
Why would anybody trust your software when you are doing the very thing you claim to be fighting? -Cluttering up the space with self-promotion and hard-sell noise.
One post is sufficient. Dozens are offensive and off-putting.
And seriously: ALL CAPS is the mark of the time-cubed insane. Don't be insane. People avoid the insane.
Intel has been setting aside secondary CPU power for invisible applications since forever. Linux ain't keeping your stuff safe except from the lowest level of Big Brother types; the Small-to-Medium Brothers, I suppose.
Intel also does fabrication in Israel. That's where the Mossad live.
How tough is it to capture your keyboard strokes through System Management hardware? Not at all. -You gotta type in that encryption key at some point along the chain.
As to your belief that Coca Cola can shift impressions that easily... that's clearly nonsense. Were that the case the Tobacco industries would won.
Actually, tobacco isn't bad for you. It sharpens awareness, calms fear and increases active intelligence without affecting judgement. But we lost that battle because authority figures sold the idea that it was, filled it with toxins and flooded the scientific community with studies based on poisoned tobacco, thus limiting from the population one of the single most useful drugs humanity has ever had.
You are absolutely wrong, the 'biggest companies' dominate and steal from 'the little guy' today, except today they have the nuclear option in their hands already - government compliance with the wishes of the biggest companies.
Stop it with the "Absolutely" thing. That's animal thinking and you're a human. This isn't simple.
You are quite correct in the second part of your statement; We don't regulate in favor of the people; essentially we lost the war and no longer have a government of the people, (except in name). The Free Market allowed monster corps to reach cancer status, and the government is simply an extension of them. The parasites won.
Happens all the time. Human bodies are Free Market systems, and lots of us get cancer. Good health is hard without knowledge, and even then it takes work.
In principle, regulation both works and is necessary. It's a simple fact of life. You *must* regulate in human society. If you don't, the meanest man with the most guns dominates. So we regulate that situation; we organize groups to post watch at the fence. We could refrain from regulating anything, from organizing; let the Big Man win, perhaps as he ought because he's the biggest. Heck, if we didn't regulate anything, we wouldn't even have guns to worry about, because technology is entirely about regulating reality into the shapes we want.
But we're not monkeys. We're humans.
And we regulated reality into fences and gun shapes. Basic law enforcement is just more regulation of the Free Market. You must understand this, and I think you do. You're just frustrated with the bullshit state of affairs and are grappling with "What Went Wrong??".
What went wrong is that we didn't regulate properly. We didn't do enough of it in the right ways; we didn't have the necessary knowledge to keep pathogens out of our government. Nobody has yet figured out how to screen for psychopaths and greedy, self-serving assholes. Like, ever. So we see empires rise and we see them fall due to this failure. No human establishment has ever throughout history managed to sustain itself.
The Law of the Jungle, (Free Market) works fine in the Jungle, because it doesn't have to worry about abstract thinking and frontal lobe intelligence. It's just muscle and claws. But Humans are more than just muscles and claws, and unless we want to revert to being jungle animals, (no thanks; I like living in a house and having cars and computers and sail boats), we cannot pretend that we don't have intelligence. -Intelligence is ALL about regulating things; making deep choices rather than simply following the four Fs; Fight, Flight, Feed & Fuck impulses.
Maybe one day Life will work out how to use that new power without flying off the rails and destroying itself, but so far it's still working through the upgrade.
What Free Market people are feeling is anxiety about leaving behind a system which worked. The Jungle worked. But the Jungle isn't for humans anymore. We outgrew the old bedroom, grew new brain structures and moved out.
So where am I going with this? Let Coca Cola make their study. I don't see how it hurts anything. If their study is crap then make an argument on the basis of the science as to why it is crap.
The problem is that they're not just investing in a study. They're investing in persuasion science.
And it'll work.
Slashdotters are among the most easily manipulated group on the internet. All you do is make the (false) argument sound a little complicated and imply that "stupid people" can't get it, and you've won. You can sell anything you like this way. Slashdotters were programmed to function in this manner during their school years when being a geek was socially punished by their peers and rewarded by the authority figures.
Behaviors, once set, don't change without effort, and nobody even realizes it's a problem, let alone that a solution is worth working towards.
Just watch. In a few years, suggesting that sugar is bad for you will earn you plenty of attacks as people fortify Great Walls of Marketing around their brains.
That would allow the biggest companies free reign to steal creative properties from the little guy.
There's nothing wrong with creating laws to counter monopolies.
Monopolies are the end result of an unrestrained Free Market.
Monopolies kill the Free Market; no matter how great or valuable a new product or service is, no matter how much people might want it, it isn't just competing based on its merits, but it is also competing against corporate regulations which are no less powerful than government regulations. The regulations are just a different type -and you can't vote to change them.
The solution is not what you suggest; a fixed, black & white nuke-the-concept approach. The solution requires on-going balance. The Free Market is based on the idea of allowing living systems to function naturally. But in all living systems, (like oxygen and blood flow regulation in the human body), we need to be smart and constantly willing to observe and adapt according the needs of the system.
Arguing that we should not regulate is like arguing for cancerous growths to dominate.
It was damned cold and damned snowy pretty much everywhere north of Florida six months ago. We didn't have "Polar Vortexes" in the news when I was a kid. I've not seen that many blizzards in one season in my whole life, and I'm getting to be a pretty old man.
Climate change? You bet.
Warmer?
Psh. What continent are you living on?
People can BS themselves all they like, spout their dogma, blame everything they can within their scope of too-limited knowledge. Me? I just bought skis and proper clothing in preparation for next winter because the reality on the ground was buried under 8 feet of white stuff 20 weeks ago and there's no reason to think it isn't going to be the same way in another 20 weeks.
Remember back when travel to the US didn't include this level of harassment?
We've come a long way, brother! Today, it is common practice to have your property stolen with no legal recourse. Today, you're smart if you're scared to complain. And think about it: Laptops are harmless. Data isn't going to jump out and eat anybody while you're in flight.
The desire to know everything about you is indicative of an obsessive, sick need to control. The only thing more pathetic are those who welcome it; the folks beaten as kids for not being obedient enough or for thinking without permission.
When I see small businesses or other collectives start up which have a lot of heart, brains and a good products, but which are probably going to fail, I'll often throw support under them.
Most of the time it doesn't prevent ultimate failure, but sometimes it does and the result is a powerful and positive entity. -At which point I'll usually lose interest and find somebody else to help out with my support.
The chances of success for decent people is going to be lower in a system skewed toward psychopathy. I like to help out where I can because psychopathy sucks.
Also, success can be measured in ways other than mass market acceptance.
I own a lot of cool products and books and such which I wouldn't otherwise if I didn't keep an eye out for awesome people trying to add light to the world.
The amount of bullshit being moved around in this thread is outta this world!
This is about one thing, and one thing only:
Money is debt. Period.
If you don't understand that, go learn.
Essentially, every unit of currency in existence being used by nations today was borrowed from a private agency. At interest.
The U.S. doesn't "print its own money". They borrow it. They gotta pay it back.
They can't.
Why not?
Because the second it's minted, (or keyed into a digital record), it starts earning interest. It's worth more than it's worth.
What does that mean?
It means this...
Suck every single unit of currency out of circulation, every Dollar, Euro, Yen, Peso and whatever the Chinese deal in, stack it all a mile high in some disused stretch of Nevada, bundle it all up with a giant bow, and give it to the banks with a smile, "Here, have it all back!" -And you'd STILL owe the bastards a ridiculous (and ever-increasing) sum.
But.., but.., there's no cash left to pay them with..!
Ah. Now you're getting it.
It's that geometrically growing interest problem. There's no upper limit on it. Remember the story about the Emperor and the chess board with one piece of rice placed on the first square, to be doubled in the next..?
Everybody knows this. Nobody denies it. It's the blank stare and awkward silence which is the problem. People prefer the endlessly complicated meandering voodoo bullshit talk about the intricacies and complexities of blah, blah, blah, rather than look at the system and recognize it for the chillingly simple thing that it is. It is designed to collapse. Collapse is profitable. Very profitable. The banks get to foreclose on real property, trading valueless paper and digits for actual wealth. That's the con. That's the end game.
But people get caught up in emotional manipulations, "They borrowed, spent wildly and expect to get away with not paying it back? Bastards! Harm them!!! We are authoritarian idiots who put subjective moralistic bullshit ahead of logic!"
Stick with this system, and the shadowy banking elites will foreclose on every damned nut, bolt and scrap of real property on the planet. And they'll make you their slave worker, because according to their make-believe math, you still owe them. Nobody is exempt. I don't care who you voted for, you're going down.
The only way out is to say, "Fuck you. You're full of shit! I'm not going to let you talk me into believing that I owe you. You loaned me air, not wealth. You loaned me funny money. I'm not paying you back with my blood, (or in this case, Grecian blood)." The solution is to walk away from the banks, ignore their invoices and threatening letters, and start a real currency which isn't interest bearing.
And to all those sweet students of economics; you have been misled; there are systems where interest is not required to reward investment. You just haven't been told about them, or you are not imaginative enough to work out how they might work. We've been lied to, because lies are profitable.
I applaud Greece for their decision and I wish them the best.
Problem is, the banksters and their vassal states (like the U.S.) will sooner send in bombs and psychopathic death squads than let one of their intended victims walk. Libya fell largely because of their refusal to play along with the bankers.)
And given the bullshit being shoveled around Slashdot, most people will look on with holier-than-thou approval. Until the day it happens to them, (like, next year perhaps?).
The U.S. doesn't control its own currency. It just looks that way because they have their logo printed on each buck.
Every single dollar in existence was borrowed -at interest- from the private banking cartels. There isn't a mathematical model in existence where that's even remotely sustainable.
At the moment other vassal states, like Greece, are being sacrificed to the black hole. The trouble with black holes is that they never stop stop being hungry.
There will always be more debt than currency, and the debt grows exponentially. What we're seeing today is the unavoidable logical collapse point of this insidious scheme.
The whole system is rigged in order to eventually allow the banks to foreclose on all real property and enslave populations. Not a bad scheme, from the con-artist's perspective, when all you're doing is pulling "money" out of thin air. Fake wealth for real wealth. They win, everybody else loses.
The smartest thing to do is get the hell out of that system and start printing and distributing your own currency at zero interest through infrastructure programs. And maybe string up the filthy usurers as a warning.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but every time I dig into this, it seems to reduce to a complicated version of trying to get something out of a balanced system which won't budge due to the Laws of Reality.
If you could just get one of those fridge magnets to turn off for half the engine cycle, you could build a truly awesome car! But fridge magnets don't give free lunches.
Similarly, if try to pull a measurement out of your q-bit, it stops being in super position and just becomes another dumb binary switch.
Solving a problem is the same as trying to sneak an observation of particles acting as waves.
If your quantum computer solves a problem, an encryption riddle, for instance, then that proves its q-bits were in superposition, which instantly means they weren't.
I thought the double slit experiment adequately demonstrated this.
I suspect that the only solutions to this reality gridlock can be found by the likes of Douglas Adams. Though, spending billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of research hours on the problem is pretty close to the kind of narrative Douglas Adams enjoyed telling.
They have a job to do, which is to stop various hostile groups from harming American citizens. While it's true the backdoor thing is stupid for technical reasons, I'm not sure we want to be in a situation where security services are so blind it's impossible for them to detect the next big Islamist attack.
It's easy for them to detect the next big Islamist attack.
-After all, they're the ones financing, training and overseeing its coordination through proxies and even directly with fake uniforms and mustaches.
To not recognize that is to not look.
And yet, astonishingly enough, there are more than 130 comments from people involved in this discussion, coming from the tried & true Slashdot user perspective.
Funny, that.
I've been reading this site for over 15 years, and not a week goes by when somebody doesn't make that same general complaint. It's a cliche at this point. A super cliche. A human behavioral bug. Predictable mechanical behavior which has no effect other than to broadcast one's Missing The Point.
That's always been true. It's about the medium, literally.
But if you are in the business of channeling folks into sitting idle while programming floods across their brains, I suppose it helps to have a variety of specific messages tuned to every basic personality type. Helps keep everybody hypnotized and separated from each other.
Back in the days of just a few channels and just a few programs, we had common stories everybody had seen, and from this drew our modern mythology. A good mythology makes for a healthy culture.
Now there are one of two basic conditions in effect; no culture, because the message is so fragmented, resulting in personal isolationism, OR the effort to tune into everything drains people so much that they are useless to the world.
Bread and circuses.
Both are toxic, it seems.
Even the introductory animation was done with the "for Babies" directive in mind.
Remember what it was? Go look.
Only two people pointed out that a logo change is *not* the item worth paying attention to.
It's about changing the company's operating philosophy while shifting public perception so as to make the transition comfortable.
However, several people here *did* pick up on the psychological association, which is almost absolutely deliberate...
It looks like a pre-school, Fischer Price toy store logo.
It's for babies.
Now ponder *that*.
Also, pay attention to the new style of filtering. For instance, a month ago you could search for the word, "Torrent" and get a bunch of results. That doesn't work today.
Google is angling towards DRM friendly; it's going to be a safe, coddling place where you are treated like an infant, (while they mine your data and observe your "growth").
The public perception is being managed in such a way that this insulting approach makes you feel like it's being done with good intentions. Makes you feel all warm and cuddled and taken care of while your brain is monitored and directed.
I know so many people with cool ideas who can't do anything with their lives other than treadmill because they are anchored to debts.
I've got a long list of names of all the people I've met over the course of my life whose debts I'd wipe out with anonymous gifts should I ever come into the money. I'd spend on that project until everybody is in the clear, or until half the money is gone; whichever comes first. I've never thought in terms of billions before, so you could probably lift a whole lot of people out of slavery and still have plenty left over for the next stage...
Start up a foundation, (or a series of them. Why not?). -Maybe the kind with twenty million sitting pat, collecting interest, and you only spend the interest, (except interest bearing projects are sort of the problem which put everybody into debt in the first place. Going all Batman on the banking elite isn't really an option, so I'm not 100% clear on how to proceed with regard to that philosophy. However...)
Foundations. Fixed budget groups with one or two captains heading up each with mandates like, "Seek out cool stage productions and finance them!" "Promote Maker Spaces and the ability to learn, build and fix tech for people of all ages!" "Awesome private schools where earnest disadvantaged kids can afford to be!" "Set up systems your community can use to establish and maintain their own food security!" "Off the grid, one home at a time..!"
Stuff like that.
It'd be fun to imagine new ways to make the world more awesome and less miserable for lots of people; to give people the chance to spread their wings and really use their gifts rather than burn all their energy just treading water.
Fame is not something that bothers me. That's why you hire secretaries.
Why wait until you're rich?
Get started right now. Sounds like the law would be on your side. Maybe decide that you're okay with losing your job and finding a new one, so the fear of want is gone.
He sounds like an evil ass. Smush him. It's easier than you think, because you'll have pretty much everybody on your side, even people you may not know about yet.
The goal of the energy companies is to maximize profit while minimizing expenses. The delivery of energy is just their method of making money, and they're pretty cozy with it. Change requires learning new things, and that takes work. Work frightens people.
The problem is that many elites have their fortunes and power tied up with the current model. When society starts to monkey with that system, powerful people get upset because it means they might not maintain control over their fiefdoms.
Fusion technology is not being developed by the energy companies, which means if it becomes viable, it would allow for young, spirited competing agencies. That could easily result in a big market shake-up and lots of established people feeling threatened.
The power delivery/distribution systems, via the electricity grid, might be willing to adapt as it wouldn't immediately affect their relationship with money, but they're small players by comparison to fossil fuel interests.
Also, there are military and covert agencies tied up in geo-politics. The face of the world, whole national agendas, are driven by oil. I can't even begin to guess how they might react to the sea change Fusion would cause in that regard. Imagine Saudi Arabia's reaction to having its cash cow threatened. Just for starters.
In any case, I don't think it's quite as cut and dried as you suggest. People would bleed and run around and be frightened while everybody plays musical fusion chairs on the world stage.
Hypocrite.
You're spamming right now.
Why would anybody trust your software when you are doing the very thing you claim to be fighting? -Cluttering up the space with self-promotion and hard-sell noise.
One post is sufficient. Dozens are offensive and off-putting.
And seriously: ALL CAPS is the mark of the time-cubed insane. Don't be insane. People avoid the insane.
Good luck.
You might want to dig into the history of Quackwatch before quoting them.
Sleazy. Lowest of the low, etc.
Sounds like quittin' time to me.
What's keeping you there?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but...
Linux can't control https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... or https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Intel has been setting aside secondary CPU power for invisible applications since forever. Linux ain't keeping your stuff safe except from the lowest level of Big Brother types; the Small-to-Medium Brothers, I suppose.
Intel also does fabrication in Israel. That's where the Mossad live.
How tough is it to capture your keyboard strokes through System Management hardware? Not at all. -You gotta type in that encryption key at some point along the chain.
As to your belief that Coca Cola can shift impressions that easily... that's clearly nonsense. Were that the case the Tobacco industries would won.
Actually, tobacco isn't bad for you. It sharpens awareness, calms fear and increases active intelligence without affecting judgement. But we lost that battle because authority figures sold the idea that it was, filled it with toxins and flooded the scientific community with studies based on poisoned tobacco, thus limiting from the population one of the single most useful drugs humanity has ever had.
Marketing works.
You are absolutely wrong, the 'biggest companies' dominate and steal from 'the little guy' today, except today they have the nuclear option in their hands already - government compliance with the wishes of the biggest companies.
Stop it with the "Absolutely" thing. That's animal thinking and you're a human. This isn't simple.
You are quite correct in the second part of your statement; We don't regulate in favor of the people; essentially we lost the war and no longer have a government of the people, (except in name). The Free Market allowed monster corps to reach cancer status, and the government is simply an extension of them. The parasites won.
Happens all the time. Human bodies are Free Market systems, and lots of us get cancer. Good health is hard without knowledge, and even then it takes work.
In principle, regulation both works and is necessary. It's a simple fact of life. You *must* regulate in human society. If you don't, the meanest man with the most guns dominates. So we regulate that situation; we organize groups to post watch at the fence. We could refrain from regulating anything, from organizing; let the Big Man win, perhaps as he ought because he's the biggest. Heck, if we didn't regulate anything, we wouldn't even have guns to worry about, because technology is entirely about regulating reality into the shapes we want.
But we're not monkeys. We're humans.
And we regulated reality into fences and gun shapes. Basic law enforcement is just more regulation of the Free Market. You must understand this, and I think you do. You're just frustrated with the bullshit state of affairs and are grappling with "What Went Wrong??".
What went wrong is that we didn't regulate properly. We didn't do enough of it in the right ways; we didn't have the necessary knowledge to keep pathogens out of our government. Nobody has yet figured out how to screen for psychopaths and greedy, self-serving assholes. Like, ever. So we see empires rise and we see them fall due to this failure. No human establishment has ever throughout history managed to sustain itself.
The Law of the Jungle, (Free Market) works fine in the Jungle, because it doesn't have to worry about abstract thinking and frontal lobe intelligence. It's just muscle and claws. But Humans are more than just muscles and claws, and unless we want to revert to being jungle animals, (no thanks; I like living in a house and having cars and computers and sail boats), we cannot pretend that we don't have intelligence. -Intelligence is ALL about regulating things; making deep choices rather than simply following the four Fs; Fight, Flight, Feed & Fuck impulses.
Maybe one day Life will work out how to use that new power without flying off the rails and destroying itself, but so far it's still working through the upgrade.
What Free Market people are feeling is anxiety about leaving behind a system which worked. The Jungle worked. But the Jungle isn't for humans anymore. We outgrew the old bedroom, grew new brain structures and moved out.
So where am I going with this? Let Coca Cola make their study. I don't see how it hurts anything. If their study is crap then make an argument on the basis of the science as to why it is crap.
The problem is that they're not just investing in a study. They're investing in persuasion science.
And it'll work.
Slashdotters are among the most easily manipulated group on the internet. All you do is make the (false) argument sound a little complicated and imply that "stupid people" can't get it, and you've won. You can sell anything you like this way. Slashdotters were programmed to function in this manner during their school years when being a geek was socially punished by their peers and rewarded by the authority figures.
Behaviors, once set, don't change without effort, and nobody even realizes it's a problem, let alone that a solution is worth working towards.
Just watch. In a few years, suggesting that sugar is bad for you will earn you plenty of attacks as people fortify Great Walls of Marketing around their brains.
That would allow the biggest companies free reign to steal creative properties from the little guy.
There's nothing wrong with creating laws to counter monopolies.
Monopolies are the end result of an unrestrained Free Market.
Monopolies kill the Free Market; no matter how great or valuable a new product or service is, no matter how much people might want it, it isn't just competing based on its merits, but it is also competing against corporate regulations which are no less powerful than government regulations. The regulations are just a different type -and you can't vote to change them.
The solution is not what you suggest; a fixed, black & white nuke-the-concept approach. The solution requires on-going balance. The Free Market is based on the idea of allowing living systems to function naturally. But in all living systems, (like oxygen and blood flow regulation in the human body), we need to be smart and constantly willing to observe and adapt according the needs of the system.
Arguing that we should not regulate is like arguing for cancerous growths to dominate.
So you're saying.., if I buy a copy of Pixels I can rip and share it as much as I like and ignore any takedown notices?
Good to know!
You just saved me a bunch of time. Thanks!
But use your Slashdot ID so's I know can add you to the list of people who are worth reading on this information snowstorm of a news server.
Just as a point of note, "North of Florida" on the American continent means a whole lot more land mass than just "Florida".
It was damned cold and damned snowy pretty much everywhere north of Florida six months ago. We didn't have "Polar Vortexes" in the news when I was a kid. I've not seen that many blizzards in one season in my whole life, and I'm getting to be a pretty old man.
Climate change? You bet.
Warmer?
Psh. What continent are you living on?
People can BS themselves all they like, spout their dogma, blame everything they can within their scope of too-limited knowledge. Me? I just bought skis and proper clothing in preparation for next winter because the reality on the ground was buried under 8 feet of white stuff 20 weeks ago and there's no reason to think it isn't going to be the same way in another 20 weeks.
Remember back when travel to the US didn't include this level of harassment?
We've come a long way, brother! Today, it is common practice to have your property stolen with no legal recourse. Today, you're smart if you're scared to complain. And think about it: Laptops are harmless. Data isn't going to jump out and eat anybody while you're in flight.
The desire to know everything about you is indicative of an obsessive, sick need to control. The only thing more pathetic are those who welcome it; the folks beaten as kids for not being obedient enough or for thinking without permission.
When I see small businesses or other collectives start up which have a lot of heart, brains and a good products, but which are probably going to fail, I'll often throw support under them.
Most of the time it doesn't prevent ultimate failure, but sometimes it does and the result is a powerful and positive entity. -At which point I'll usually lose interest and find somebody else to help out with my support.
The chances of success for decent people is going to be lower in a system skewed toward psychopathy. I like to help out where I can because psychopathy sucks.
Also, success can be measured in ways other than mass market acceptance.
I own a lot of cool products and books and such which I wouldn't otherwise if I didn't keep an eye out for awesome people trying to add light to the world.
The amount of bullshit being moved around in this thread is outta this world!
This is about one thing, and one thing only:
Money is debt. Period.
If you don't understand that, go learn.
Essentially, every unit of currency in existence being used by nations today was borrowed from a private agency. At interest.
The U.S. doesn't "print its own money". They borrow it. They gotta pay it back.
They can't.
Why not?
Because the second it's minted, (or keyed into a digital record), it starts earning interest. It's worth more than it's worth.
What does that mean?
It means this...
Suck every single unit of currency out of circulation, every Dollar, Euro, Yen, Peso and whatever the Chinese deal in, stack it all a mile high in some disused stretch of Nevada, bundle it all up with a giant bow, and give it to the banks with a smile, "Here, have it all back!" -And you'd STILL owe the bastards a ridiculous (and ever-increasing) sum.
But.., but.., there's no cash left to pay them with..!
Ah. Now you're getting it.
It's that geometrically growing interest problem. There's no upper limit on it. Remember the story about the Emperor and the chess board with one piece of rice placed on the first square, to be doubled in the next..?
Everybody knows this. Nobody denies it. It's the blank stare and awkward silence which is the problem. People prefer the endlessly complicated meandering voodoo bullshit talk about the intricacies and complexities of blah, blah, blah, rather than look at the system and recognize it for the chillingly simple thing that it is. It is designed to collapse. Collapse is profitable. Very profitable. The banks get to foreclose on real property, trading valueless paper and digits for actual wealth. That's the con. That's the end game.
But people get caught up in emotional manipulations, "They borrowed, spent wildly and expect to get away with not paying it back? Bastards! Harm them!!! We are authoritarian idiots who put subjective moralistic bullshit ahead of logic!"
Stick with this system, and the shadowy banking elites will foreclose on every damned nut, bolt and scrap of real property on the planet. And they'll make you their slave worker, because according to their make-believe math, you still owe them. Nobody is exempt. I don't care who you voted for, you're going down.
The only way out is to say, "Fuck you. You're full of shit! I'm not going to let you talk me into believing that I owe you. You loaned me air, not wealth. You loaned me funny money. I'm not paying you back with my blood, (or in this case, Grecian blood)." The solution is to walk away from the banks, ignore their invoices and threatening letters, and start a real currency which isn't interest bearing.
And to all those sweet students of economics; you have been misled; there are systems where interest is not required to reward investment. You just haven't been told about them, or you are not imaginative enough to work out how they might work. We've been lied to, because lies are profitable.
I applaud Greece for their decision and I wish them the best.
Problem is, the banksters and their vassal states (like the U.S.) will sooner send in bombs and psychopathic death squads than let one of their intended victims walk. Libya fell largely because of their refusal to play along with the bankers.)
And given the bullshit being shoveled around Slashdot, most people will look on with holier-than-thou approval. Until the day it happens to them, (like, next year perhaps?).
The U.S. doesn't control its own currency. It just looks that way because they have their logo printed on each buck.
Every single dollar in existence was borrowed -at interest- from the private banking cartels. There isn't a mathematical model in existence where that's even remotely sustainable.
At the moment other vassal states, like Greece, are being sacrificed to the black hole. The trouble with black holes is that they never stop stop being hungry.
There will always be more debt than currency, and the debt grows exponentially. What we're seeing today is the unavoidable logical collapse point of this insidious scheme.
The whole system is rigged in order to eventually allow the banks to foreclose on all real property and enslave populations. Not a bad scheme, from the con-artist's perspective, when all you're doing is pulling "money" out of thin air. Fake wealth for real wealth. They win, everybody else loses.
The smartest thing to do is get the hell out of that system and start printing and distributing your own currency at zero interest through infrastructure programs. And maybe string up the filthy usurers as a warning.