When you think about it that way, it does seem ridiculous... some interpretations of quantum mechanics (for example, the "Many Worlds" model, explained below) may help understand how this could possibly be. Indeed, this is why some people dislike the typical view of quantum mechanics (the "Copenhagen Model"), as there are experiments that show that this does in fact change things.
The most straight-forward example (that doesn't involve murdering cats) is the double-slit experiment. You send a coherent beam of light (or electrons, it turns out, although that particular experiment is harder) at a screen with two slits in it, and observe what pattern appears on the wall behind it. With just one slit, a particular pattern (a diffraction pattern) appears. But with both slits in place, you see characteristic alternating bands of light and dark (an interference pattern). The weird part comes if you place a detector in the slit (that still allows the light to pass through), to try to see which slit each photon goes through. If you do that, the intereference pattern disappears! Somehow, the act of passively measuring the photon (which is just EM radiation under a different name) with scientific instruments changes the fundamental character of the interaction - that is, you "collapse the wave function."
While measuring the whole universe does indeed sound much more ridiculous than a table-top experiment, the point is just that the axioms of quantum mechanics, when applied to the universe as a whole, give this result. Now, this could mean there's something wrong with the way we model dark energy... my money is on this one, seeing as how we actually have no consistent theory at all of how Dark Energy works. This article is based on 2 or 3 assumptions that have not at all been established as anything other than theories that might work (and there are far more theories that also work and don't tell you that we're destroying the universe).
Alternatively, though, this could mean we don't understand quantum mechanics (in fact, we KNOW that it's wrong when it comes to gravity, for other reasons) or at least that the Copenhagen model is incorrect. An attractive (to some people) model is the "Many Worlds" model. According to this interpretation, instead of the universe reacting to our measurements, there are universes created every time a measurement is made for each of the possible outcomes of the measurement. So measuring the acceleration of Dark Energy, in this interpretation, doesn't change the universe directly - instead, it simply selects one out of many possible universes for YOU to inhabit. From that viewpoint, it makes much more sense how observation can affect things that you are not directly controlling - you just pick where you're doing your observation from, rather than changing the thing that you are observing.
Actually, inside the event horizon of a black hole, all of that switches around - when you cross the event horizon, time and space switch. More mathematically, if you look at the Schwartzschild Metric (the mathematical description of space near a black hole - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_metric has the form of it), you'll see that when the radial coordinate r passes from outside to inside the event horizon, the radial and time coordinates switch signs, making paths constant in space outside the event horizon constant in time inside the event horizon (and vice versa). Now this is something like what the article authors are saying is "about to happen" in out universe, but with an unrelated cause (e.g. they aren't claiming anything about falling into black holes or the like)
Another important thing to bear in mind is that the observed universe is essentially completely isotropic on large scales. This means that we cannot be inside a black hole because then the black hole singularity has to be located somewhere (the r=0 point in the Schwartzschild metric) that isn't here, and this would manifest as a preferred direction in the universe. And there isn't one.
As for the idea of the Big Bang being a "repeatable occurrence in the limitless void of space," bear in mind that the Big Bang occurred everywhere - again, the universe is isotropic on large enough scales, so saying the Big Bang could happen again, just "somewhere else" is a meaningless statement. Of course, when you start throwing in the brane theories with more than 4 dimensions, things get more complicated (e.g. multiple big bangs can be constrained to branes that are limited along some 5th or 6th or 7th or whatever dimension... but I don't know too terribly much about that side of things)
It's great to think about these kinds of ideas, but (despite what some present-day particle physicists seem to think) they always need to be tempered with some observational checks about the universe that we actually live in to be anything more than an unusual mathematical oddity.
As a final note, though, your original idea of time "slowing down" has been investigated by some people - I don't have any references off hand, but there has at times been talk of a time-varying speed of light. The key point is that c is the "constant" that you multiply by time to get dimensions of space - having it vary in time would lead to a more complicated relation between time and spatial coordinates, that may well seem to result an an acceleration. The problem is, this seriously mucks up how light and other EM radiation works, and its very difficult to get the observed universe to be observable at all if you let this happen.
No particle accelerator could generate fields strong enough to kill a person solely due to the magnetism, but certain wild astrophysical objects (for example, magnetars - pulsars with unusually high magnetic fields - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar ) generate fields that, in the near vicinity, could kill a person just by polarizing the diamagnetic materials in the human body. The thing is, magnetic interactions are generally so much weaker than electrical that all phenomenon I've ever heard of that make those kinds of fields would kill you with various kinds of radiation far sooner than the magnetism would. Not to mention, at least in the case of magnetars and black holes, tidal forces would be fatal before magnetic effects could come into play.
I would have to partially disagree with this. Some of my greatest educational experiences were learning to think in a way different from how I thought about science (not engineering, but still a technical field...).
For purely technical writing (i.e. documentation and the like), perhaps it is reasonable to treat it as an engineering problem, but anything that has a significant element of creativity, humor, or persuasion simply cannot be put into a neat formula that scientists, programmers, or engineers will be able to say "that's like writing and debugging code." There is certainly value in framing some of the questions in the terminology of engineering (some of the ideas the parent has are very clever in this respect), but writing just can't be a pure engineering problem. The best writers learn to think in both paradigms (the "humanities" mindset and the "technical" mindset).
If you look carefully, you'll find Dr. Mills is the only person to publish any results supporting Hydrino theory. This is VERY suspicious, seeing as how science is founded on the idea that other people doing the same experiment reproduce your results. This doesn't mean he's overtly lying, but it could mean that some part of his experiment, he makes a mistake that his team doesn't catch because he's been doing it so long.
The moral is: I'll believe when other people can reproduce the results.
"Previously, astronomers debated whether a presumed central feature of the galaxy would be a bar structure or a central ellipse - or both"
Everyone knew there was some kind of feature at the center of the galaxy, but sprial galaxies show a continuum between ellipses and bars in their cores, and in the middle areas, its hard to distinguish which is which. The quote you cited says the central feature is 7,000 ly longer than previously though, but it ALSO shows that the shape is much more bar-like than previously thought. Sure, that makes the Hubble Sequence (the most well-known categorization scheme that seperates barred spirals from "normal" spirals) a bit deceptive, but it's MEANT to represent those extrememes.
You have to be careful here, though - "supersonic" and "subsonic" in terms of interplanetary space have a different meaning... the material has too little density to really talk about sound waves propogating through it, but you're right you can take about it in terms of charged particles' speed in relation to the average speed of the solar wind. BUT - that doesn't make any sense for macro-scale objects... Unless you think all macros-scale object in space objects are electrically charged. I doubt these people have thought that far, but they are self-consistant in that respect...
While I completely agree on a), I think your solution to b) isn't quite right. There's no reason why math/science needs to be made less nerdy, kids just need to realize there's NOTHING wrong with being a "nerd/dork/dweeb" - there are plenty of us around, so it isn't like they have to be all alone(Slashdot is certainly proof of that). The thing that's terrible about being a nerd for a high school student is that the people making fun of them have convinced them its a bad thing - all that's necessary is for the nerds to realize that their way of thinking and acting is no less valid than anyone else's.
Once people realize the "geek" label just bounces off you (or can be taken as a compliment, even), they often stop using it and start thinking of you as a real person. To bring this back to the topic at hand, that also allows those who are only held back by the societal pressure (those who are intersted in math/science, but don't want anyone to know that they are) to "come out of the closet" as it were, because they see there's nothing bad about it.
How is XP 64-bit? As I understand it, they had to develop an entirely different version to enable 64-bit functionality... (hence the "Windows XP 64-bit edition")
Well, there are things that have a probability of 0, but you're right that there is nothing with a probability of 1 (quantum mechanics tells us that, if nothing else). The point, though, is that in a universe of infinite extent, even the lowest probability even happens. Of course, if the universe is infinite, the laws of probability break down, so it's unclear what would actually happen. If it's finite but very large, on the other hand (which is one of the ideas the article suggested) things with very low probabilities are almost certainly going to happen (although you're right that it's not COMPLETELY certain, with a probability of 1)
Well, for pictures and HTML, obviously HTTP is better - it is after all what it was designed for. This web site came up, sure, but this web site isn't a very large file. No one doubts that HTTP is better for web pages - I'm pretty sure the question was asking about larger file downloads, the purpose FTP was designed for...
It tried for two different markets and failed with both of them (Nemesis was only a little better, in my opinion). Immediately upon seeing previews for Insurrection, I knew that it was departing from the Star Trek "tradition" and trying to go mainstream - more action, more sex, less thinking, etc. The problem was, that's not (necessarily) what most of the core Trekkies want to see, and for whatever reason, it failed at attracting the mainstream. That's Why I didn't like it. The same thing can be said about Nemesis, except people realized it would be like Insurrection.
Now why would you think that? It's true that manned spaceflight probably doesn't have the obvious advantages that,say, an engineering company or even unmanned space projects have, but that doesn't mean they aren't justifiable.
There are products that improve the daily lives of people all around the world who's roots can be traced to manned space exploration. If an example is necssary, there were a number of significant developments in plastics that came out of the space program that quite likely wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions.
And that's before getting to the actual research itself. Just because the public doesn't really want it doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. By that reasoning, all research scientists should immediately close up shop and stop wondering why the universe works. Expanding the scope of human knowledge is the only way for Humans to progress in any real fashion.
Even if manned spaceflight doesn't have the same return on investment that an earth-based corporation has, it has other uses that are far more important and cannot be simply ignored because it isn't building a better mousetrap.
I keep switching stations, and I'm tired of hearing about "6 Americans and 1 Israeli". 7 people were in that shuttle. It's frustrating that the media can't let go of war sensationalism even now, at a time like this.
This isn't necessarily "war sensationalism" It's just recognizing that one of the astronauts was an Israeli. If anything it's a tribute to nationalism. If the first Mexican to go into space was on this flight, I'm sure they'd say "6 Americans and 1 Mexican." That doesn't necessarily mean Mexico is under a threat of terrorism.
Keep in mind, though, that that simply means the shuttle technically was capable of flying 100 missions - that doesn't necessarily mean the equipment wouldn't be hopelessly out of date - the point here is that we could easily design a new shuttle that would do what the current shuttle does, but do it many times better.
This isn't a very good comparison - the technology required to design a 747 is far less than what is needed to design a reusable space vehicle. Their two totally different things. More importantly, the motive for the 747 is purely commercial. The Space Shuttle (and all of NASA, for that matter) is a government-sponsored research institution. I really don't understand the connection you're trying to make between the two.
Who says that can't change? Not all humans spend their lives trying to be better than the rest of the species, so that means that there is (at the very least) hope that the rest of the species can come around to that way of thinking.
Re:Ramblings on overpriced labor & ecology
on
Giant Sucking Noise
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
But the question is how much good the CEO actually does, and if that's justified in the salary. I'd say one of the biggest problems in American (and perhaps foreign) corporations is that the CEOs are all working for each others' benefit. A lot of companies function despite their CEOs instead of because of them, but because the CEOs are all on each others' board of directors, they've learned that if they pump up their fellows' salaries, their fellows will pump up theirs. In the end, there is only one position in the modern corporation that has no oversight: the CEO.
This isn't to say all CEOs are incompotent, there are certanly some that are exceptional and were the keys to a company's success or failure, but most of them aren't any better than anyone in middle management - they just have the right connections.
I don't know if I agree with that charecterization of stories vs. 'play' - I think it would be very possible to create an EQ game that was both story-driven and commercially viable. After all, paper RPGs were around long before computers, and they're still being sold now - the trick is to find a way to adapt that to computers.
"You really think anyone outside of US knows, or even gives a shit?"
I'm seeing a connection here... If anyone in the US said this about, say, Monaco, guess what you would call us? "self centered pricks"
I don't know if it's safe to say Americans are idiots - we're just uneducated. I think many of the problems in the US (I'm American, btw), boil down to the fact that too many people are either uneducated, or poorly educated (i.e. They have diplomas or degrees, but didn't really learn much). I think that's one of the major sources of American arrogance(and all the actions that go along with it), which is the main source of all the anti-american sentiment in the rest of the world.
I usually accept this argument if its an ideology issue like abortion, but these are organizations that were created for a certain issue, and are focused on that issue. An oil company doesn't want a politician to help them because they believe that what they're doing is right - most of the time, their primary concern is cash flow. That's why I see a major difference between ads funded by ideological organizations and ads funded (even indirectly) by corporations.
You know it's true that we Americans have had a dim view of socialism, but I've always thought it odd - after all, since FDR, the US has been more or less socialist. Not to the extent of some European countries, but if we truly wanted to call ourselves "capitalists," we'd have to get rid of pretty much all our social programs. And that would be a bad thing.
Slashdot Mirror
When you think about it that way, it does seem ridiculous... some interpretations of quantum mechanics (for example, the "Many Worlds" model, explained below) may help understand how this could possibly be. Indeed, this is why some people dislike the typical view of quantum mechanics (the "Copenhagen Model"), as there are experiments that show that this does in fact change things.
The most straight-forward example (that doesn't involve murdering cats) is the double-slit experiment. You send a coherent beam of light (or electrons, it turns out, although that particular experiment is harder) at a screen with two slits in it, and observe what pattern appears on the wall behind it. With just one slit, a particular pattern (a diffraction pattern) appears. But with both slits in place, you see characteristic alternating bands of light and dark (an interference pattern). The weird part comes if you place a detector in the slit (that still allows the light to pass through), to try to see which slit each photon goes through. If you do that, the intereference pattern disappears! Somehow, the act of passively measuring the photon (which is just EM radiation under a different name) with scientific instruments changes the fundamental character of the interaction - that is, you "collapse the wave function."
While measuring the whole universe does indeed sound much more ridiculous than a table-top experiment, the point is just that the axioms of quantum mechanics, when applied to the universe as a whole, give this result. Now, this could mean there's something wrong with the way we model dark energy... my money is on this one, seeing as how we actually have no consistent theory at all of how Dark Energy works. This article is based on 2 or 3 assumptions that have not at all been established as anything other than theories that might work (and there are far more theories that also work and don't tell you that we're destroying the universe).
Alternatively, though, this could mean we don't understand quantum mechanics (in fact, we KNOW that it's wrong when it comes to gravity, for other reasons) or at least that the Copenhagen model is incorrect. An attractive (to some people) model is the "Many Worlds" model. According to this interpretation, instead of the universe reacting to our measurements, there are universes created every time a measurement is made for each of the possible outcomes of the measurement. So measuring the acceleration of Dark Energy, in this interpretation, doesn't change the universe directly - instead, it simply selects one out of many possible universes for YOU to inhabit. From that viewpoint, it makes much more sense how observation can affect things that you are not directly controlling - you just pick where you're doing your observation from, rather than changing the thing that you are observing.
Actually, inside the event horizon of a black hole, all of that switches around - when you cross the event horizon, time and space switch. More mathematically, if you look at the Schwartzschild Metric (the mathematical description of space near a black hole - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_metric has the form of it), you'll see that when the radial coordinate r passes from outside to inside the event horizon, the radial and time coordinates switch signs, making paths constant in space outside the event horizon constant in time inside the event horizon (and vice versa). Now this is something like what the article authors are saying is "about to happen" in out universe, but with an unrelated cause (e.g. they aren't claiming anything about falling into black holes or the like)
Another important thing to bear in mind is that the observed universe is essentially completely isotropic on large scales. This means that we cannot be inside a black hole because then the black hole singularity has to be located somewhere (the r=0 point in the Schwartzschild metric) that isn't here, and this would manifest as a preferred direction in the universe. And there isn't one.
As for the idea of the Big Bang being a "repeatable occurrence in the limitless void of space," bear in mind that the Big Bang occurred everywhere - again, the universe is isotropic on large enough scales, so saying the Big Bang could happen again, just "somewhere else" is a meaningless statement. Of course, when you start throwing in the brane theories with more than 4 dimensions, things get more complicated (e.g. multiple big bangs can be constrained to branes that are limited along some 5th or 6th or 7th or whatever dimension... but I don't know too terribly much about that side of things)
It's great to think about these kinds of ideas, but (despite what some present-day particle physicists seem to think) they always need to be tempered with some observational checks about the universe that we actually live in to be anything more than an unusual mathematical oddity.
As a final note, though, your original idea of time "slowing down" has been investigated by some people - I don't have any references off hand, but there has at times been talk of a time-varying speed of light. The key point is that c is the "constant" that you multiply by time to get dimensions of space - having it vary in time would lead to a more complicated relation between time and spatial coordinates, that may well seem to result an an acceleration. The problem is, this seriously mucks up how light and other EM radiation works, and its very difficult to get the observed universe to be observable at all if you let this happen.
No particle accelerator could generate fields strong enough to kill a person solely due to the magnetism, but certain wild astrophysical objects (for example, magnetars - pulsars with unusually high magnetic fields - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar ) generate fields that, in the near vicinity, could kill a person just by polarizing the diamagnetic materials in the human body. The thing is, magnetic interactions are generally so much weaker than electrical that all phenomenon I've ever heard of that make those kinds of fields would kill you with various kinds of radiation far sooner than the magnetism would. Not to mention, at least in the case of magnetars and black holes, tidal forces would be fatal before magnetic effects could come into play.
I would have to partially disagree with this. Some of my greatest educational experiences were learning to think in a way different from how I thought about science (not engineering, but still a technical field...). For purely technical writing (i.e. documentation and the like), perhaps it is reasonable to treat it as an engineering problem, but anything that has a significant element of creativity, humor, or persuasion simply cannot be put into a neat formula that scientists, programmers, or engineers will be able to say "that's like writing and debugging code." There is certainly value in framing some of the questions in the terminology of engineering (some of the ideas the parent has are very clever in this respect), but writing just can't be a pure engineering problem. The best writers learn to think in both paradigms (the "humanities" mindset and the "technical" mindset).
If you look carefully, you'll find Dr. Mills is the only person to publish any results supporting Hydrino theory. This is VERY suspicious, seeing as how science is founded on the idea that other people doing the same experiment reproduce your results. This doesn't mean he's overtly lying, but it could mean that some part of his experiment, he makes a mistake that his team doesn't catch because he's been doing it so long. The moral is: I'll believe when other people can reproduce the results.
"Previously, astronomers debated whether a presumed central feature of the galaxy would be a bar structure or a central ellipse - or both"
Everyone knew there was some kind of feature at the center of the galaxy, but sprial galaxies show a continuum between ellipses and bars in their cores, and in the middle areas, its hard to distinguish which is which. The quote you cited says the central feature is 7,000 ly longer than previously though, but it ALSO shows that the shape is much more bar-like than previously thought. Sure, that makes the Hubble Sequence (the most well-known categorization scheme that seperates barred spirals from "normal" spirals) a bit deceptive, but it's MEANT to represent those extrememes.
You have to be careful here, though - "supersonic" and "subsonic" in terms of interplanetary space have a different meaning... the material has too little density to really talk about sound waves propogating through it, but you're right you can take about it in terms of charged particles' speed in relation to the average speed of the solar wind. BUT - that doesn't make any sense for macro-scale objects... Unless you think all macros-scale object in space objects are electrically charged. I doubt these people have thought that far, but they are self-consistant in that respect...
While I completely agree on a), I think your solution to b) isn't quite right. There's no reason why math/science needs to be made less nerdy, kids just need to realize there's NOTHING wrong with being a "nerd/dork/dweeb" - there are plenty of us around, so it isn't like they have to be all alone(Slashdot is certainly proof of that). The thing that's terrible about being a nerd for a high school student is that the people making fun of them have convinced them its a bad thing - all that's necessary is for the nerds to realize that their way of thinking and acting is no less valid than anyone else's. Once people realize the "geek" label just bounces off you (or can be taken as a compliment, even), they often stop using it and start thinking of you as a real person. To bring this back to the topic at hand, that also allows those who are only held back by the societal pressure (those who are intersted in math/science, but don't want anyone to know that they are) to "come out of the closet" as it were, because they see there's nothing bad about it.
How is XP 64-bit? As I understand it, they had to develop an entirely different version to enable 64-bit functionality... (hence the "Windows XP 64-bit edition")
Well, there are things that have a probability of 0, but you're right that there is nothing with a probability of 1 (quantum mechanics tells us that, if nothing else). The point, though, is that in a universe of infinite extent, even the lowest probability even happens. Of course, if the universe is infinite, the laws of probability break down, so it's unclear what would actually happen. If it's finite but very large, on the other hand (which is one of the ideas the article suggested) things with very low probabilities are almost certainly going to happen (although you're right that it's not COMPLETELY certain, with a probability of 1)
Well, for pictures and HTML, obviously HTTP is better - it is after all what it was designed for. This web site came up, sure, but this web site isn't a very large file. No one doubts that HTTP is better for web pages - I'm pretty sure the question was asking about larger file downloads, the purpose FTP was designed for...
Funny, I remember that being the case during Vietnam, and that was such a wonderful war...
It tried for two different markets and failed with both of them (Nemesis was only a little better, in my opinion). Immediately upon seeing previews for Insurrection, I knew that it was departing from the Star Trek "tradition" and trying to go mainstream - more action, more sex, less thinking, etc. The problem was, that's not (necessarily) what most of the core Trekkies want to see, and for whatever reason, it failed at attracting the mainstream. That's Why I didn't like it. The same thing can be said about Nemesis, except people realized it would be like Insurrection.
Now why would you think that? It's true that manned spaceflight probably doesn't have the obvious advantages that,say, an engineering company or even unmanned space projects have, but that doesn't mean they aren't justifiable.
There are products that improve the daily lives of people all around the world who's roots can be traced to manned space exploration. If an example is necssary, there were a number of significant developments in plastics that came out of the space program that quite likely wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the Apollo and Space Shuttle missions.
And that's before getting to the actual research itself. Just because the public doesn't really want it doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. By that reasoning, all research scientists should immediately close up shop and stop wondering why the universe works. Expanding the scope of human knowledge is the only way for Humans to progress in any real fashion.
Even if manned spaceflight doesn't have the same return on investment that an earth-based corporation has, it has other uses that are far more important and cannot be simply ignored because it isn't building a better mousetrap.
I keep switching stations, and I'm tired of hearing about "6 Americans and 1 Israeli". 7 people were in that shuttle. It's frustrating that the media can't let go of war sensationalism even now, at a time like this.
This isn't necessarily "war sensationalism" It's just recognizing that one of the astronauts was an Israeli. If anything it's a tribute to nationalism. If the first Mexican to go into space was on this flight, I'm sure they'd say "6 Americans and 1 Mexican." That doesn't necessarily mean Mexico is under a threat of terrorism.
Keep in mind, though, that that simply means the shuttle technically was capable of flying 100 missions - that doesn't necessarily mean the equipment wouldn't be hopelessly out of date - the point here is that we could easily design a new shuttle that would do what the current shuttle does, but do it many times better.
This isn't a very good comparison - the technology required to design a 747 is far less than what is needed to design a reusable space vehicle. Their two totally different things. More importantly, the motive for the 747 is purely commercial. The Space Shuttle (and all of NASA, for that matter) is a government-sponsored research institution. I really don't understand the connection you're trying to make between the two.
Who says that can't change? Not all humans spend their lives trying to be better than the rest of the species, so that means that there is (at the very least) hope that the rest of the species can come around to that way of thinking.
But the question is how much good the CEO actually does, and if that's justified in the salary. I'd say one of the biggest problems in American (and perhaps foreign) corporations is that the CEOs are all working for each others' benefit. A lot of companies function despite their CEOs instead of because of them, but because the CEOs are all on each others' board of directors, they've learned that if they pump up their fellows' salaries, their fellows will pump up theirs. In the end, there is only one position in the modern corporation that has no oversight: the CEO.
This isn't to say all CEOs are incompotent, there are certanly some that are exceptional and were the keys to a company's success or failure, but most of them aren't any better than anyone in middle management - they just have the right connections.
I don't know if I agree with that charecterization of stories vs. 'play' - I think it would be very possible to create an EQ game that was both story-driven and commercially viable. After all, paper RPGs were around long before computers, and they're still being sold now - the trick is to find a way to adapt that to computers.
"You really think anyone outside of US knows, or even gives a shit?" I'm seeing a connection here... If anyone in the US said this about, say, Monaco, guess what you would call us? "self centered pricks"
I don't know if it's safe to say Americans are idiots - we're just uneducated. I think many of the problems in the US (I'm American, btw), boil down to the fact that too many people are either uneducated, or poorly educated (i.e. They have diplomas or degrees, but didn't really learn much). I think that's one of the major sources of American arrogance(and all the actions that go along with it), which is the main source of all the anti-american sentiment in the rest of the world.
I usually accept this argument if its an ideology issue like abortion, but these are organizations that were created for a certain issue, and are focused on that issue. An oil company doesn't want a politician to help them because they believe that what they're doing is right - most of the time, their primary concern is cash flow. That's why I see a major difference between ads funded by ideological organizations and ads funded (even indirectly) by corporations.
And that's a copout conservatives (and for that matter, liberals, in other situations) use then they can't think of how to answer an argument.
You know it's true that we Americans have had a dim view of socialism, but I've always thought it odd - after all, since FDR, the US has been more or less socialist. Not to the extent of some European countries, but if we truly wanted to call ourselves "capitalists," we'd have to get rid of pretty much all our social programs. And that would be a bad thing.