They're in the business to find out your interests to sell ads.

Why is that a mysterious thing? This is the job of any media company: to find your weaknesses and manipulate you in order to sell you goods.

I don't understand why people have a problem with that? Sales and marketing is what society has been doing since life was invented. You brush your teeth in the morning to sell yourself to your personal audiences over the people that DON'T brush their teeth in the morning.

Everything that Google does is known and predictable. There is nothing wrong about what they do, and we should encourage them to find out your sales weaknesses in order to extract more money from you via the advertising they sell.

After all, you do the same personal sales and marketing for yourself. Everybody does sales and marketing. It's a fundamental life property, not just for humans, but all species.

We should encourage sales and marketing, over the objection of the libertarian douchebag princesses that are losing the attention-whoring war against professional marketers like Google.

It's always amusing when libertarian princesses cry about losing at attention-whoring.

If you're trying to start a business around apps, you better have a business plan in place, and that would typically include your marketing activities.

If you don't know the basics of even how to email thousands of media sites to get them to publicize and review your app, then you shouldn't be in the business.

The app store isn't broken. Your business plan is.

Yes, it is what it's about, but the narcissistic libertarian princesses that infest this site haven't figured out that other people have power and control over them.

These narcissistic libertarian princesses made the mistake of thinking they are the ultimate power.

Sorry narcissistic libertarian princesses, but you're not in control over your lives - other people have control over you.

Maybe in your next life, you'll learn to gain power in order to maintain some self control?

Meanwhile, we will continue to A/B test the shit out of you and manipulate you to your heart's content.

Are going to go apeshit when you find out people PAY MONEY for things like fashion magazines and Sunday newspapers, BECAUSE of the ads.

Also, you don't have to go to the CNN site if you don't like their ads. No one actually forced you to read CNN. It is their media property, they can do what they wish.

Your only role is to decide if you want to visit their media property or not.

You don't get to decide things you don't pay for. The people that pay for things gets to decide them.

If you ever feel the need to install an ad blocker, you're doing it wrong. The correct response is to NOT visit that site in the first place if you don't like their ads.

Again, please try not to make things convenient for you when you don't pay for it. You need to pay for things that you want your way. More people should be taught that.

Well I got my free healthcare so sucks to be you! haha!

Sorry kiddos, you can't have everything. Politics is about "choosing between given choices", not "getting what you want".

And that means making tradeoffs.

Is free healthcare more important than Patent reform? Because fuck patent reform if that means I lose free healthcare.

Do you think you would have been better off under a McCain/Palin administration? Because I got news for you if you think they would have given what you wanted in Copyrights, Patents, and Guantanamo Bay.

Again: politics is about choosing between given choices. It is NOT about getting what you want.

Very few people get that.

It bugs me that people, while taking in consideration the intelligence Gates has would ever say something like that and mean 640KB would last forever.

Are you an idiot? Because you must be, since advertising is very influential. The entire global economy revolves around it. Every single dollar revolves around some form of advertising.

It must cause your head to explode when you find out people actually BUY newspapers and magazines BECAUSE of the ads, or when they watch random teams in the Superbowl BECAUSE of the ads...

Don't be a douchebag libertarian narcissist that thinks their lives are above influence by others.

"I am so awesome that advertising has no effect on me."

Introverted libertarian narcissist geeks such as yourself are the worst. Your narcissism prevents you from understanding how the real world operates, where advertising is actually DESIRED, because people are interested in other people's lives, and becoming like those people.

Unlike you, where you're stuck comfortably in the awesomeness of your own life, but you don't know about your low social status, or complain about how other awesome people are actually somehow not awesome? hah.

Given all that, social media advertising itself is a terrible concept, because it goes against the basic nature of how advertising and marketing and marketing works. Mainly, the rule of life that says people want to associate themselves with people more powerful than themselves.

Why would a brand place their ad next to a picture of your friend from high-school throwing up, when they can place their brand's ad next to an awesome picture of Kate Moss in Vogue? Or next to an awesome sports figure on ESPN (the most valuable media property in the world)?

If you understand that, THEN you understand how advertising really works, and how influential it actually is. Understand this rule, and you can pretty much make any brand.

Of course, the libertarian narcissist douchebag doesn't understand that other people are higher power than them (because obviously their narcissistic disorder causes them to think they're just too awesome themselves) so this basic fundamental of advertising flies right over their head.

They're idiots and their entire economy revolves around selling things they can find on the ground.

Making microprocessors takes some actual talent.

New taxes are never the solution. Ever.

Taxes are the costs of living in a society. I own this country, and I don't want you to live in this country without paying me something for it.

That is because humans are territorial animals. I have no desire to allow you to live in this country for free, when I can take all the resources of this land for myself. If you want to live on this land, you're going to have to pay me, and the rest of us citizenry. Otherwise, GTFO.

Taxes are the tribute you, as a citizen, pay to other citizens like me, for allowing you to live in this country.

This is the punishment you get for having little power in life. Sucks, but your libertarian philosophy mistakenly led you to believe you had more power than you thought you had. This is why adults never teach their children to be libertarian, because that is the incorrect view of life.

Remember, life isn't free. People live under the power of others, and no one is interested in allowing you freedom to live your life on your own. You will always have to live your life under the rule of someone else, because someone else controls the land you live in.

If you don't like that system you will have to find a way to rule over the land you wish to live on without any other rulers over it. Maybe you can try your hand at becoming a Somali warlord?

Also, either the author of the article has a listening comprehension problem or the assitant professor quoted in the article has a reading comprehension problem.

Look at Turing's original article. It says that the imitation game is played between a man (A), a woman (B), and a player C. C has to decide among A and B who is a man and who is a woman. Now, the _man_ is replaced is a computer and we ask if C will perform as well or poorly as before.

So in Turing's version we have a computer A pretending to be a woman to C, and a woman trying to convince C that she is the woman.

Turning's original test _does not_ have a man and a computer pretending to be a woman to a judge.

There are 7 billion people on earth but only one tallest person. Clearly the odds of finding a tallest being on any planet is 1:7_billion.

The point of parent is that if the intelligent "us" were not us, someone else would have evolved to be as intelligent. You can argue that point but don't argue probabilities based on 1 out of however many being intelligent. Two intelligent species would have competed and one would be killed off so far in earth's history.

+1 ;-)

no, it's not newsworthy

but it feels good giving them as much bad PR as we can handle

post a story like this every other month

"consumers screwed by oligopolies" category should be a thing

Do you realize that the whole point of the GP's "exercise" was that you can't ignore relativity? It is due to relativity that the time observed by the traveller would be so little. If you are travelling at a velocity very close to the speed of light, in your own frame time is essentially standing still. You would get to your destination before you could blink your eye.

Now redo the calculations taking time dilation into account.