I ran into problems with wikipedia during the recent elections in my state. Wikipedia was not my first stop in gathering information on candidates, but I did go there after forming some initial conclusions to see if the masses had noted anything I had missed in the governor's race. The incumbent surprisingly had, despite having worked in the state for years (and despite my having seen at least a couple of positive things in the news) not ever done anything good. The article was well sourced, but it was entirely negative. I will grant you that politics corrupts, but it seemed a bit off. When I got to the challenger's wikipedia page, I discovered that he had never done anything bad (or marginally negative even), only good. There are theoretically moderating folks involved in each area of wikipedia, so it was surprising that the pages (and their history for some time) were as they were. Others are noting that their edits are being rejected. I don't know much about this, but it would appear likely given this one example.

All the challenger's efforts (or his supporters') to "fix" the wikipedia entries relevant to the election were for naught (I guess not many people take wikipedia seriously). The incumbent ended up winning despite apparently having a challenger with a staff dedicated to manipulating popular websites.

1. Take ads. Lots of ads.

2. Generate ire in the public using said ads, thereby increasing publicity and public interest.

3. Sell to Google to replace dead knol (or however they spell it).

4. Profit.

5. Re-invest in competing industry after the non-compete clause expires.

6. ????

7. More profit.

or maybe just use a basic cipher or memory peg for all passwords... at least, that's what I did until someone hacked all of my email addresses (but forgot to change the "I forgot my password" setting and this allowed me to regain control).

speaking of adblock, (and yes, this is somewhat offtopic, and if someone wants to waste mod points on a nested comment so far down, kudos to you), have you noticed that more ads seem to be getting through on Chrome lately? Is this a "feature" of the browser or is this isolated to me (likely user error or some such)?

I have the same problem with my ... bank card. In what world is a four digit password based off of ten numbers a secure method of doing business. The immediate answer is, "you have to have a passcard too" but this is no longer true since someone can walk past your wallet with a fancy phone attachment and get your number just by bumping into you to put onto their own fake card. Ah well.

...and yet there was clearly gambling and smuggling in every series.

This is where the movie Wall-E comes into play. If humans had all they needed... AND all they wanted all the time, what would be our motivation? If there were no scarcity ever, it seems to me that the Wall-E scenario could easily come to pass (or the scenario of Inception multiplied across the entire population... people addicted to dreams). It would seem to me that the government would do well to ensure some level of scarcity always exists even with such technology as is readily available in Star Trek (or else we'd all run around on scooters until we died of boredom).

Additionally, I really think there are a few too many people on the planet that would still steal, still live homeless, etc. even if in a Star Trek-like environment... capitalism could even still find itself necessary because of the intrinsic value of non-replicated antiques (and there would be a scarcity there).

It might indeed be arrogance to suggest that life could only exist in an earth-like environment. Going on the statement by hoggoth (parent to my first post), he is suggesting that life on earth exists as it does now only because of prior life adjusting our atmosphere. If we found a planet with an atmosphere similar to our own (and hoggoth is correct), then it might be safe to assume there was life of some kind (again, this is based in a lot of assumptions).

Given politics in the US, it would seem then that if a planet were thought to have life, the establishment would want to have the ability to get there and investigate it at the earliest possible opportunity to determine threat mitigation responses.

It is entirely possible that your scenario of another form of life might be missed entirely by present researchers (and the camera hungry politicians who fund them). It is also possible that they would not. I am not suggesting that there is no other form of life besides earth's nor am I am suggesting that there is (both would seem to be fairly arrogant assumptions).

Well, we are talking about the Large Hadron Collider. Maybe the website I mentioned above is actually connected to a computer that is another universe but is entangled with our internet. We should definitely take this as a warning before next season starts that the Go'uld are about to invade.

...and how long before someone starts claiming that this has already happened and this is why we have Atlantis myths and the Black Plague? Actually, sounds like a good science fiction story for someone to write.

Given the number of ads displayed in the typical satellite TV feed and that these surely bleed over into space, I expect they will not be surprised in the least and simply chalk it up to some big marketing strategy.

I've had problems with it in general on OS X lately (Firefox, Safari, and Chrome).

You look like you need some peace of mind. Hope that helps.

Which is why, if they discovered a planet that appeared to have a non-poisonous atmosphere, we'd be even more likely to pump funding to get there. Or do you imagine the people in charge of the war on terror would like to be the ones visited rather than the ones doing the visiting? Research and money would go to space travel development, and hopefully, along the way, the warhawks would find themselves balanced appropriately by peaceniks (I say balance, because as annoying as both extremes are, paranoia does sometimes have a purpose as does trust).

It sounds reasonable, BUT amazon's lawyers would probably argue that what you were doing was the equivalent of entering a place of business and holding down the cashier so she couldn't take people's money. This would be assault, trespassing, etc.