The fact is that the experiment they Facebook conducted was mild to what other corporations do every day under the umbrella of "marketing".

They use control groups and try every trick they can to manipulate your mood, feelings, impressions of their products. They carefully script interactions to take advantage of your feelings and social norms. Also take the recent example in the past few weeks of the scripts that Verizon's 'account retention' departments use to try and wedge people into keeping their account longer. Those weren't just thrown together, those were made with careful research and years of experiments on customers and focus groups.

The only difference with what Facebook did and the rest do is that they shared their results with everyone. Was Facebook Unethical manipulating people the way they did? I think so, and I'm only less interested in the service after that scandal, but what they got them in trouble was sharing it with the rest of the world in a way that might have also done some honest good. Now they will learn from their mistakes, keep it to themselves, and use that research purely to manipulate people for higher profit and no one will say a thing.

"The KGB have used Romeo spies"

Who'd have thought this would end in tragedy?

I posted this below, but yes a thousand times.

I'm even starting to see this on supposedly reputable sites like Sourceforge.

Ads that look like a download button. They have been getting better on that, locating it near the content and not having any other text around it except maybe a tiny (outside offer) or something similar nearby, if you are lucky.

It used to be that it was only pretty shady websites you'd see this on, but more and more I'm seeing this on supposedly reputable sites. Even Sorceforge. It's a massive loss of reputability in my mind.

I hate marketing, I've gotten rid of cable and broadcast TV in favor of Netflix and other ad-free content. Much the same for music.

Yet despite having the option I've never turned off ads here on Slashdot; it's always in the same place, not massive or obtrusive, and generally somewhat relent to the content. I respect that they use the ads to support the site and I think this is one of the few commercial sites that respects me the same which is one reason I still come here after all these years. No massive page filling adds, moving ads, video ads, or any of the crap that is mentioned above. As long as it keeps that way, I won't turn off ads, and I'll even visit the sites sometimes when they are relevant to me.

If it ever changes from that, I'll probably just stop coming. Sure i could use adblock or the built in ad-blocking feature of the site, but if the owners don't respect me, why would I be interested in their services?

I don't believe that Orbital Sciences (now Orbital ATK as of last week) has any near-term plans for carrying people. Orbital's Antares rocket, which is what they use for the commercial cargo program for ISS, was only ever planned for cargo (And incidentally also uses Russian engines, the NK-33).

The Sierra Nevada Corporation is making their Dream Chaser spacecraft for manned flight, but it relies on the Atlas V as a launch vehicle.

So the only way we are going to get people into space without the Russians, before the SLS is done, is getting the Delta IV heavy human rated, or, SpaceX.

I think you're overselling StarTrek a bit. It was a silly action/adventure show with regular goofy fight scenes. It was though, a show that was written by people with an interest in core questions of humanity. On the good episodes that humanity shone through in a way that was novel for television. On the bad.. well, not so much.

I do agree that the show lost something in it's newest franchise and has become something else that I find isn't for me. Lets not kid ourselves on the source material though.

My grandmother has a petal operated singer sewing machine from the early 1930s that still works beautifully.

Sewing machines were a Victorian era household marvel, and really one of the first pieces of modern engineering technology that came into the home. Many were so well built it's not at all uncommon to find them still in great operating condition. You can easily find operating models from the 1800s in any antique store.

It depends on what your metric is. I'd be willing to bet that these kinds of companies cause more direct, day to day anger and frustration for a large number of people. Rather then the much more indirect activities of banks.