If you want a real conspiracy theory take a very close look at how precisely Google received its initial start-up money and what government agency was involved. It's not really so absurd to posit that the government makes "investments" in things it believes will serve its interests just like businesses do.

And if you want Google search without Google tracking, try using Startpage. They conduct Google searches on your behalf and act as a proxy.

I simply use an alternate user to arrange this. In my case, it's the Windows games I run via Wine. I don't trust them and I have no need for single-player games to connect to remote servers.

So I create a user named "winegames". I run all Windows games as this user. Then I add a simple iptables rule:

iptables -A OUTPUT --match owner --uid-owner winegames -j REJECT

Now nothing run as "winegames" can connect anywhere. A few games will briefly complain that they can't connect to the server so that people who don't care can see my in-game achievements but that's alright. Also, I use REJECT instead of DROP so that the programs get an instant error when they try to connect. If you use DROP they will waste a lot of time waiting for a response that will never come.

Incidentally, if your distro does not provide this, you will need to add a line to your PAM config to allow alternate users to open windows on your X display. For my distro (Gentoo) the file is /etc/pam.d/su. I simply add this to the file on its own line: "session optional pam_xauth.so". Now the alternate user "winegames" can open new windows on the X server started by my main user.

The second mouse gets the cheese.

Only if you have no belief whatsoever in the power of your own example and your own message. In that case, I suppose you would want to use some form of coercion.

But then, I question your true motives for believing what you believe. Is it to join the majority and avoid the shame and invective of being accused of intolerance? Or is it because you truly believe that tolerance is superior? If the latter, why not act like it's superior and let it stand on its own merits? Why not show everyone a shining, pure, hypocrisy-free example of what real tolerance is?

See, what many of you really want is is to issue righteous judgment against those who disagree with you. You think the fact that you are right excuses this desire. You still haven't performed the introspection and the difficult internal work of overcoming and transforming your own hatred. You think espousing the correct doctrine makes you superior, but you did not eliminate your own hatred at all. You merely found a socially acceptable way to channel it. This still fails to reduce the amount of hatred in the world. Hating evil does not make you good, no matter how desperately you want to feel self-righteous.

The failure to comprehend this is not because it is so difficult to understand. It's really simple, in fact. No, the failure to understand this is the same failing behind most of the vices that remain today: it raises too many difficult and uncomfortable questions concerning who you really are and why you believe what you believe. It's so much easier to find something external to yourself to hate. Isn't it?

And retaliating by trying to convince others to stop using the software is just childish and vengeful because it does nothing to address the perceived problem. If successful, it would amount to an extralegal method of censorship because they dislike the way the CEO uses speech. I suppose this is also intended to make other people afraid to voice their own viewpoints on this issue if they happen to differ from the "correct" approved viewpoint. It's not unlike the MAFIAA's efforts to "make an example" out of filesharers in order to instill fear.

I could never in good conscience support this method no matter what its perceived goal may be.

The correct solution is to put forth one's own political viewpoints and explain why they're so much better. If one's position is so reasonable and correct then there is no need for vengefulness and fear. Really all the administrators of OKCupid are doing here is revealing that they are unreasonable fanatics who treat dissenters as hated heretics rather than people to be persuaded. They should apologize to the reasonable gay rights advocates for working to make the movement look bad.

But I assume that at least you'd be on the market because your old dishwasher broke or something reasonable like that. Although it hardly takes three weeks to look up something like a Consumer Reports rating...

Anyway, the main purpose of much advertising and branding is to convince people to expend and possibly go into debt to buy shit they don't need. Many millions of dollars are poured into this effort for the simple reason that it works. It doesn't deserve to work, but it works.

Just ask yourself why pharmaceutical companies are allowed to directly market prescription-only drugs to the general public. The whole basis of medical practice is that you first need a diagnosis and that only a licensed professional can determine this. You either have a legitimate diagnosis and need that drug or you don't. Anyone else is, in fact, thrown in jail for trying to diagnose a disease (practicing medicine without a license).

It was for this reason that I stopped short of saying "and therefore they should all get a pass and be considered totally blameless". I'm with you. It's not that hard to learn about these things. It's a problem of inertia really. Once the first step is taken, the rest unfolds naturally enough. What's the first step? Don't believe anything the government says (George Carlin was right about that), learn to do research, and stop depending on mainstream media to spoonfeed information to you.

If something appears on the mainstream media it was either bought and paid for, or various monied interests don't really have a problem with it being widely known. By the way, most any major politician would rather have a Puritannical sex scandal than expose precisely why the vote went that way.

Dammit. Something actually a bit witty and I'm all out of mod points.

At least I never wasted any of them modding up the repetitive "sharks with lasers" memes.

No. What they are is lazy, childish, obese, opiated by entertainment, naive, and self-centered. This enables the corruption by the minority who really run things.

The rest of the world only thinks Americans are evil and corrupt because of the myth that the US government and US corporations are representing the will of the American people and operating on their behalf.

Most Americans would be shocked and horrified if they learned about what their government and major corporations have done to places like South America, the Middle East, and parts of Africa, let alone what goes on at home.

Yes, just like the Pepsi Cola in the action movie is merely being used by the badass hero to quench his thirst, and certainly no claim is being made that it is superior to Coca-Cola or any niche brand of soft drink.

Yet Pepsi Cola paid a lot of money to make that happen.

Why should Apple get this treatment for free with government support? When it would be so easy to create a video with none of these questions? That's the take-away here.

Indeed. The court showing an Apple logo (or if they ever showed a Samsung label) for even a moment is a potential problem. The effect of a large, official establishment of some sort showing acceptance of such things, for even a moment, is not to be underestimated. It's the entire basis of all celebrity endorsements, for example.

"This major actor used Product X and says he likes it, therefore maybe I will like it too!" sounds silly and full of fallacies. But it works. There is no reason to assume that "this official government organization displayed one logo and not the other" has zero effect. It's so easy to avoid these problems and it would be worthwhile even if it were difficult.

This sounds so much like the product placements in movies, or the subliminal advertising experiments conducted decades ago. Whether these methods work or not, the intention is rather clear. Why do judges recuse themselves from trials in which they may have an interest? It is not because we have proof positive that the judge cannot maintain objectivity, but rather because in a fair trial we wish to eliminate such concerns entirely. The outcome and the precedent are simply too important.

Whatever you think of such methods, all of this could be neatly put to rest, at the satisfaction of both litigants, by merely creating a video using fictitious brands to illustrate the same point. Compared to the cost of carrying out this trial, it would be negligible, and that's assuming it would have to be created from scratch, that there are not already such videos available.

The problem is that we have two standards. One is the level of objectivity and reasonable thinking you should be able to expect of adult people. The second is the actual thinking you really get from adult people.

According to the first, it's truly a tempest in a teapot. According to the second, the cost of producing a video that would put to rest entirely such objections is negligable compared to the cost of the rest of the trial.

Branding, logos, and emotional situations associated with them are used in marketing for the precise reason that they bypass the former standard and appeal to the second. All major corporations engage in this. Apple is not in any way special and neither is Samsung. They do it because on the vast majority of soft-minded and easily influenced people, they work. Just consider, why would beer commercials show vibrant parties and bikini babes instead of telling you about how the beer was brewed and why it's better? Why do car commercials show families and small children to tug at your heartstrings instead of explaining why their engineering principles are sound? They want the second standard to prevail; it is much more malleable and easier to manipulate by far.

I was with you until "in the mirror". The fact is, most people in most places are not this corrupt. Most people are subject to a minority who happen to "run things".

As a matter of fact, this is part of the problem: the average person working a job and raising a family cannot comprehend the greed, the self-interested several-moves-ahead strategy that looks like things "just worked out that way", the corruption, the ruthlessness, and the dehumanization. If the average person fully understood these forces, then you would in fact have a situation where public awareness keeps these abuses in check.

Adolph Hitler himself described the phenomenon with surprising candor. He said: "The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one."

Because they themselves do not use this level of deceit, it does not occur to them that others do. Therefore there is a certain innocence or naivete that prevents the average person from suspecting and guarding against such things.

A gaze into this mirror for most would reflect not such corruption, but a kind of innocence that ideally would know better. History is replete with examples, but of course that only happens elsewhere. It can't happen here. It certainly cannot happen in a manner that is subtle, not publicised, not obvious, not easily detectable. Or so the thinking goes.

The truth is, the corrupt are competing not with a vigilant and wise public, but against other sociopaths. Other sociopaths deal with this not by exposing all corruption, for that would harm themselves, but by carving out their own little niche that doesn't encroach upon the terriority of their competitors more than necessary. The average person has no clue how much they're being lied to on a daily basis by governments, corporations, and other institutions which enjoy an automatic credibility they have not earned.

The point being, I know they are there because I constantly track all lanes around me in addition to what is happening in front and behind me. Yes I do perform a shoulder check prior to changing lanes. I signal too, if you are curious.

What I find from this information gathering is that there are lots of pacers on the freeway who will stay in my blind spot for miles unless I deliberately speed up or slow down, which I will. I don't like having to put extra effort just to compensate for someone else's stupidity and thoughtlessness, but the safety advantage means I do it anyway.

You see, the lemming just hanging out there isn't the problem. The problem comes from them doing this in the passing lane. Inevitably an aggressive/impatient third driver(s) come along wanting to use the passing lane for, you know, passing. Now they do crazy maneuvers and make lane changes within a few inches of bumpers because that's the only way to get around the lemming. This increases the likelihood of me, in the slow lane (which is where I am unless actually in the act of passing), getting involved in an accident.

I suppose not wanting to be involved in an accident that I did nothing to cause makes me self-important? You have some serious inferiority issues if that is your determination given what was written. This is the typical hostility that used to be a rare occurrence on this site. It's like it became flooded with bullied nerds, people with daddy issues, and men with small penises or something. It can be summed up thusly: "what you said isn't what I would have said, therefore you're a fucking moron and I hate you and I already know you are wrong without really trying to understand what you said". What a bunch of sad little men.