Monday, January 11, 2016

Antivirus softare can make your system more insecure

http://www.csoonline.com/article/3020459/security/antivirus-software-could-make-your-company-more-vulnerable.html

Just by sending an email without you even opening it, can exploit antivirus software.

It seems the big and bloated syndrome doesn't just apply to operating systems and Flash, but antivirus programs as well.

People need to be aware that security exploits can happen with any software. Even antivirus software.

Thursday, September 17, 2015

Many free software and services are free because they invade your privacy

Data collection is a big thing that can earn a company millions by monitoring what their customers do and selling the information to the highest bidder.

Windows 10 upgrades were given out for free because they invade the customer's privacy.

As time goes on operating systems, web services, and software will become free due to adware and spyware invading your privacy.

Free as in no money cost, but not free as in freedom. We need more free as in freedom operating systems, web services, and software.

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Inequalities in the IT salary scales

I have worked in the IT industry for close to 30 years now.

IT jobs used to pay really well. Management decided to cut the budget  and hing end programmers like me got the ax and got downsized or fired to make way for cheaper labor sources.

Now I don't mind someone else of a different demographic getting my job, but they should be paid what I used to be paid.

If IT jobs are offshored to a different nation, they should be paid what I was paid.

If the IT job is given to a female or minority they should be paid what I was paid.

I don't really see why not? Most of what I did was automating tasks in business to make work easier on employees and management. All they have to do is fill out electronic forms and push buttons. The print out reports to make decisions on how to do things.

To be far this automation put a lot of people out of work, but also sped up the paperwork process.

We are now entering the age of the robot, where robots are advanced enough to do jobs and tasks that human beings can do, but for free and working 24/7. I feel that when more jobs are cut that the saved money should be used to pay employees more to make up for the fact that less employees are needed and stimulate the economy for all of the lost jobs.

Management wants more and more automation, because it saves money. What I wrote was basically software robots using business intelligence algorithms to do the work for the workers.

There used to be a time when a person made a living typing up memos and letters on a typewriter. A business would have 100 typers to type out copies of memos and letters for office use. Once the Word Processor was invented on the PC with the laser printer, one administrative assistant would type up a letter or memo and click it to be printed 100 times. Then later on email caught on and MS-Word documents attached to the email to save paper. So technology advances cost jobs but create new ones.

At the rate our economy destroys old jobs, it does not create new jobs fast enough, so to stimulate the economy people need to be paid more money.

It is because that a majority of people lost their good paying job and forced into a low paying job that we have bankruptcies and people spending less money in our economy. Bailing out the large corporations that cannot earn money from the now low paying population won't fix anything, we need to get more money in the hands of the low paying population so that they can spend more and stimulate the economy.

When big business eliminates jobs and hires cheaper labor, it destroys the economy and forces people into poverty. Sure they get higher profits, but they are short-term higher profits and thus the business has to look for more ways to save money.

The best way to save money is to have a good job cost analysis system to see where it costs more to support a product or service than the revenue it brings in. Then improve the quality of those products and services or cut out products and services that cannot be fixed and replace them with new and better ones. This is how Steve Jobs saved Apple Computers. It should work for almost any business.

Saturday, August 24, 2013

DC vs. Marvel: Why Marvel is always better.

I know it isn't exactly science or technology, but a lot of people into science and technology read comic books and watch TV shows and movies.

Both Marvel and DC have 'Rebooted' their comic books and characters to younger readers. The same is being done with Star Trek (Possible Star Wars, but I hope not) and other stuff.

DC does not get it, every time they have a 'Crisis' series or reboot a universe or character it ends up costing them. DC is owned by Warner Brothers and of course can make movie adaptions which don't always work. The Batman trilogy with Christian Bale was a blockbuster trilogy, the Man of Steel, Green Lantern, and a few other movies not as much. If you have to ask why the Batman trilogy tried to stay as close to the comic book as possible and in some cases deviating from the comic (Heath Ledger as The Joker who is more of a schemer and anarchist rather than a criminal who wants fortune and fame and play jokes on everyone. Ledger's Joker for example burned up his share of money, it was not about fortune, fame, money, or jokes, it was about proving others wrong and showing their hypocrisy)  it was so good that it changed The Joker in the Batman comics into more of a sadist, anarchist, schemer.

DC tried to reboot their universe, and they messed some stuff up. They did not reboot Green Lantern, Batman, and didn't reboot The Flash much. The Green Lantern comic worked because of "Blackest Night" and "The Sinestro Corps" being hit miniseries. Batman comics stuck to the old formula of Batman. Basically Batman and Green Lantern have great supporting villains. As part of a good comic formula you have to have great villains. Great villains are people or entities who do evil things for a great purpose. Sinestro for example was once a Green Lantern, until he abused his powers to take over his home planet to fight evil and wipe out crime. This did not go over well with his bosses the Guardians so they stripped him of his Green Lantern ring.  Instead Sinestro harvested fear instead a willpower to create a new power ring, one that uses yellow fear energy instead of green willpower energy. Sinestro is a great villain because he sees himself as 'wronged' and has this 'revenge' thing to get even with the Green Lanterns because he considers himself 'good' and them 'evil' for having wronged him. In Batman you got The Joker, he is a great villain because you cannot predict him as much as other villains and you never know what The Joker is going to do next. But The Joker is on this anarchist scheming trip to try and trick Batman into breaking his own rules and also causing some mayhem in the process. The Joker lies to play pranks on people and trick them into doing things, it is all mind games. Batman has Catwoman who is sometimes bad sometimes good, sure she steals stuff but sometimes gives the money to charity or only steals from evil rich people. Sometimes she helps out Batman and has a romantic interest with him.

DC wants to do a Justice League movie, but first they have to get Superman and Batman together. They can't do a Wonder Woman movie because they are not sure if they can get it right. Well to be honest DC keeps rebooting Wonder Woman's origin and changing her personality as well. If it was me, I'd stick to the Classic Wonder Woman that Linda Carter played in the 1970's and 1980's, the one everyone likes. The one that doesn't age, the one who has good morals, the one that doesn't kill. I'd merge her with the modern DC Nu52 Wonder Woman who is the daughter of Zeus and makes Hera mad, but is also the daughter of the Queen of the Amazons. She can fly, is super strong like Superman, has wrist bracelets that can deflect anything, and of course a magic lasso that can't be broken and makes people tell the truth. I'd remake the Green Lantern movie with the Sinestro Corps War, and then introduce Guy Gardner, John Stewart, and Kyle Rayner as alternative Lanterns recruited for the war.

You see Marvel has great villains, most of them want to take over the world, just so they can make a better world or free people from tyranny or whatever. Magento wants freedom for mutants, he saw the Nazis and how they treated Jewish people and thinks human beings feel the same way about mutants. Doctor Doom is super smart and crazy, he wants to take over the world because he believes everyone will be better off under his benevolent dictatorship instead of democracy. Thanos (who you might see soon in Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy) just wants to impress 'Death' because he is in love with her, and in order to do that he has to kill half of the galaxy but he needs these Infinity gems or a Cosmic Cube to get such power to do so. Galactus is this big guy who survived the big crunch of the universe before ours, and he is so powerful that he has to eat planets full of life in order to survive. So instead of using his own energy to move and find planets, he gives power to 'heralds' like The Silver Surfer to find them for him. But the Silver Surfer has a good soul and sees that this is wrong and turns on Galactus to save Earth, and then leads Galactus to planets that have life but not inhabited with intelligent life.

Marvel Comics had recently pulled the old switcheroo on Spider-Man. They had Doctor Octopus and Spider-Man switch minds and bodies. So Peter Parker's mind is in Doc Ock's body that is dying. Doc Ock is in Peter Parker's body aka Spider-Man. In their final battle Doc Ock in Spider-Man's body (Fans call him SpOck for Spider Ock) had this metal shield over the back of his head as a helmet so Peter couldn't get back into his own body and died in Doc Ock's body. Fans got upset, the Peter Parker Spider-man they knew was dead. Dan Slot got death threats on Twitter (This is uncalled for, it is just a comic book people, never make death threats just because you disagree with something.) for doing this. I mean at first you miss Classic Spider-Man but Superior Spider-Man with SpoCk makes it interesting to see where the book is going. You see SpOck was bullied and abused as a child, and buried himself into learning all he could about math and science. He made these mechanical arms to help people out and even handle radioactive materials through a shield at a distance. But an accident fused those arms with his body and radically changed his brain chemistry making him crazy and evil. Yet once he switched minds with Peter Parker, it was like that insanity and evil sort of went away as he had access to Peter's memories of being a hero, losing his parents and then making a mistake and his Uncle Ben dies. Somehow this makes SpOck want to become a hero. While he has Peter's memories he does not have his personality, but there was a little of Peter's personality left that followed him around like a ghost until he was able to remove it. After that using Doc Ock's resources and inventions he was able to become The Superior Spider-Man, all of the power and none of the responsibility. But SpOck really gets things done, unlike Peter Parker. Mr. Slot had taken a great villain and turned him into an anti-hero like The Punisher or Wolverine ad put him in Spider-Man's body. Brilliant, even if you hate it, the idea is brilliant.

DC is doing more reboots, Lobo is not Lobo anymore but an imposter and this new 'Teenage Emo Lobo' is coming to kill the fake Lobo and so every single comic about Lobo is now null and void, and people are upset. I figure DC is trying to copy the SpOck thing, or copy that War Marvel had with Skrulls being imposter super heroes. I think DC should have done better by making the new Lobo one of his 'sons' that survived and wants to kill his father to take over his title of "The Main Man". This is what DC tried to do when Hush took over as Bruce Wayne after the real Bruce Wayne was Batman died in a battle with Darkseid, and was traveling through time and dimensions to try and get back. Look DC instead of just rebooting characters, why don't you just make brand new characters that connect with the younger audience instead? Marvel made this Ultimate Universe for that, you can use one of your alternative Earths like Earth-4 or whatever for that. Just stop messing with formulas that work like Lobo, and then changing them for the worse. The same with your movies and TV shows. Otherwise Marvel is just going to eat your lunch as the fans defect from DC to Marvel.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

The Ubutu Edge, a Linux based smartphone

Canonical has ported Ubuntu to smartphones and is working on the Ubuntu Edge smartphone.

Android is based on Linux as well, but Ubuntu might have more free and open source apps ported to it. The Ubuntu Edge might take a few years to catch on, but they already have a Kickstarter even for under $700 to buy one. They seem close to meeting their goal.

With the Ubuntu Edge you have a smartphone that has the abilities of a PC running Ubuntu Linux. On the Android you have that if you run a special Ubuntu app that installs Ubuntu under Android. The iPhone not so much.

Once the major cell phone carriers sell the Ubuntu Edge it will start to catch on. Since Ubuntu is free and open sourced, any tablet or smartphone can be made to run it. In case of Apple vs. Android lawsuits, all Android phones can be ported to Ubuntu.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Apple is slipping, no new products in a year.

I had hoped Apple would make a new iPhone or something this year, but they haven't. Apple usually has a 'wow factor' when releasing new products or new models of existing products.

I had expected Apple to at least release a new Apple TV that was also a video game console, but nope! I expected the iPhone 5S with a faster CPU and better graphics to match the Samsung Galaxy S4 and other Android devices that outpower and look better than the iPhone 5 does, nope! I hoped Apple would make a cheaper iPhone to conquer the low end smartphone market, nope!

What Apple did was sell more iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4/4S phones at lower prices than the iPhone 5 cost. Sure it cut into their profit margins, but it gained them a bigger marketshare.

I think the lawsuits against Sansumg, LG, and others have cut into Apple's R&D budget for a while. Samsung was making A6 chips and about 90% of the chips used in the iPhone to Apple (storage chips, RAM, DSPs) and since Apple was using them, Samsung must have decided to withhold the new Octocore ARM chips (The A8?) that are used in the Smasung Galaxy S4 that run rings around the A6 chip in the iPhone 5?

There was a time way back when Google and Apple worked together to share technology and secrets to make better smartphones. Google offered Apple the Android OS it bought that was invented in 2005 that has IP going back to Linux in 1993 and also uses Sun/Oracle's Java. Instead Apple took their OSX and ported it to the ARM Platform and made a GUI based on the Android one in 2005 and then modified it and called it iOS. Then Apple decided to sue Samsung and others, despite buying chips from Samsung to make iPhones.

There is a big tablet war going on, Microsoft had released the Surface and Surface Pro based on Windows RT and Windows 8 that are complete and total colossal flops. It burned Microsoft for $900 Million, almost a billion dollars in the red. Microsoft doesn't seem to understand that a tablet is not the same as a PC, and that we are now in a Post-PC market. So trying to make Windows 8 with the Metro UI and then also have a Desktop minus the Start Menu really alienated the PC Users who wanted the Start Menu and Desktop, and nothing like Metro. Plus if a software company makes an App for Metro UI in Windows 8, it won't run in Windows 7 and under. Microsoft should have called it MetroOS or something like SurfaceOS because it is nothing like the Classic Windows anymore. Apple of course has Microsoft at a disadvantage because of this, and even if the iPad and iPad Mini cost more, they don't have the problems of the Microsoft Surface devices.

Even if a Microsoft Surface is a few hundred dollars cheaper than an iPad, Android tablets like the Amazon Kindle Fire HD, Nook HD, and the Google tablet are $200 or less right now. Way cheaper than the Microsoft Surface Tablets that cost $299 to $499 plus they have Apps from several different App Stores like Google Play and Amazon Market, etc. From China you have the 'APad' Standard 7 inch Android 4.X tablet for under $99 and in some cases $59 or $39 in China, or India and since anyone can use Android for free, and Windows RT or Windows 8 has a $90 OEM fee to use, the PC OEMS that used to use Windows RT or Windows 8 switched to Android instead. The RT/8 Tablets did not even sell very well and are in warehouses and being marked down. Port Android to them and reformat them to Android and they will sell.

Apple has locked their platform, Apple has locked their OS, Apple has locked their developers. In order to make as much money as they can, Apple made it so a developer needs to pay Apple $100 a year plus use a Macintosh with XCode to submit apps to their App Store. The only way to buy apps for your iPhone is through Apple's App Store. Only Apple can use iOS, it won't run on non-Apple branded hardware. Apple has the easier to use UI, and the marketing behind them to sell as many iPhones, iPods, iPads as they want. Facetime is built into the iPhone, for example, verses installing Skype on an Android phone. It makes it easier for a video chat from one iOS device to another. But because Apple has locked their tech, it drives people away from them, some even dare I say it jailbreak their iPhone to do what they want with it, even to install free and open source software on it or homebrew games that Apple won't allow in their App Store.

The advantage that Apple has right now is a lock in with the education market. iTunes U for example has videos, podcasts, eBooks, and other materials for free for college/university courses. My son's highschool is going 100% digital with iPads using the ESCO app for reading eBooks, and it does not have an Android port. So Apple has locked in many educational organizations into their devices.

Microsoft has forgotten that many people still want to use a notebook or laptop instead of a tablet, the low end $300 Windows 7 Laptops were just fine, but they got replaced with Tablets that just cost more and do less and are not as powerful. I hope Apple still keeps their Macbook line and does not replace it with Tablets. Some people still want to use a keyboard and mouse or touchpad. The Macintosh really lags in video games because Apple uses low end video adapter and GPUs in the cheaper Macs. What Apple should do is allow video cards in the iMac and Mac Mini series to upgrade them to a faster model later if the user wishes. The Macintosh Pro at least used the ATX standard and PCIe video cards and could have a faster card put in. But Apple has no low end gaming Mac with a fast video card and GPU and fast Processor and an under $1000 price. There are $700 PCs that are used for gaming and people make Hackintoshes out of them to run video games on them because the Mac Pro is too expensive. Now that Steam is available for Linux, Apple has even more competition as Linux can be installed on any AMD or Intel based PC to make a cheaper gaming platform than a Mac Pro. Once the Steam Box comes out, watch out, because it will bring PC Gaming to the TV sets as a video game console. This will take away from Apple's Macintosh sales as well as Windows PC sales.

Microsoft best way to survive the tablet wars is to convert to Android, and then port their apps to the Android platform and make the Microsoft Android Store to sell apps. Windows RT is done, can't get enough apps to it, can't run legacy Windows apps on it, no advertisers for the little apps they do have,  the MetroUI is a joke and the AndroidUI is way better and has widgets that work better than Metro apps work. Microsoft can never license iOS, Apple won't allow it, but Google and Amazon will allow Microsoft to use Android with welcome arms. Face it Microsoft tried to buy out Barnes and Nobel for the Nook store, if they did they'd be selling Nook tablets that use Android already. When Windows RT is a total fail, Microsoft can save face by porting Android 4.2.2 or 4.3 to the Surface line of tablets and just reformat the storage from RT to Android. They can do the same for their Windows 8 Phones that aren't selling, port Android to them and see if they sell better. If Microsoft sees Apple as a competitor, they need Android, it is their only advantage over Apple, Windows RT is a handicap and disadvantage over Apple.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Neo-Evolution: Global Consciousness How the Internet Evolves our minds

You might think this is yet another crackpot theory, one that belongs on SciFI TV TV shows like "Fringe" or "The X-Files", Pseudoscience, absolute rubbish.

Back in 1984 when I was a teenager in high school, a sophomore, aged 16 I had come up with a variety of different scientific theories. I had tested almost perfect in state tests for science, I had read a lot of books (while most teenagers went to parties and got drunk or stoned, I avoided all that and studied computer programming and reading as many books as I could on various subjects. This was before The Internet and search engines like Google. All we had were BBS text based systems and text files people wrote that you could download and read. When I debated with others on the BBS systems many thought I had a PHD and asked me what university I went to, anyway I didn't know everything but I had thought I knew everything. To this date I still keep learning things.) and I found flaws in theories like natural selection, evolution, Relativity, etc. I wrote a series of theories of my own to explain those flaws. One was matter energy points and another was Neo-Evolution.

I saw how evolution and natural selection were flawed, there was no noticeable pattern, no evidence of evolution increasing the information in an organizing in order to allow it to evolve, the DNA had a junk section and nobody knew what it was and they called it 'junk' because they couldn't understand it. We were told that 'random chance' created life, the universe, and everything. That all matter and energy came out of nothing billions of years ago. I saw that this theory of matter and energy coming out of nothing and a random chance goes against the standard model of physics. Sure I believe in a big bang theory, sure I believe in evolution and natural selection, I just think that we got a lot of it, perhaps most of it wrong.

If you study the universe you will notice patterns like the Fibonacci sequence in snails, in hurricanes, in people, in galaxies, in flowers in all sorts of stuff. It is not random, it is an algorythm in nature that causes this stuff. The very 'junk' in our DNA, I had proposed, that we didn't know what it was, is program code to tell cells how to reproduce and create cells in our body using an algorithm of series of algorithms. If we could just decipher that code, much like how one reverse engineers machine code in a computer, we could learn how it works and perhaps reprogram it to cure disease and illnesses and have the cells in the body repair the body instead of causing tumors and cancer, they rewrite the damaged cells in tumors and cancers to reverse the process.

Well I was laughed at when I was in The Academy of Math and Science. People aren't computers, you cannot reprogram DNA, there are no algorithms in nature or DNA itself. I was also laughed at for saying the Moon must have water on it because of the abundance of hydrogen and oxygen from exploded stars long ago. I was told that water on the Moon would evaporate by the very same people, that it would not freeze as I predicted, but evaporate into nothing. That very thinking stopped us from going back to the Moon and putting bases on it, and it violated the standard model of physics. Of course now NASA found ice (water in frozen form) on the Moon, and people are talking about going back there. This 'wrong thinking' put onto us by the media, which created a 'Me generation' concerned only with money and power and greed, forgot the teachings of science and conservation.

The problem is that DNA loses information over the years, each cell in the human body only lives for 10 years and has to be replaced. The new cell is created by other cells using materials in the blood stream. When your DNA loses information about your hair color, it turns grey or white and you start to grow or possible lose hair. The aging process is part of your DNA, when they cloned that Sheep dolly, guess what? It started to accelerate the aging process. The DNA from the donor sheep already had the information damaged to the point that the life clock of the cloned sheep had the age set to an advanced age. This is almost like the DRM protection you find in software of today, copy protection. If you can find the part of the DNA that causes aging in a sheep, and reset it back to year one, you could modify the DNA and clone a sheep that wouldn't age.

OK we have an Internet now that is global, we didn't have any sort of cheap global communication before. We evolved from radio to television, to BBS systems and the Arpanet, and then the Internet and the World Wide Web. Each advancement in technology has caused connections between groups of people all over the world. We now have smartphones that access the Internet and connect us to each other via text messages and voice calls and social networks. We have started to evolve a group-think, where the group thinks alike and people join together on issues and other things. People who don't have the same group-think are kicked out of the group-mind to purify it. This is because they are not part of the global consciousness that the group shares. This is very much like how neanderthals made tribes of like-minded individuals using cave paintings and other symbols. It is a culture that is developing, a society, a series of social norms over the Internet.

If you look at the original telephone system, it is basically telepathy over a wire. You dial a number, get to speak with a person who isn't in the same room, city, or part of the world you are in, but you talk to them as if they were in the same room. My father worked for AT&T and he said the people who often called each other a lot in a group were a neuronet much like how computers link together to share the workload and become faster and better. Fast forward to today and the smartphone, people are so defendant on smartphones to communicate and even live their lives using apps and websites and social network sites that they are one with the smartphone and virtually a cyborg. It won't be long before there is a neurochip to replace the smartphone that is implanted in our brains. But that is getting way ahead, we are still in the smartphone era.

While it is true that our bodies are not evolving and evolution takes millions of years, the same is not true of our minds. There was a Prophecy in the Christian Bible about the Book of Revelation talking about the end of the world, and during end times everyone is surrounded by information. Well we got wireless signals everywhere containing all kinds of information that we are surrounded by. Science and technology have evolved themselves to the point that many people no longer have a connection to God or Nature but science and technology itself. Religion contains two Latin root words, Lig which means connect, and re which means again. You are supposed to reconnect to God to nature to other people, but we somehow short-circuited that connection in our minds with TV shows and movies that we gather together in groups over the Internet to discuss. We follow them like a religion, we follow tech companies too like a religion, Apple, Microsoft, whatever. Our minds have evolved away from spiritual stuff to material stuff.

The problem is that materialism is harming the world, we consume too much seafood and the ocean life dies, we consume too much oil/gas/petrol and the climate changes to a warmer one, we cut down too many trees and don't have enough to recycle the carbon dioxide into oxygen for us to breathe. Our devices use more and more electricity despite being labeled as green and low powered, and thus we burn more coal and become dependent on nuclear reactors. In doing this we are causing natural selection to set ourselves up for a depopulation event or series of events.

Either Hollywood does not know what it is doing, or it is putting hidden images in movies and TV shows. You'll find people posting images on Reddit and other websites of stuff they found hidden in images just in logos. But the music has hidden stuff as well. Hidden messages are nothing new. You have to understand that this triggers the unconscious mind, and certain people with certain mental health issues will trigger an episode if they notice this. Those with normal mental health won't even notice the images and hidden messages, and in a way it programs their subconscious. For some reason hiding stuff makes it sell better, so the MPAA and RIAA do a lot of it. It is done on websites as well. Almost like hypnosis, if you know it is there and you don't want to be hypnotized by it, you cannot, but if you want something to hypnotize you it will give you subliminal messages and condition your mind for this new culture, society, group-mind. If you open your mind to this sort of stuff, it will take control and change you. If you remain skeptical of this sort of stuff, it cannot change you, because you know how it works and don't want it to make you like the other people.

It should be used for goodwill, to change people for the better. Make them less materialist, and more towards saving the planet and human race, ending racism, ending hatred and bigotry. Instead it just encourages stuff like that. If in the USA, we export our music, TV shows, and movies to a foreign nation, most people in that nation become addicted to it like a drug and keep wanting more. It changes their culture, their society, and makes them more like the US consumers who are the main target of such things.

We homo sapiens, very much like neanderthals still form our own tribes, but we call them social cliques now instead. Anyone not in the clique gets bullied and harassed, anyone in the clique gets special privileges and secret information.  Both men and women do this. In some parts of the world they are still tribal, and believe in freedom and democracy but in tribal freedom and tribal democracy because their whole tribe is a giant social clique. This is a problem with humanity and perhaps all forms of animal life as we know it. We have to have enemies that we hate in order to justify our own existence because of this social clique mentality of the group-mind. Hate, greed, envy, sloth, gluttony, anger, lust, and worse of all pride drive our egos to attack others and become evil or bad. It is all desire and attachment to material things that causes pain and suffering in the world. Only by breaking that desire and attachment can we solve world problems.Only by removing our own hate, greed, envy, sloth, gluttony, anger, lust, and worse of all pride can we become better human beings.

Television and Videos are on the Internet now, all over the place. Satellite, Cable TV,  will go away once all movies and TV shows migrate to Internet Video and high speed Internet becomes cheaper and people cut the cord to the TV set and watch on smartphones and PCs and Mac, and tablets, etc.

Microsoft has learned that they didn't market the Surface tablets correctly and lost almost a billion dollars. Windows RT and Windows 8 are flops, because Microsoft didn't follow the Windows Success Formula and tried to copy Apple. As a result OEMS who made Windows 8 and RT tablets now make Android tablets and left Microsoft behind. Apple makes the iPad, but does not share iOS with anyone, while Android is free and open sourced to anyone. Eventually Android will overtake Apple in tablets and phones, because Apple charges a $100/year developers and locks iOS devices to just their app store and limits developments to XCode on a Macintosh to submit to the App Store. To become an Android developer you just need to have Java installed and download the free Android SDK/NDK and then develop apps for several Android App Stores for free. The Android Model has tapped into a success formula that Windows once had, allow anyone to use it on their device and don't close it out to developers. Apple is following some sort of 'cult' type religion, as is Microsoft, but Android is more for free thinkers and people who want to be free of the group-mind.

To make a Star Trek comparison, the group-mind is very much like Star Trek's The Borg. People are connected together with common interests over a network and all think the same thing and share the same opinions. They are no longer 'individuals' but part of a hive, or group that thinks alike. Religion is not controlling this, religious people are only now just discovering the power of the Internet. But in a way it is like a religion, with no God, but people in power or creating the media that are in control of groups of people to tell them what to wear, what to buy, what to do, what to say, what groups to attack. Sort of like the Borg Queen, except each Group has their own Borg Queen so to speak that controls their group.

This group-mind is nothing new, it is how religions had controlled people in the past before the Internet or radio to TV. Religious figures like Jesus Christ and the Buddha spoke out against it, and the Roman Empire used it, as did the Egyptians. People used to be controlled by art, music, news from people speaking in villages. As science and technology advanced, so did our own evolution of our minds as we tuned into it and connected with people. People we are supposed to hate have a negative connection, and people we are supposed to love have a positive connection. Religion was supposed to free us of this manipulation so we can be free thinkers with critical thinking, but it was taken over by manipulators.

What you call Atheism these days in books and videos, is nothing more than religion with God removed from it, and the worship of money and material things instead. People who were once Fundamentalist Christians had become Fundamentalist Atheists and used the Internet in the way they accuse religion of manipulating people. There is nothing wrong with atheism, many religions like Buddhism are an atheist religion. True Atheism might question religion and religious people, but it would not attack it for fear of being hypocritical of the religious people who attack atheists. Most atheists I meet are good and kind people, but then some of them are just as bad as those they speak out against. The Internet group-mind has caused this, and it is part of neo-evolution and the evolution of the mind.

In order to become a civilized planet we have to cast off the group-mind and become free thinkers, and critical thinkers and remove all bias and love everyone even our enemies. We need to control our own neo-evolution and evolution of our minds into a good thing instead of a bad thing. Diversity is a good thing and we need to remember that when dealing with people who are different in some way. We are even learning that animals are intelligent like dolphins and gorillas, and so we develop the name sophonts to describe an intelligent being be it human, animal, or machine (Artificial Intelligence) that is capable of learning and doing good things.