Justified Paranoia

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A hostile takeover in effect can only happen in earnest if your company is one that has gone public (ie. participating in the stock market). A private company cannot be taken over in that manner because you never made the decision to offer a way for people to accrue a stake in your company (stock), and thus you don’t have anyone who would buy most of them and take control. If you don’t want to risk some rich guy wresting control of your company away from you, then don’t go public. Case in point, Micheal Dell deciding that he is the best man to lead his old company in the future and so took it private to ensure it stays that way.

Likewise, I have seen no indication of CG Cookie or BA having ever been a part of the Stock Market, and the moderation team here as well as the administrators are all long time avid users of Blender who have genuine interest in seeing the program continue to advance (Johnathon W for instance is a member of the UI team and helps make decisions there). I would see concern if they were generic suits who barely use 3D software at all, but that’s not the case.

Okay, so it’s good that you stick with the more mainstream sites, it’s just that constant speculation on trying to find ulterior motives by sinister or elite forces to make things happens to screw ordinary people is something that sites like Info Wars tries to sell as truth.

Anyway, it also doesn’t help that the thread title works to try to convince someone to live a paranoid lifestyle because the world is out to screw you as hard as possible. This type of idea is the type of thing that leads people to build bunkers complete with rotating gun turrets and death traps.

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I did say it would have been like a hostile takeover, not that it would have been a hostile takeover. However; the definition presented of a hostile takeover suggests that going to the investors is not the only way to initiate a hostile takeover, but also “fighting to replace management” which I suppose could be accomplished in numerous ways including bribery and blackmail.

As far a sinister and elite forces are concerned, again I was merely pointing out that CG Cookie had a possible motive, that’s not conclusive evidence and I certainly didn’t mean for it to suggest so. Fact is that ‘criminal’ behavior exists in all levels of society, from the richest to the poorest there are those willing to utilize nefarious tactics to achieve their goals. Not every business owner is willing to hack a site to obtain ownership, but many are.

Of those that are willing to use nefarious tactics to achieve one goal or another it’s rarely, if ever, for the purpose of screwing ordinary people. Instead it’s usually about survival. The CEO of AT&T said the company needed to acquire T-Mobile at all costs, whether they hacked T-Mobile or not their need to acquire T-Mobile had nothing to do with screwing ordinary people and everything to do about surviving in the face of strong competition from Verizon Wireless.

I do not live a paranoid lifestyle myself. The @Chat program I made doesn’t make use of encryption at all, I considered using an open source Java encryption library I found and use an asynchronous encryption method, but eventually decided not to include encryption at all. Sure the government apparently spies on a lot of their citizens and while I’m not a big fan of this practice, I really don’t care what data the collect on me, if any.

I have a virtual box setup for my system and by and large it’s for the purpose of keeping ad-ware and crap off of my host system and it works well. It did succeed in stopping an actual damaging virus from infecting my host OS at one point though so it does come in handy for that purpose too.

Sure there are plenty of reasons for one person or another to be paranoid, but for me I just don’t care. I could build a bunker, encrypt all my files, put bars on my windows and still trip on my shoe lace, smack my head on the concrete and die. What’s the point of living a long life if it’s spent in fear the whole time anyway?

Yeah I disagree with a lot of what goes on in the world today, but what everyone else does with their life is their business. I’m happy to speak my mind, but other than that I’m just going to live my life the way I wanna live my life.

P.S. I had to move my download links for @Chat from Google Drive to Copy.com because all of a sudden Google Drive wouldn’t allow people to download the shared install file saying that the two @Chat install files violated Google’s Terms of Service. I went and read their terms of service and couldn’t find any reason why @Chat would be in violation of them. I clicked the dispute button and was told that they would get back to me in a couple of days, that was a couple of weeks ago and I still haven’t heard anything back about it and @Chat apparently remains in violation of Google’s Terms of Service for some unknown reason.

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Wow, you guys really know how to get off topic, talking about God, nature,ecosystems,blender artist, and cg cookie amongst other things. I don’t believe that any of these things pertain to Government trolls or anything like that mentioned in the first post and link of this thread but I didn’t read too many other post because they were to long like my post.
Getting back on topic or close. I am under heavy surveillance by the us government, Home Land security, The state of California, and the riverside sheriff department.
I see and know what they do, and I am not an idiot. I knew before this article came out that there were government trolls. But what bothers me the most is what these agencies can do.
I get alot of T.v’s,dvd’s players, computers, and just anything electronic given to me so I can find a nice home for them. But anyway I recently got a computer that I liked and wanted to just use it for a work horse computer and never ever hooked it to the Internet. So I though I would make this windoz xp operating system work more to my liking and change some stuff around, recording here and there. I was able to do some serious stuff and almost had it the way I wanted it. But then one day after shutting the computer off and it being off for an hour or so the computer came on, booted up and everything. I watched this computer with total amazement as to how it even turned on without me pressing the button. Well it booted alright and just after I seen my desktop then the command prompt came on running massive code. I just could not believe what was happening. I sat in amazement and confusion watching this computer. After running alot of code it brought up this window to shut the computer off or restart and then the computer started shutting down. I tried to reboot but nothing was going on in this computer. I later gave this computer to a guy that new how to take parts off computers and make a fully functional computer. Needless to say he told me everything was fried and all he kept was the computer case. Keep in mind this computer had never been hooked to the Internet.
I’ve got things to say so just hang in there.
Phone taping is also something I hate not necessarily because they are listening but rather because they won’t let me talk to who I call. I have called many of times to certain numbers but if riverside sheriff department doesn’t want me talking to them then I have to talk to this you black man that works for the sheriff. It’s really messed up. I am not allowed to call or email anybody unless it has been approved, nor can I receive emails or phone calls unless it has been approved by higher up authorities. Same goes with searching on the Internet. I can use other peoples computer searching out stuff. Me searching on my own brings up a limited amount of websites that have been approved.
Everything I do is monitored and nothing can be done about it.
I even have proof that they can hear what I am saying while being in a vehicle through the radio if the radio is stock or factory made for your vehicle. There is an extreme amount of technology for surveillance. Which is just insane.It’s illegal to stalk somebody but it’s not illegal for the the law enforcement people to surveillance you.
I have alot more along these lines but this is starting to feel like a long post. I get carried away when I have a keyboard in front of me.
I have rode on a bicycle a few times cross USA country with not a penny to my name and the people that done me most wrong is law enforcement people. 99% of the time law enforcement people done me the worst and 99% percent of the time the people of the city or towns people would always warn me, watch out for the law because we have the crookedest law enforcement in the whole USA. It really sounded like a broken record going from town to town,“Watch out, the towns people are good but the law enforcements in this town is crooked as hell”. I felt like telling them that all city people say the same thing.
“And” they wouldn’t say that if they didn’t believe it and didn’t have proof.
According to the constitution the people are the militia and not law law enforcement people.
It brings to mind what a president once said (I am pretty sure) , “A person that gives up freedom for security deserves neither”.
But hey, I don’t want to be completely out of place in the way this thread is going. So here’s my 2 cents. “Everything is going as planed”. For thousands of years mankind has always known and talked about the end of time even prophesying at times. Whether they were of a religion or not. Yes you my friend, you are living in the last days of mankind. All ancient people spoke of bad times at the end and if they didn’t, don’t believe them. Times are far worse then they were forty years ago.
But that’s just it. We are not only living in the end times but we are living in an age that has been predicted for thousands of years.
I like to look at it as though I am sitting in my recliner just watch mankind destroy it self and that this is the most historical moment in time/mankind. What more could you ask for.
What people have predicted for thousands of years you are getting to witness first hand.
I now governments are crooked and people also but you are truly living in the most historical moment in the duration of mankind.
I hate how mankind is such a low form of life now a days but overlook that and realize that you are living in the last great historical moments of all of mankind. It’s truly awesome. Not enjoyable, but truly awesome.
Anyway thanks for reading this far and hope I didn’t step on anybody toes.
Thanks

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Atr; But you have to admit that the replacement of the old management with one from CG Cookie is hardly a hostile takeover when you note that the former, for quite a while before, barely had time to give this site the devotion it needed (didn’t even have the time to fix bugs). BA at that time was in need of someone who would keep the site current, add needed features, add the needed bandwidth as it grows, and fix things that break.

Except for Johnathon W and Wesburk, the forum staff remained largely the same, all of the old moderators were still in their positions for instance.

Anyway, this is starting to go in circles, time to cut it off. I’m just trying to emphasize that no malice was involved when CG Cookie became the new owner.

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@Ace Dragon: Actually, and this is only my personal experience, the only problems I ever had with BA came in the form of logging in and staying logged in and these problems didn’t crop up until after CG Cookie took over. At the same time those problems don’t bother me either.

@lalen: I believe the quote you are looking for is “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” which was written by Benjamin Franklin. In reading about the quote apparently it was not in reference to what people commonly associate with it. Apparently Mr. Franklin was not speaking about ceding freedom to a governing body in order to receive a little security, instead he was talking from a legislative standpoint, that the legislature not cede it’s freedom to legislate certain issues in return for a little security.

At the time the Pennsylvania Assembly wanted to tax the property of the Penn family, read Pennsylvania, in order to fund security on the frontier against French and Indian attacks. The Penn family didn’t want to pay taxes, however; they offered to donate the money in order to fund security. The Penn family didn’t want to set the precedent that the legislature had the right to tax them. Benjamin Franklin was speaking in response to this, from a government standpoint he didn’t want to sacrifice the legislature’s ‘freedom’ to levy taxes in return for security on the frontier.

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That’s one of the issues that need to determined and fixed as well, of that of going around in circles, kind of like animals in the paddock, making a complete circle. The vicious cycle.

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@ atr1337 “according to the Blender Artists web-page CG Cookie owns the copyright to Blender Artists” <-- show me where it says that. That tag at the bottom of the page doesn’t necessarily mean that.

Again, you are making assumptions and you haven’t done your homework. They can’t just use the Blender name without some kind of working relationship. Your evidence is still weak. This is not a matter of subjective definitions of “ownership” it is a legal matter of definitions of ownership.

For the record I think they are both crap. I accept the physical constraints. We are all borrowers in death.

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@Blonder:
http://whois.domain.af/blenderartists.org
“the data in this record is provided by Public Interest Registry”
blenderartists.org:
Domain Name: BLENDERARTISTS.ORG
Sponsoring Registrar: GoDaddy.com, LLC
Registrant Name: Wes Burke
Registrant Organization: CG Cookie
Registrant Email: [email protected]

Admin Name: Wes Burke
Admin Organization: CG Cookie

P.S. Obviously there is a working relationship between the Blender Foundation and CG Cookie, I even said they had a symbiotic relationship, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about who owns the Blender Artists web-site. If you’ll notice the actual Blender logo is not present anywhere on the Blender Artist pages.

As I understand it CG Cookie also operates a website called the “Blender Marketplace” in which a portion of profits are donated to the Blender Foundation. This is symbiotic because it helps to fund the development of Blender, Blender is the software used to create content that is marketed on this marketplace in which CG Cookie also profits alongside their educational services some of which are centered around Blender. CG Cookie has a financial interest in ensuring Blender’s continued development.

@KBot: Going around in circles isn’t always a bad thing. In this particular case arguing the same point over and over again keeps bumping this thread topic and I’m sure there are people out there that are happy to see this topic at the top. At the same time I’m sure there are people out there that get really irked about this topic continually being bumped to the top. :slight_smile:

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…and this is nothing like your initial statement. You were the one who brought up blender artists. I was intending to critique the system scientifically and you dragged me in while trying to make some kind of point. As far as I can tell it’s gone nowhere and I would be glad to drop it and get back to analyzing the system.

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@Blonder: As you can clearly see this particular subject between you and I began when I replied to someone else regarding the ownership of Blender Artists. Then you replied to me as if to combat me in regards to BA ownership. I don’t see how I could have dragged you into anything when you are the one who replied to me in a combative state. Moreover there is absolutely nothing in your replies to suggest a scientific critique other than accusing me of making wild assumptions when all documentation and physical evidence points to CG Cookie being the owner of BA.

I would note that all of my replies contain physical evidence to support my claim including copyrights, quotes from CG Cookie and website registrations. All of your replies contain nothing other than denials and counter accusations.

“The American political consultant Roger J. Stone Jr. is often credited with coining the embattled spook’s mantra, “Admit nothing. Deny everything. Make counter-accusations”. As P.R. strategies go, it’s combative. But if your job has you frequently trying to defend the indefensible, it may be as good a credo as any.”

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Ok you didn’t drag me into it. I have now cleared up my singular accusation. You were still using it to make a point… one that you haven’t yet made.

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The point I’ve been making all along is that Blender Artists is owned by CG Cookie, the point you’ve been denying and combating me on. Accusing me of making a wild assumption that CG Cookie owns BA when their copyright is at the bottom of the page and their homepage lists Blender Artists among their assets, accusing me of providing weak evidence when I’ve provided web-site registration information listing CG Cookie as the sole owner of Blender Artists and now accusing me of trying to make a point that I haven’t made when I think it’s quite clear that my point was that CG Cookie owns Blender Artists and all evidence points to this being the case.

So the question is, why?

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What does your capitalistic view of the relationship (or more accurately lack of a relationship) between Blender and CG Cookie have to do with this thread? What point does it make? Why even bring it up? That is the question I was asking in the previous post. What is your point?

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@Blonder:
Ah, sit down my friend you’re in for an interesting bit of information. Obviously we’ve been arguing over whether Blender Artists is a for-profit business or not, but that wasn’t my original point. Whether you agree with me or not on the subject of BA existing for the purpose of profit or not for the sake of this explanation let us assume that it does.

Most Internet forums are modeled very similar to television. The thread represents the content, entertainment or otherwise bait that attracts viewers. The purpose of attracting the viewer is to throw an advertisement in front of their face. On television the cost of buying ad space on any given network or show is directly related to the number of viewers, or ratings, that network or show has.

Advertisers want to put their ad in front of the widest audience possible so shows with higher ratings cost more to advertise on, the American Super Bowl is a very high priced advertising event. Internet forums are similar, but advertisers generally pay per click rather than per show/second, however the amount they pay per click varies depending on the popularity of the web-site the ad is on and the frequency the advertiser desires the ad to be displayed on the site.

Think of Blender Artists, or any given forum, as a television network like NBC or HBO and each thread like a television show on that network. Look to the right of the thread title, before selecting to view the thread, and you might see this particular thread’s “ratings” listed as the number of posts and the number of views. Threads with higher ratings, like television shows with higher ratings, are highly desirable by the network because they bring in more viewers thus increasing the number of potential ad-clickers and the amount they can charge per-click for ads on their site.

The network might be more willing to let a broken rule slip if the thread has high ratings. Again think of it like television, shows like Jerry Springer or Survivor often bring in a good deal of viewers, people love to watch confrontations. Officially Blender Artists bans political and religious discussion, but unofficially such topics can lead to very entertaining confrontations and really boost ratings which in turn brings in additional revenue.

Whether Blender Artists subscribes to that or not I don’t know, but it is true. Generally it’s not about the posters, it’s about the viewers. Notice how the number of views on any given thread is usually quite a bit higher than the number of posts. Blender Artists, like most forums, probably has a lot more readers than posting members. You and I are basically on TV right now, we’re the stars of the show.

P.S. The viewers don’t really care what our political views are, they just want to be entertained.

P.P.S. The network doesn’t care about our political views either, network executives don’t care if the writers and actors in their shows differ politically or religiously so long as they make them money. “Money talks and bull-shit walks.”

P.P.P.S. Ace Dragon, with a post count like that you’re an A-List celebrity. Blue Print Random, you’re like Charlie Sheen, the bad boy of Blender Artists. Heh, usually I’m just an extra most of the time, but had the lead role this time around :slight_smile:

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Err… BA’s been getting revenue from ads long before the CG Cookie team took ownership of the site, and there’s been large threads (even recently) that were still closed because they devolved into flame wars regarding religion and politics.

If CG Cookie cared more about money than community health, they would just let flamewars go on until people got tired of calling each other names, and no doubt this thread may get locked because it retreads the same points over and over (honestly, you’re the only person I’ve seen who actually likes the idea of creating a circular argument pattern that keeps going to infinity).

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Every television show runs its course, most are lucky to last four seasons, Seinfeld ran for nine seasons and the Simpsons is still going strong.

As for circular arguments I never said I liked them, but I’m usually good to see them through to fruition. This time it had a pretty good climax in my opinion.

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Yawn!

Here’s an interesting thought. There is a difference between physical reality and accepted social constructs. This is becoming more evident as the consequences of “externalities” are moving into the realm of existential risk. The underlying cause is our economic system. It is incoherent with respect to natural processes. By that I mean that systems are not built with the overarching natural processes in mind. This is by the physical constraints a recipe for natural disaster.

It is a fact that the economic system is inherently coercive and more of a control grain than a system of distribution. It was constructed with the intention of being populated with two classes, the ruling class and the precariat. These days the precariat is 99.99% of the population. The only way for anyone to influence the economic system within the confines of the system itself is to contribute capital to political campaigns. This is an Oligarchy. This is the wage of the monetary system in all forms of governance. This is only possible with a complacent precariat that continues to work within the confines of the monetary system. We do this not because it makes sense but because of a natural characteristic of our behavior called Heuristics. This is a method by which our brains work more efficiently. Instead of bogging our activities down with careful consideration of each and every action, we form habits that tend to help us reach our goals. This is the underlying behavior that allows for Operant Conditioning.

To understand what is going on here one needs to have a deep understanding of the systems in play. Our original economic system was derived from the natural, primitive behaviors. Gift Economics is context sensitive in that respect. The individual gives to the collective and the collective cares for the individual. This is wild animal behavior. This is also similar to the process of evolution. When Linus Torvalds considers the open business model he likens it to Evolution. This is an economic system that not only affords the liberty to behave within the physical constraints of the overarching natural system, it is derived from the natural system itself.

In prehistoric times there was unlikely the notion of ownership. This too is context sensitive. It was understood by the first nations peoples that all belongings by the natural (physical) constraints are literally borrowed from the future considering the inevitability of death. All resources were community property as observed in natural systems. This is human nature as it emerged from the process of Evolution.

Several (probably more than ten) thousand years ago agriculture was discovered and with it abundance. In order to prevent the abundance of grain being stolen (scavenged) two behaviors emerged, hoarding and war. Populations grew and tribal governance was then being scaled up. Later when states emerged with markets where trade was used as a system of distribution. The issue with barter brought about the advent of currency. Currency not only made trade more convenient but also made hoarding much easier. By this time settlements had grown to the point that the scaled up tribal governance was overwhelmed and there was a system in the works that could serve as a control measure. Coercion was the reigning system and it has been ever sense in the form of the monetary system. Many forms of governance (all scaled tribal systems) have shared the same fate except for the ones that were taken over by the before mentioned. This fate is a crisis cycle in which a system rises to Oligarchy and falls to rebellion only to enthrone another entity to rise to Oligarchy. This system has been proven to be unsustainable not only in the long term as a statehood but it is being proven to be unsustainable in general as the inherent entropy has brought about many forms of existential risk.

We don’t really have a choice. We either work within the constraints of the physical realty or we parish. There is two types of extinction. One is transcendence through the Evolutionary process where we change beyond recognition and the other is an abrupt ending of our existence with no successor. We have been poor ancestors.

Now I can make my point scientifically.

We can’t help but notice our failures even though we are driven by heuristics. The evidence is all around us. We are suffering from cognitive dissonance in that our conditioned behavior is incoherent with respect to our observations. We continue on the same path by means of denial and justification. “I get more because I work harder”. “That person just fell through the cracks”. etc. etc. Graham Hancock (Sociologist / Journalist) has made some huge blunders with his wonderful contributions but he never spoke more true than he did when he said “we have forgotten who we are”.

This is why these behaviors are found in modernity. The economic system is the most influential aspect of our society. It is impossible to steal something that is free. A robust form of governance doesn’t need control methods. Distributed systems are inherently more secure in that there is no single point of failure. This is just desperate behavior in a failing system. All technology (including biological and economic) with the natural emergence of greater complexity will become mature and be replaced by a more complex and intelligent successor. That is just the way it is. :yes:

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@Blonder: If anything is a yawn it’s certainly that wall of text you just threw up there, did this just turn into PBS? :slight_smile:

Here’s what you just said “Society is rife with malfunctions and people don’t realize nor care about it. Oh yeah we’re all doomed because this system always fails one way or another.” You just said it with a lot more words that few are going to read.

I would agree with your second to last paragraph though, a lot of people refuse to place blame upon the system and instead blame the individual. “There’s nothing wrong with the system, there’s something wrong with the human.” “The system that humans invented is perfect, but humans are imperfect.”

P.S. You didn’t make your point scientifically, big words do not a scientist make. All you did was give your opinion, but pointlessly made it a really long and arduous read.

Oh and I’m not sure I agree with your usage of ‘cognitive dissonance.’ Cognitive dissonance suggests an individuals behaviour that does not align with that same individuals beliefs. I.E. Smoking cigarettes while believing them to be harmful, cheating on your spouse while believing it to be morally unacceptable. While people do cope with cognitive dissonance with denial and justification, justifying the worship of an imperfect system does not necessarily fall into the category of cognitive dissonance if the person is not opposed to the aspects of that system.

If Catholic businesses were forced to pay for birth control that would fall under the category of cognitive dissonance I believe because the Catholic is morally and religiously opposed to the usage of birth control. Not changing the subject, but as a quick note, I am not personally opposed to the usage of birth control, but I am opposed to the idea of forcing others to facilitate it if they are opposed to the usage of it.

Which is to say I do not hold the same beliefs as Catholics, but I don’t think they should be forced to violate their own beliefs, even though they are opposed to that of my own.

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The system being imperfect doesn’t mean that nothing you do can possibly be your fault though.

If someone budgeted poorly and bought things with monthly payments that he couldn’t afford, then filed for personal bankruptcy, would it be someone else’s fault, perhaps being that of the bank’s? In the real-estate burst at least a big chunk of the problem were people buying oversized houses known as ‘McMansions’ thinking that interest rates would stay at rock bottom levels, while the reality was that the home was bigger than they could afford so when those rates went back up to more normal levels, they were in deep trouble. Recently there was a story on how the government is providing altered mortgages to allow people to keep their homes, but with the catch that they will be working to pay it off for up to 40 years or more (slice it any way you wish, but debt is debt and some things like retirement can’t be done if you have obligations like that. The home debt spread out over 40 years also doesn’t shield against the eventual costs of home maintenance and emergencies like if a pipe bursts or if a storm breaks your windows and dings your roof).

That’s a major issue with society today, a lot of people have a tendency to blame their troubles on someone else. To them, it has to be someone or something else who caused it to happen, because there’s somehow just no way you could be capable of doing such a thing.

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Just to clarify here. I find it absurd to tell a Catholic, or anyone else for that matter, that they should have to choose between their God and their government. If ever a choice were presented to someone I should believe they would choose their God otherwise know that they are choosing that which opposes their God.

@Ace Dragon: Not saying no one is ever at fault, but the system is not perfect, some people really do get screwed by the system. It’s not on purpose, but the system is not perfect, how could it be. While I believe a perfect being can create imperfection I don’t see how an imperfect being can create perfection.