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They build factories where people are given 15-minute breaks twice a day to urinate and defecate, and four hours to sleep.

A human being cannot live like that, their workers would simply fall asleep at their jobs.

When they use them up, they send them off to have any non-failing organs harvested in a death van.

there are simply too many factories, too many bodies, and not enough oversight for any of it to make a lot of difference.

Are you kidding? The Chinese government has party members everywhere, and they love to be seen to be doing their jobs. Naturally there is corruption, but we are talking about a government that has managed to introduce a one-child policy and enforce it with much success.

Having enough warm bodies and fervor to do the job and not having the job done are not contradictory statements. Try again.

The solution to factory suicides in China? Bars on the windows.

We do that too in places where we know people might try to kill themselves.

The difference is that our employees are allowed to quit their jobs and go home.

it's easiest to just trust them when it comes to things like baby formula (melamine)

You know those guys were executed for their crimes, right? Talk about corporations being held accountable.

You know that capital punishment doesn't dissuade criminals, right? There's always someone who thinks they won't get caught. Also, I know that someone was killed, I don't know that it's actually whoever was really responsible.

paint on toys (lead)

A few decades ago perhaps but they stopped doing it way back. They had to or they couldn't sell toys to the developed world. No-one makes lead paint any more, except for very special applications where it is more expensive than non-lead paint.

Now I know you're a total fuckbag shill asshole, because this is provably untrue. You can get on the CPSC mailing list and you will get a continual stream of recalls for lead paint, and literally ALL of it comes from China. Much of it is sold at Dollar Tree locations nationwide. Most of it is children's projects, like colorful notebook covers that will be fondled and possibly chewed on.

Fuck off and tell your lies somewhere else. We've enough here already.

The SCADA system isn't flawed, the whole prison system in U.S. is. Not only have studies shown that there is no need for such locked down prison facilities, but it's also demonstrated by real life experiences in Norway. Almost all of Norway's prisons are open. Their objective isn't locking down people but correct behaviour. The purpose is to create real life environment, complete with saunas, sunbeds and own rooms and furniture. It makes much more sense too. If you just lock down people for years they are always going to stay criminals. If you try to correct their behaviour and reintroduce them to system and proper behavior, they will learn and also stay out of prisons in future. It's very telling that U.S. has one of the highest percentages of their people in prisons. That system clearly isn't working.

Is it just me, or was there a similar story to this on April Fools day this year? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1372297/April-Fools-Day-2011-Best-world-round-up.html Forth one down the page.

The fact the average wealth of members of congress tripled in the last 25 years only backups what you've said. Welcome to the new fall of Rome redux.

Yes, you can say what you like about the president with no repercussions.

It is a mistake to think that all Israeli Jews agree with Israeli or even Jewish policies. For example: Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jews 'harass' 8-year-old girl over dress. Quote: "... 50 people involved in the abuse of an 8-year-old." Also see Israel braced for protests against treatment of women after girl, 8, is spat on by Jewish extremists.

Here are only some of the reasons many Israelis disagree with the typical policies of the Israeli government:

Some Israelis think that further violence toward Iran will cause trouble for Israel. Partly that is because there is the idea that encouraging violence against 1.6 billion Muslims is self-defeating. There are only an estimated 14 million (not billion) practicing Jews in the entire world.

Some of those who control the U.S. government want to build an oil pipeline through Iran to get oil from the "Stan" countries to the ocean where it can be shipped easily. That idea would be financially profitable only if U.S. taxpayers paid for security. The U.S. government is, in some ways, VERY corrupt.

Remember that the U.S. government supported Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's war with Iran so that U.S. companies could sell weapons to Iraq, and with the idea of the enormous profits that would come from building the pipeline through Iran.

Also, remember that the U.S. government has interfered with the politics in Iran since before before 1953, when the U.S. agency known as the CIA arranged the removal of a democratically elected president, President Mossadegh. The U.S. government arranged that the Shah have complete power. See for example, Politics, Power, and US Policy in Iran, 1950-1953 (PDF file, Harvard University). Quote: ... the August 1953 coup was not an isolated incident, but an outgrowth of decisions and policies made by the Truman administration largely as a result of a truly remarkable U.S. military buildup that really began to come on line in mid-1952. Such aggressiveness would have been impossible in 1950 or 1951, even if Eisenhower had been president.

Opposition in Iran to the violent regime of the Shah caused support for Muslim clerics who took over management of the government. Iranians say that clerics have usually not been good business and government managers. The unthinking violence of the U.S. government toward Iran has caused Iranians to be very afraid of what the U.S. government might do in the future.

One reason for the Iranian government to develop nuclear materials is to try to protect Iran against U.S. government violence. Another reason is that all governments need to give attention to sources of energy that do not cause global warming.

Some with influence in the U.S. government wanted to build an oil pipeline through Afghanistan. That is one of the reasons the U.S. government spends taxpayer money there, but it seems that getting control of Afghanistan will not happen soon, so there is renewed interest in violence toward Iran.

The U.S. government's support for violence toward Arab and Muslim nations, partly as a way for a few to make money, is seen by some as caused by Jewish manipulation of the U.S. government. There is support by some Jews in the U.S. to get U.S. taxpayers to pay for the security of Israel.

There are only 5,874,300 Jews in Israel. There are approximately 5,275,000 Jews in the United States. In some ways, the U.S. is as much o

Saying
"CarrierIQ is an Android problem"
  is a lot like saying
"Cars are a Suzuki problem"

Sorry but
Not all cars are Susuki's
like
Not all CarrierIQs are on Android

and
Not all Susuki's are cars
like
not all Androids have carrierIQ

and cars aren't that much of a problem
like
CarrierIQ is not that much of a problem

And plenty of Windows PC's come with CarrierIQ like stuff installed on them:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1383216/Rental-chain-Aarons-caught-spying-customers-home-taking-webcam-photos.html

LOL, yesterday my 27 year old daughter was on NORAD's site tracking Santa on her new notebook all day!

Daughter of Thomas the Tank Engine creator slams politically correct 'holiday' episodeThe clergyman who wrote the Thomas The Tank Engine books would be insulted by a new TV episode which ditches all references to Christmas, says his daughter. Hilary Fortnam made her comments after the television company that records the new adventures re-branded Christmas as 'the holidays'. Mrs Fortnam, 65, said her father Rev W Awdry was the son of a vicar and brought her and her sister and brother up in the traditions of the Church of England.

This is why

Well, the Bhopal disaster in which Union Carbide was responsible for resulted in a fine, and the CEO evading any justice due to the US not extraditing him to India.

Yet the US will get their panties in a bunch to extradite someone for far lesser crimes. Hypocrites. Anyone who has any respect for US law after seeing shit like this needs to give their head a shake.

Don't be stupid. Twitter lets people delete their posts, but you can't do the same for the stuff that the LoC has archived.

How To Delete a Tweet

If you've posted something that you'd rather take back, you can remove it easily. When you hover over your Tweet while viewing your home or profile page, you'll see a few options appear below the message

People signed up with the understanding that they could remove tweets from the public record. Turns out twitter, in handing a copy to the library of congress to data mine (and this is what they've said they are doing), is violating that part of the agreement.

The archive will be available to Mr Lefurgy's team of researchers, to find and analyse interesting trends.

'There have been studies involved with what are the moods of the public at various times of the day in reaction to certain kinds of news events.

'Thereâ(TM)s all these interesting kinds of mixing and matching that can be done using the tweets as a big set of data.'

Here are a couple:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1265676/Britney-Spears-releases-airbrushed-images-digitally-altered-versions.html

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/photo-alteration-analysis/?intcid=story_ribbon&pid=2550&viewall=true

Lets see. They are developing multiple carriers. This was launched and at least 2 keels are laid for new carriers. There are reports that the 3rd carrier is nuke and not diesel.

Then you have multiple reports of China likely having multiple hidden nuke warheads.

They took out a sat with a new anti-sat. Their Space program is 100% military.

And idiots like you think that they are DEFENSIVE?
Either you are a western idiot, or just another Chinese spy.

2000-3000 new nuclear warheads.

China may be using thousands of miles of underground tunnels to hide a nuclear missile arsenal that is far bigger than current estimates, according to researchers.

They spent three years translating secret military documents, scouring the internet and studying satellite images for clues – and concluded that China may have as many as 3,000 missiles, compared with general estimates of between 80 and 400.

faceless human mass? There is a picture of him over here

This system is very likely well beyond what Iran can do on their own.. Most likely China has cracked into our systems, OR far more likely, have spies that work on this and modified the code to accept their commands, or possibly even sold us parts that allowed them to hijack this. This ties into revelations about China's hidden systems.

Now, the funny part is that everybody will blame O for not going into Iran to steal this back. Yet, this is proof that we have a fucked up industrial-military complex. We need to crack down hard on security, since it should be obvious that we have security issues. But we will not. We will continue this way.

Add this to Kyoto and the massive breaking of WTO/IMF by China and you have the direction for where the west is headed towards.

I work in the maritime industry and green initiatives are working hand in hand with rising oil prices to...

That is really great news. As you're probably aware, the maritime industry is a major MAJOR contributor to global pollution and carbon emmissions. 16 ships create more pollution than all the cars in the world. One wonders just how many groups of 16 ships are there in the maritime industry? Perhaps the maritime industry itself, descretly, should be included in whatever international agreements are made.

Google execs offer $33m to save Nasa's Hangar One

Well, China is preparing for a hot war. It is an interesting read. But there have been reports for over a decade that China had restarted their nuke production. Who knows, with the horrible leadership in America for the last decade, we will probably find out when most of them launch.

First, in some countries this would automatically spark an ethics investigation or be deemed corrupt. It may not be "corrupt" in the US, but I suspect that's more of a relative definition of corrupt than an absolute one.

Second, the US is ranked 24th in the world on corruption. I'd therefore argue that the standards the US government holds itself to is not only nowhere near what it could be, but isn't even anywhere near as good as other nations are managing on a day-to-day basis. This isn't great for smaller nations, though you can understand that they don't have the resources to be equal and of high quality. They also don't have much influence and the impact of corruption is necessarily limited. A fair number are also very new and don't have much experience. A nation like the US is a different matter. They've plenty of resources, they've had three centuries to work out the flaws, and they've far too much power to not be responsible with it.

The fact that New Zealand, Denmark and Finland are first and joint second respectively (none of whom are permanent members of the UN Security Council, hold nuclear weapons, dominate either the IMF or World Bank, or control vast swathes of international trade) is worthy of great respect. They don't have to be as good as they are, they just are because they by-and-large want to be. Not saying they're perfect, this is a ranking system not a measure against a fixed standard, but it is highly commendable none-the-less.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2070483/TSA-screeners-confiscate-2-machetes-6-grenades-23-loaded-guns.html

http://www.wsmv.com/story/16155120/gun-confiscated-at-nashville-airport

http://www.abc4.com/content/news/top_stories/story/Loaded-gun-confiscated-by-TSA-at-SLC-airport/Ih20n3TQykG7eso8vF8q8w.cspx

I would be much more interested in an opensource electric car design.

...that can be replicated using a 3d printer 3d printer

I like how they hang American flags with white skulls instead of stars beneath it as well as graffiti covering them. Real mature. Sort of makes me want to photoshop their flag with the tulip being one person stoning another person while blood drips down into the bottom band.

So you've downed a pristine intact drone from your mortal enemy. Do you A) keep it secret to have an upper hand and send it to a lab to analyze all of its weaknesses and offer this information to your allies or B) take pictures in front of it with propaganda surrounding it and show the world? Well, I guess when you don't know how to do A you have to go with B!

The point is that sending aircraft into someone else' airspace without permission is an aggressive act forbidden by international law and treaties that the US is a party to.

It's something that happens all the time. Usually all that comes from it is the intruding flight gets intercepted and escorted out, then the country later files a diplomatic protest.

Hostilities arising from such intrusions are the exception, not the norm, and almost always happen after visual confirmation of the target by a pilot in a chase plane. A shoot first, ask questions later policy leads to terrible incidents like Iran Air 655 and Korean Air 007. Given the size of the RQ-170 (wingspan estimated at 60-90 feet), it could easily have been a small commercial airliner or a civilian business jet.

And, Apple has lost Steve Jobs and when his legacy of ideas is used up, I don't see Apple doing well.

Dude had 300 patents according to National Inventors Hall of Fame and Museum in Alexandria maybe, just maybe, one of those might be useful to Apple going forward.

Apple has not done well in the past with Jobs and they won't in the future.

They did so badly under him that he had to be ousted by John Sculley to save the company.

Jobs was Apple. Jobs is gone. Apple will not continue to innovate and bring out "game changer" products because they lost the guy who envisioned those products and knew how to bring them to market.

What Johnathn Ive, CBE will suddenly lose his Midi-chlorians because The Master has gone?

Steve Jobs' biological father, Abdulfattah John Jandali, is a native of Syria. He recently expressed his support for the pro-democracy protesters

Ideal climate? I'd say Luleå (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lule%C3%A5#Climate) is closer to ideal, where Facebook is building its European server halls. (also has a technical university next door among other things).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2054168/Facebook-unveils-massive-data-center-Lulea-Sweden.html

What's with all the hate for the Aptera? Did the owner rape your sister or something? I can't believe so many of you are getting so worked up about hating this guy and his company and his car. I smell some kind of agenda, although I can't imagine what it could possibly be. Maybe you guys work for companies that make those pathetic hybrids that barely get more than 50 mpg? It was a concept car that never made it off the ground. It could have been any small automotive startup. The fact that it was a car that looked like an airplane and got much higher gas mileage than anything else on the road in North America is not why they failed. Even for major manufacturers, most concept cars never see the light of day. I would have bought an Aptera if they could have sold it for less than 30k. It was strikingly beautiful and had an incredibly low coefficient of drag. I think it would have been one of the best cars ever made.

For now I will continue to salivate over Volkswagen's efforts with the XL1. Although I much prefered the former, more radical, tandem 2 seater L1 A real jetson-mobile.

It's not just you.

Look at your $60-120 cable bill and tell me there isn't something else that would make you happy with that money. At the high end, that's a family mobile plan with data for a family of four.

What are the odds that they dream up a whole bunch of laws to "protect the children" and then local councils use those laws in a totally different context.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2696031/Anti-terrorism-laws-used-to-spy-on-noisy-children.html
Whilst not a news paper - -
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1053039/Council-use-anti-terror-laws-spy-binmen-accused-accepting-strawberry-pop-bribe-away-trade-waste.html
and many more examples on Google. I don't think I trust them much.

I used to think Apple fanboys were preachy and annoying but they have nothing on the Android Ninnies that feel the need for everyone to have Android phones.

Do not forget /. editors. Way to catch up with the UK last week

and on ilounge as well but no they have to wait for this week to put it up because it is now on appleinsider.

What is the point of putting up stories about the hipster item du jour if you are a week late?

Did you hear how Mother Earth is creating a new island in the canaries?

She's got it in for us, I swear. Nothing like putting a blowtorch in the hidden depths of your oceans to screw with those gnats on the surface: "They think they're so important, I'll show them."

it's the speed at which it is happening. It's way faster than any natural warming or cooling that we've experienced

There has been no statistically significant Global Warming since 1995.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html

it's the speed at which it is happening. It's way faster than any natural warming or cooling that we've experienced

There has been no statistically significant Global Warming since 1995.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html

Crazy? Since I am the subject of your link, I would have to take offense at that.

But if you want to talk facts, let's talk facts rather than distort the picture or take comments out of context, shall we? I'd rather be a crazy than some kind of ass who quotes other people out of context.

My comment was about recent years -- the last 2 or 3. I said nothing about whether there was an overall warming trend. So take your distortions and stuff them, okay?

Just in case you would like something other than just my word that it hasn't warmed significantly in the last 2 or 3 years.

Now, call that what you will, but it isn't the rantings of some crazy person.

However -- again for the sake of truth and fairness -- the graphs in that article are misleading. They are the doings of the media, not the scientist being quoted.

If you want to be taken seriously, you need to get your own facts straight, rather than distorting them and quoting out of context. Shame on you.

"Are we forgetting that the Koch brothers funded a separate study that pretty much confirmed the results? Crazies will be crazies, but I don't expect reasonable persons to be swayed by this."

Um... no. Come on, you alarmists! For all your talk about "just the facts", you have a surprising tendency to scramble the truth.

What Muller "confirmed" was the veracity of the initial data used by some of the models... NOT "results" of any kind. Muller's paper cannot honestly be called a "verification" of AGW in any way, even by the staunchest AGW defender. That isn't what it is.

Further, mere days after Muller's announcement, the colleague who collaborated with him on the work denounced his claims, saying the report was "a huge mistake with no scientific basis".

Just to set the record straight, that's all. You want facts, let's talk facts.

This is what your climate skeptic had to say

I don't understand, that's not my climate skeptic, you linked to an article from 2004 written by Richard Muller. I merely provided you the results of his research, I didn't even indicate whether or not I sided with him!

So lets just ignore the part that the greens were pushing about the climate skeptic who had a come to god moment.

What the fuck are you talking about? You brought Richard Muller into this conversation -- are you "the greens"? Furthermore, you used an article he wrote seven years ago to summarily discredit everything apparently even somehow validating "the emails demonstrating knowledge of the fraud that was ongoing." What the hell, man?

Lets look at what one his team members had to say about his come to god paper.

"But today The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped. Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html#ixzz1eTMUgUpc"

When you identify me as a "green" that you "can't talk to" I don't know why I continue to help you but here's another article you might find informative that follows your Daily Mail article by a matter of hours. It's a little more valuable because instead of it being some news organization (WSJ, Daily Mail, whoever) hell bent on making a story and cherry picking comments to make them sound the most inflammatory, it's actually Judith Curry actually telling you how she actually feels. She has reservations and that's good but she opens with:

I had a 90 minute meeting with Richard Muller this evening. I have to say that there isn’t much that we disagree on.

This is what your climate skeptic had to say

"... "back in the early ’80s, I resigned from the Sierra Club over the issue of global warming. At that time, they were opposing nuclear power. What I wrote them in my letter of resignation was that, if you oppose nuclear power, the U.S. will become much more heavily dependent on fossil fuels, and that this is a pollutant to the atmosphere that is very likely to lead to global warming."

So lets just ignore the part that the greens were pushing about the climate skeptic who had a come to god moment.

Lets look at what one his team members had to say about his come to god paper.

"But today The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped.
Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html#ixzz1eTMUgUpc"

In the UK we also have a system called TrafficMaster [trafficmaster.co.uk] which analyses traffic flow for their satnav services. There is, however, nothing to prevent them working with the stores to cross-reference number-plates against traffic flow. So now the store can find out exactly where you're driving as well.

That kind of information is something I never signed up for & one of the reasons I'll never have a store loyalty card.

Nice graph, which deserves a caption of "Humans Warming to the topic".

Here's another linkie thing, more wiggly lines ... http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/10/30/article-2055191-0E974B4300000578-6_634x639.jpg Nice wiggles.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html

What a screwed up world it is.

Nice graph, which deserves a caption of "Humans Warming to the topic".

Here's another linkie thing, more wiggly lines ... http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/10/30/article-2055191-0E974B4300000578-6_634x639.jpg Nice wiggles.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html

What a screwed up world it is.

I guess this latest release is in spite of the data. Check the chart showing temps from 2001 to 2011. It's about half way down the page and the temps are statistically flat.

The weight of the internet has been estimated: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2057018/Internet-weighs-strawberry.html

Time passes quicker at higher altitude. When using a clock on the surface to measure the speed of something passing well below you, it will appear to go faster than it actually did. Since the neutrino bean passes underground over several hundred kilometers, somewhere in the middle it'll be several kilometers below the surface.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1314656/Scientists-prove-time-really-does-pass-quicker-higher-altitude.html

However, this effect is very small. Anybody around here on /. that has the time to put up a quick ballpark calculation of the expected increase in observer speed due to time dilation affecting the researchers' clock relative to the underground neutrino beam?

Probably this is in the paper since it will most certainly affect their measurements but the paper appears to have been slashdotted... and if it is not we may have the first empirical results to build a new subsurface time contraction theory on, in which case I suggest we call it the Zmooc Theorem:-)

For some arbitrary definition of violent crime yes. We have a lower murder rate, lower levels of rape and so forth however which is arguably what matters more in terms of violent crime. I'd much rather put up with a slightly higher chance of being punched at the pub on a Friday night by a drunk if it means a drastically lower chance of just outright being shot dead next time I do my weekly shopping on a Saturday afternoon. Of course, avoiding both would be nice and I can't say either have affected me yet, but it illustrates the point.

I covered debt to GDP elsewhere, it's meaningless by itself, and the riots? are you kidding me? Britain has one set of riots over a few days for the first time in god knows how many decades and that's something that stands out? Countries like Spain, Greece, France and so forth have riots of that scale on a seemingly annual basis. France for example:

2005: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4413964.stm

2009: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2009_French_riots

2010: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1322441/France-riots-Demonstrations-pension-reforms-continue-ninth-day.html

Yeah, I don't think Britain's riot situation is too much to worry about right now to be honest, if Britain can be criticised for having some kind of problem, it's sure as hell not riots.

Britain has a lot of faults, but fundamentally my point was simply that compared to other nations, there's certainly not any more, and in many cases an awful lot less to worry about here. Pulling random faults out the hat proves what exactly? That Britain is a somehow worse country in general than many others? No, it doesn't.

Britain's violent crime record is worse than any other country in the European union, it has been revealed.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html

That on top of having second highest debt to GDP ratio in the world (only Japan has worst record) and recent riots.

Why do Europeans always hold us up as the poster child for rampant xenophobia?

The UK rhetoric sounds a lot like some of the commentary coming out of Arizona, United States. Italy's Northern League is doing the same thing.

So seriously, just stop. Xenophobia and over-the-top patriotism is indicative of a people wallowing in fear prodded by power hungry governments distracting their own citizens with an "us versus them" construct. It's visible and present in every culture on the planet because other cultures are the easiest scape goat to lay your problems upon.

It's RyanAir; this is just a publicity stunt

Exactly. This is the same airline that makes new aircraft designs to charge people to go to the toilet (imagine if two people become sick on the same flight!) and/or have standing rather than sitting positions (imagine an evacuation from a plane which will not have been designed for such passenger density) . Their business model is basically that people believe that if the customer service is worse, the flight must be cheaper. They make it quite difficult to compare (they have tickets online for about 10UKP but the price quoted up front never includes baggage or check in (up to 55UKP online + 100UKP at the airport for a standard airline 25kg allowance), for example and in order to get it you have to use their own special card or you will have to pay an additional administration fee.

Ryanair, having tricked you into paying more than an equivalent standard airline, will then, typically, dump you at some random airport not even close to the airport you were meant to go to and fail to arrange transport to your original destination.

It sometimes happens that people travel RyanAir because it has a monopoly on a particular route, but it seems to me that it's mostly because they just don't realise how much they are being ripped off. Avoid, or if you do take up with RyanAir, remember that the only form of communication they accept is through the small claims court. Always buy with a credit card and be ready to cancel the charge. Send in your demands for a refund of any additional costs you had to bear (by registered mail; forget the phone), but give a deadline and after they ignore them start with the small claims court. Since the courts know they are a bunch of cheats, if you provide reasonable evidence you will get your money.