Slashdot Mirror

It sounds tempting as an explanation for their famous flops, like the Fire phone -- they pushed it on the front site of their giant e-commerce / do-everything site (I bet Amazon is a lot of people's homepage or startup tab set), so how could it fail, even if it barely succeeded? But plenty of companies have flops (I assume most, but then, I'm thinking of some high-end companies for which I can't think of any universally panned *products,* price aside, like Rolex ... are there any terrible Rolex watches?), and Amazon's made some awesome ones, too. I did not expect to like it nearly as much as I do, but my e-ink Kindle is pretty amazing to me, for instance. (On the other hand, the color tablets seem fine for some people's use and mindset, but I find them very unappealing for being so far from stock Android, lacking Google Play, etc.)

I am so far more curious than cynical about the Echo; plenty of room to reject it, but I'm trying to let the cool possibilities balance it out until I at least see one in person. I don't think it's yet time to label it a flop. That time may be *close* (we'll see!), but it isn't *yet.* I think an audio search appliance is a neat idea. Will they make it more Kindle Fire (OK, useful, just not ideal, and stretchable https://www.youtube.com/watch?..., http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tec...) or more Fire Phone (cool cameras, but .... otherwise, oy).

If the products suck, then all the ads in the world can't make them otherwise. If they're good, really good, or great, though, the ads won't hurt ;)

More than 250,000 UK citizens have been killed by cold temperatures, despite how inexpensive energy is. To the extent people advocate against inexpensive energy, the death rate will increase, and the victims' [frozen] blood will on he hands of the advocates.

lool fox news report on how afghans are gay. you're an excellent troll.

Could you expand on that? What makes a report from Fox News regarding a study conducted in Afghanistan by the military a "troll"?

Are you claiming that the information is wrong? Does the news change when its comes from other sources? No, it doesn't look like it.

Paedophilia 'culturally accepted in south Afghanistan'
Afghan sex practices concern U.S., British forces
Chapter 4. Afghan Cultural Influences

Or are you simply engaging in anti-Fox News trolling yourself?

Could it be as simple as "haters gonna hate" and you're a hater? Sure looks that way, "Noah."

One more thing: LOL

Yeager replied, "All ours pilots do that, we do a roll on final approach to make sure we're not landing on top of somebody else." And so he saved Emmett's career.

And Yeager had good reason to say this: airplanes do land on top of each other, especially when a high-wing plane is doing a low approach and a low-wing plane is doing a steep approach. It's also a somewhat common midair collision scenario, of a high-wing plane climbing into a low-wing plane, because of the same visibility problems inherent in the two designs.

That is shipped, factory sealed as unpacked and installed.
Thats why all the spy rocks keep on getting found.
How many where more than just dead-letter drops?
Russian 'spy rock' was genuine, former chief of staff admits (19 Jan 2012)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

A proposed internet tax is the least of problems with Hungary's current government. Selected headlines from around the web:

The Guardian: Hungary's rabid right is taking the country to a political abyss

The Tablet: Meet Europe’s New Fascists

The Telegraph: Inside the far-Right stronghold where Hungarian Jews fear for the future

Aljazeera: Hungary: Towards the Abyss Investigating why critics of Hungary's authoritarian government believe it is leading the country towards fascism

The Tablet's, tagline is "A New Read on Jewish Life" and of course Aljazeera is Islamic. The Telegraph and Guardian are respectable British publications. They all agree that Hungary is leaning fascist.

The military and corporate planes have had rear facing passenger seats for ages. It certainly doesn't affect babies being carried in rear facing car seats. There's all kinds of safety reasons why this is a good idea, but I can't find anything substantial to back up your claim.

http://www.airspacemag.com/nee...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tra...

No, I chose the US over Australia because of the socio-economic constraints in Australia.

Yet you can't think of a single example to back up your claim? I mean this is your third post on the subject which could quite easily resolved with some reputable citations, yet here we are.

Given the low levels of inequality in Australia,

So less constraints then right?

that means that you can move easily from being slightly lower middle class to slightly upper middle class (and back down)! Ain't it great! And that's just one of the many problems with your interpretation of that statistic.

Low inequality means lower socio-economic constraints. You can't have it both ways.

They teach you to read, but not to think.

derp derp

Well its a good thing I work in visual effects then isn't it? You know the kind of people who are grammer nazies? Usually people with OCD and lack social skills. Luck for me having dyslexia has paid of well in my life working on movies. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cul...

As Umberto Eco wrote:

"G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.

"The "death of God", or at least the dying of the Christian God, has been accompanied by the birth of a plethora of new idols. They have multiplied like bacteria on the corpse of the Christian Church ..."

Interestingly, there's a report in the Telegraph today suggesting that driverless buses could be on the roads in the UK pretty soon.

On the one hand, this makes sense - the complexity of the problem is reduced with a vehicle following a pre-programmed route.

On the other hand, I'm deeply sceptical - taking the assumption that such vehicles would have to be super-safe to be accepted, I can see a spate of teens having fun baiting autobuses into emergency stops. Oh, and cyclists will totally rule the roads - get in front of a bus and pedal as slow as you like.

Egalitarianism

Wage gap myth:

http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20Final%20Report.pdf

Majors by Gender: Is It Bias or the Major that Determines Future Pay?

There Is No Male-Female Wage Gap

The Gender Pay Gap is a Complete Myth

Gender pay gap is not what activists claim

Equal pay statistics are bogus because they don’t compare like with like

Fair Pay Isn’t Always Equal Pay

Wage Gap Myth Exposed -- By Feminists

5 Feminist Myths That Will Not Die

The Wage Gap Myth

Don’t Blame Discrimination for Gender Wage Gap

The pay inequality myth: Women are more equal than you think

Women Now a Majority in American Workplaces

Labor force participation rate for men has never been lower.

Share of Men in Labor Force at All-Time Low

Women In Tech Make More Money And Land Better Jobs Than Men

Female U.S. corporate directors out-earn men: study

Female CEOs outearned men in 2009.

Women between ages 21 and 30 working full-time made 117% of men’s wages.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, single women between 22 and 30 years old earn an average of $27,000 a year. That’s 8% more than comparable men.

Workplace Salaries: At Last, Women on Top

Young Women’s Pay Exceeds Male Peers

The 15 Jobs Where Women Earn More Than Men

Women aged between 22 and 29 earn over £10 per hour on average, compared to men their same age who earn just under this amount.

Young women now earn more than men in UK

No. But such is the moral panic over child molestation in the UK that no-one dare stand up and defend him.

I don't think you could build a good case that "moral panic" over child molestation is the biggest problem the UK has in this regard, viz:

Rotherham child abuse scandal: 1,400 children exploited, report finds

Prof Jay said: "No-one knows the true scale of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham over the years. Our conservative estimate is that approximately 1,400 children were sexually exploited over the full inquiry period, from 1997 to 2013."

Revealing details of the inquiry's findings, Prof Jay said: "It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered."

The inquiry team found examples of "children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone ....

The report found: "Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought as racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so."

Failures by those charged with protecting children happened despite three reports between 2002 and 2006 which both the council and police were aware of, and "which could not have been clearer in the description of the situation in Rotherham".

No indeed, it appears the "moral panic" you are looking for is not about child molestation.

Rotherham child sexual abuse scandal is tip of iceberg, says police chief

There will be more Rotherham-style child sexual exploitation scandals unearthed in the coming months as the “stone is lifted” on the scale of abuse perpetrated on the young, one of Britain’s top police officers has warned.

Children are being abused an hour after being groomed online, Rotherham sex abuse scandal expert warns

Paedophiles are abusing children in real life within an hour of grooming them online, the professor who led the investigation into the Rotherham sex abuse scandal has warned.

Professor Alexis Jay, who compiled a report into how gangs of mainly Asian men groomed, terrorised and abused 1,400 girls as young as 11 in Rotherham over a 16-year period said sex abuse went on undetected in many other areas across Britain.

it's a matter of public record. Sort of.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

Health minister Simon Burns must consider himself lucky not to have been disciplined - not so far anyway - for describing, under his breath in the Commons yesterday, Speaker John Bercow as ''a stupid, sanctimonious dwarf''.

Although the remark was picked up by the Press Gallery, Mr Bercow did not hear it, or affected not to hear it.

But when he heard about it, he said that no record had been made, implying that he had ordered the comment to be excluded from Hansard, the official report.
 
The Speaker of the House has the authority to order any word uttered in the Chamber (which has a live television feed to satellite and cable in operation whenever the Chamber is in session) to be stricken from the official record. Said, essentially in public, but retroactively censored hence offering some degree of deniability - if only there wasn't that pesky press gallery which is invariably full for the juicy debates!

So an incident which occupied the headlines in today's newspapers did not officially take place. The Speaker has wielded his censor's pen, and censored (or should the word be ''redacted'') the comment from the record.

Hansard is not a verbatim report and comments made by MPs ''from a sedentary position'' are generally not recorded, unless they give rise to exchanges in the chamber.

But tinkering with Hansard can be perilous. Some years ago, Speaker Horace King was involved in angry exchanges with a Tory MP named Donald Box. Later, privately, Box told the Speaker that he had got his facts wrong, so the Speaker agreed to excise the row from Hansard.

Incidentally, not too many months ago (July I think it was) a long list of names was read out in the Chamber, those names all being intimately connected with Sinn Fein and alluding to allegations that those names were connected with activities some might consider not quite legal. Like, for instance, plotting and executing the Brighton bombings. The entire record of the live televised debate was erased from Hansard but not before it had already been published.

Things get progressively darker from there. I have a scrape of Hansard from back when it first went online, I'll have to do a rescrape and run a diff, because I do recall a bit of a panic on when it was realised that there was information in there that the Government would rather we forgot - like for instance, the debates in 1958 concerning the permanent scrapping of the Blue Streak nuclear deterrent (and calling into question the entire point of the V project) in favour of the insanely expensive and as then untested Trident programme, the 1971 nonevents surrounding the UK's entry into the European Common Market with that secession clause that Teddy Boy Heath absolutely insisted and would brook no debate on it being in there which means that Scotland's split from the UK would have ended the UK's Europe membership because the UK would have technically ceased to exist, and the incredible opposition to Thatcher's plan to send our entire Naval force to the Falklands to liberate a few sheep from those pesky Argies in 1982.

The _real_ ouch is that under the Obama administration NASA has become the agency to uplift the Muslims' Self Esteem"

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sci...

http://www.frontpagemag.com/20...

I love the idea of LFTR. Honestly. A thousand years of cheap and plentiful fuel, simplified nuclear design, smaller physical footprint, lower risk of cataclysmic meltdown & resulting fallout, waste having a much lower half-life, no CO2 emissions...

But it's still an idea. After Oak Ridge, there's been no government-led development of LFTR reactors in the states. Our only hopes at present are either with the Chinese or a private company called Flibe Energy that's trying to gather investment funds to build LFTE reactors for army bases.

Short men tend to get married later but stay married longer. Referenced

Unfortunatly the cannabis produced today (skunk) is way more potent than that available in the nineteen seventies. Then, average THC content under 2%, now average THC content 20%. CBD, an anti-psychotic, is virtually absent in skunk.

Cannabis as addictive as heroin, major new study finds

As intrusive as I find Google's business model there is no changing the fact that the vast majority of internet content exists only because of add revenue. If that revenue were to dry up then it is quite likely that the internet would be facing a large crisis as so many users have been conditioned to believe they don't have to pay out of wallet for browsing web content.

This is not to support the sensationalist quote from Eric Schmidt, but merely to point out that Google's business model, and the business models of similar companies, are currently the reality of how the internet functions without pay walls. This was in a slashdot article a while ago, but it would cost the average user $230 a year to use the internet without adds.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tec...

While this is not really that large of an amount considering what Comcast extorts its average user for, it is worth mentioning that this would require individual signups for almost every website which throws a wet blanket over the prospect of most internet start ups who are looking to lower the barrier to entry as far as possible. Like it or not adds support the internet and targeted adds are the most valuable.

Instead of dismissing targeted adds as a concept I would prefer to know exactly what is being tracked about me so that I can separate the sensitive information from information that would be useful to marketers.

So what was the crew of the Cole supposed to do? Blast every speedboat that came within 300 meters of their ship with a 20mm cannon? ...and before you say yes, consider the amount of shit that would hit the fan if some foreign warship blew a speedboat out of the water in New York harbor...

The rules of engagement for the Cole were clearly incorrect for the time and place. Bombed US warship was defended by sailors with unloaded guns It reminded me of the barracks bombing in Beirut.

> It's genetics and hormones.

No. It is culture and upbringing.

Not for much longer. Russia. China. India.

At the rate Americans are de-funding wasteful gub-mint spending like space exploration and basic research, the whole "put a man on the moon" bit is going to become pathetically out of date. Hope that extra dollar in your job-creator's tax refund is worth it.

Syria is most recent historical example

The Civil War there has been ongoing for a little over three years. The American Revolutionary War took eight years to fully resolve itself. The Syrian Government only controls about 20% of the country if this map is any indication, so that would seem to dispel your notion that you can't effectively fight the police state.

The Syrian Government is doomed in the long term; it's basically a battle of attrition at this point and the cold mathematical reality is that al-Assad's followers have less males of military age than his opponents. Barring decisive intervention from the outside he is doomed; I leave it to the reader to decide if this is a good thing or not...

Heard the call, and am answering. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/com... Bet you wont read it !

Arnold_Schwarzenegger#Marital_separation

Arnold Schwarznegger's chequered history with women

It looks like he have not needed much of steroids, as he started bodybuilding at an early age.

To those people, every point seems to matter. They'll apparently do absolutely anything...because everyone else does it too! (Well, that's free market to you and me.)

You get two iPoints.

> Do you even know why?
> Germany's CO2 emissions grew for several years after implementation of these policies.

Seems like you have a narrative that isn't universally agreed upon.

When I google for "german co2 emissions" I find a number of articles that offer a different explanation for the current situation. They put the blame on Fukushima, saying that the rise in CO2 corresponds with the decommissioning of 8 out of Germany's 17 reactors in the post-fukushima hysteria. They say that solar has primarily replaced what was formerly nuclear with the difference being made up by increased coal that was previously scheduled to come online hence increased CO2.

While AmiMoJo is probably wrong about solar making coal and nuclear unprofitable, it seems the weird taxation is really just an indirect way of paying for solar to replace nuclear rather than for solar to replace coal.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05...
http://www.indialawjournal.com...

Take your pick or just Google it for yourself. It's common knowledge.

Captcha: provable

First, I'd like to point out you're ignoring the french example which you know full well does support my position.

Second, you are apparently utterly ignorant of the issue:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fin...

Do the honorable thing and commit rhetorical seppuku... honor demands it, scumbag.

*waits for Stuart to disembowel himself while standing ready to knock his head off out of mercy.*

*takes a bow and walks*

"Pranab Mukherjee and other Indian ministers tried to terminate Britain’s aid to their booming country last year - but relented after the British begged them to keep taking the money, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal."

well you can have your peanuts, India does't want it..

The US already has a system like "the rest of the world" with its Veterans Administration hospital system. Just like "the rest of the world" people die waiting for care, and the employees try gaming the system to make their stats look good. You see similar things going on in the NHS, and other similar systems.

Patients facing eight-hour waits in ambulances outside A&E departments

I don't think everyone wants that.

And you're right, the Democrats did drag the US into a 19th century plan, unfortunately before that the US had a 20th/21st century system. The Democrats tried to "fix" what was at most a 15% problem by seizing control and screwing with 100% of it, and making a hash of it. But at least they own it.

The militant yes voters physically attacking no campaigners are a figment of your imagination

See, you've just demonstrated perfectly why the 'yes' campaign failed: A personal attack on someone because they made a statement you disagreed with, while pretending the evidence that proves them correct doesn't exist - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

A pro-union newspaper claiming one unnamed person was attacked but the police have no record of the incident. That is not evidence.

The militant yes voters physically attacking no campaigners are a figment of your imagination

See, you've just demonstrated perfectly why the 'yes' campaign failed: A personal attack on someone because they made a statement you disagreed with, while pretending the evidence that proves them correct doesn't exist - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

Not really, i think the movement is small at the moment but the Scotlands was in the beginning http://www.independent.co.uk/n... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... http://www.shetnews.co.uk/feat...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

The major banks have already said that they would leave Scotland for England, including Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fin...

Some beaver dams are actually quite big, the biggest is twice the size of the Hoover dam, and can be seen from space! =)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/canada/7676300/Worlds-biggest-beaver-dam-can-be-seen-from-space.html

Well, its still less stupid than throwing a bucket of ice water over your head and then posting it on Facebook.

No, not really. Which one is more likely to get you killed?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

Oh you want precise data? Like large support across muslim countries, where terrorism is supported. 20% of muslims support the 7/7 bombings 1:4 muslims in the UK say the bombings were justified 31% of muslims in turkey support suicide bombings against westerners 32% of palestinians support the murder of jews, including children. 55% of muslims support hezbollah 26% of young muslims in america believe suicide attacks are justified 26% of egyptian muslims believe that suicide attacks are justified

You're now enlightened to this "tiny minority." Which is roughly 25% having extremist views, out of 1.6 billion that would be a "mere" 400,000,000 individuals. You know, I could keep going and posting, so again--there is something fundamentally broken with islam and muslims. And I haven't even gotten to the stuff on specific groups, which vary between 6% as a low to 51% support across muslims. Or the 50-75% that believing that killing apostates is a good idea. I guess none of that is large swaths.

According to Wikipedia ISIS has around 100,000 people fighting for it. The world's Muslim population is around 1.6 billion. Therefore ISIS contains 0.006% of the world's Muslims fighting for it.

Interestingly that's around the same percentage of the US population (0.006%) who were convicted of murder in 1994 (source), so is Islam really any more broken than, for example, 1994 America?

That's how many soldiers ISIS has, where did they get money for weapons, outside support. Where are they getting rations, outside support. Where are they getting vehicles, outside support. It was 20 years ago but I don't remember a Guns for Murders program, I do remember a Jail for Murders program that still continues today. Again it was a long time ago but I don't remember there being support for murders, even congress has better approval numbers then murders. When you look at Muslim support for terror groups and their activities it is much higher then 1994 US support for murders, 32% of Palestinians support Itamar attack which was a brutal murder of 5 family members including a 3 month old. 89% of Palestinians support attacks on Israel. 20% of British Muslims sympathized with the 7/7/7 bombers, 16% of French Muslims support ISIS, 51% of Pakistanis grieved for the death of Osama Bin Laden, only 16% though the killing of Bin Laden was justified, the majority of Muslims in the middle east have positive or mixed feelings of Bin Laden. This is not a small percentage that approves of this behavior it's 25-50% of all Muslims.
sources
http://www.ynetnews.com
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org
http://www.pewglobal.org
http://www.pewforum.org

I would worry less about global warming and more about the ignorant descendents of those once great Egyptians, who are today practicing a religion that could very well lead them to one day soon decide to demolish these relics because their 6th-century child-molesting prophet said they were idolatrous.

Some believe in a bearded man in the sky. Doesn't mean he exists.
And yes, for example battalion "Azov" is pretty much entirely made of neo-nazi volunteers. They even use neo-nazi symbolic.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

Please be sufficiently terrified and not notice it's a sham caused by western meddling in the 1st place.

Many problems in the world are either caused or exacerbated by ignorance of the sort that you have just demonstrated. Al Qaida's goals have nothing to do with what the West does or has done, other than repelling the Muslim invasions 500+ years ago. They want to rule the world, and that means taking over places they don't rule now. Pretending the problem is something other than what it actually is will be very likely to have unfortunate results. The Islamists are teaching their children that they will retake the lands they formerly ruled, and eventually control it all. Now there is a key point here: it doesn't matter if you believe them, believe that they actually believe that, or that they will succeeed. They do believe it, and will act on it, so Western societies and the rest of the world had better be ready for it.

Alarm in Spain over al-Qaeda call for its “reconquest”
HAMAS Targets Spain

The price of denial and PC thinking is starting to be felt in very ugly ways.

Rotherham: In the face of such evil, who is the racist now?

I'd be a little more inclined to believe that the person who wrote the document was a real expert if there had been a known case of these guys actually producing a biological weapon. This sounds a whole lot more like people who have never built a biological weapon teaching other people who have never built a biologial weapon how to build a biological weapon.

It's been known for quite some time that al Qaida and company have conducted lethal experiments with biological agents, even if at times inadvertently. You are also far too dismissive of them. Many terrorists and terrorist leaders have been well educated people: engineers, doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc. You should also keep in mind that al Qaida has previously canceled attacks because they were uncertain that a particular attack would produce casualties of a large enough number to meet their approval and maintain their "brand" as highly dangerous.

Black Death 'kills al-Qaeda operatives in Algeria'

Defense official says Pentagon has evidence Russia firing missiles inside Ukraine
Russian troops 'directly' involved in Ukraine conflict: US, Kiev

Of course, if you don't believe US officials, let's instead turn to something we can all trust: money.
Markets take fright as Russian tanks roll into Ukraine

Well, it's good to see the Chinese government's censors are here to keep us informed about what this week's official lie is. Meanwhile in the real world, anyone discussing forbidding topics online risks arrest for "spreading rumors":

Teenager becomes first person arrested under China's new anti-gossip law

People don't realise how costly monopolies are. I work for a UK hospital, and have worked in the department that's responsible for purchasing all of the medicines the hospital uses. We have an online system that tells us for any given drug that generic A is the cheapest at £0.50 per box, generic B is £0.60, generic C is £1.00 per box and generic D is £5.00 per box. If every hospital buys generic A's levothyroxine, then generics B, C and D will just stop producing this medicine, because there's no market for it - and then if generic A wants to charge £20.00 per box, they can, because they have no competition to bring the prices down and the hospitals need to buy levothyroxine.

So instead, the hospitals are grouped into purchasing regions, and one region will buy generic A's levothyroxine, one will buy generic B, and one will buy generic C. (Generic D doesn't get a look-in because its prices are considered unreasonably high). The hospitals that were made to buy the more expensive levothyroxine will then be told to purchase the cheapest simvastatin, and the middling-cheapest flucloxacillin (while the people who bought the cheap levothyroxine will buy the more expensive flucloxacillin), so no region is out-of-pocket overall.

And yet, when I've mentioned this to people, they seem to think this is unnecessary, and all the hospitals should just buy the cheapest version of every medication. Here's what happens when a company is given a monopoly and decides not to play nicely with its customers:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/hea...

Would it help to know that it is largely an urban legend?

Drink spiking with Rohypnol and GHB on a large scale that people are imaging is not real.
In my city, a study was done on a large number of young people arriving at the city hospital (free A&E) with suspected drink-spiking.
Not one had any traces in their blood. Maybe some had been spiked with extra alcohol, but mostly is was young women not taking responsibility for their own excessive drinking (or pills).

Similar data from the UK:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

Yeah, in China you get sent to jail for political satire. Last time I checked, political cartoonists weren't being jailed in the US for mocking Obama.