Obama supporters didn't show up to vote for Hillary so the total wasn't what the poll predicted
That was part of it, but they also misjudged how people would vote. For instance, a lot more Hispanics voted for Trump than anyone expected. Same for union members. The unions endorsed Hillary, but the rank-and-file voted for Donald.
From what I've heard, fake reviewers often ARE verified purchasers.
Correct.
They work out deals to buy the products, then return them to the seller for a refund.
It is even easier than that. When my daughter writes fake reviews, she pre-sells the product on eBay or Craigslist, then buys it from Amazon and has Amazon drop ship it directly to the secondary customer. Then the seller reimburses her for the price difference. So the review is from a "verified" customer, when if fact she has never actually seen the product. Since she is a Prime member, the shipping is free, and that cost advantage means she sometimes directly makes money on the eBay transaction.
-instead- choose to do undeserved damage to the reputation of a product with inaccurate reviews.
It is not "undeserved", it is just inaccurate. These people are spammers, and I have specifically and repeatedly said I want off the marketing list. They deserve to lose sales. Amazon refuses to allow me to say the real reason, so I say something else instead. If the manufacturer contacts me about the bad review (they often do), I tell them the real reason. Either way, they are disincentivized from spamming people.
Save yourself a lot of time and energy by learning how to use the filtering features of your email software.
That does nothing to solve the root problem. If you see your neighbor's house being robbed, should you waste "time and energy" by calling the police, or should you just buy a better lock for your own door?
The solution is for Amazon to honor their own email policy, and stop spamming their customers. They should also stop censoring legitimate criticism.
Amazon could solve this issue by only allowing reviews from people who have actually purchased the product on Amazon.
Nope. My daughter writes fake reviews, and she typically charges $20+"price of product" if they want a "verified" review. For more expensive items, she will sometimes charge the difference between what the product costs on Amazon, and what she can resell the NIB product for on eBay or Craigslist, and then she has Amazon drop-ship directly to the secondary customer.
Requiring all reviewers to be verified buyers may help somewhat, but it would be only a partial fix by raising the cost of the fake reviews.
If the polls were off in just a few critical swing states, the case for fraud would be stronger. But they were off by about the same amount in all states. Locations with electronic ballots were a bit more pro-Trump, but that may be explained by demographics, since areas with more minorities are more likely to use old-fashioned paper ballots.
There are only a few grievances I have with this site, and its lack of friendliness to utf8 is one of them.
If I just slap together a webpage, UTF-8 will "just work" by default. So Slashdot must be going through some extra effort to make sure it does NOT work. Is there a reason for this? Maybe the backend database is MySQL 1.0 from 1995.
The easily spotted ones are easily spotted. Many others are not. My daughter makes money on Fiverr writing fake reviews. She is an A-student, and writes impeccable English. Many of her reviews are flagged as "most useful" by Amazon customers, and she uses that fact to promote her services. There is no indication that her reviews are fake or incentivized, so I don't see how Amazon is going to remove them.
They should also do something about "angry reviews" from people that have requested to be removed from marketing email, but are receiving it anyway through "marketplace.amazon.com", mostly badgering for reviews. Amazon refuses to stop those emails, so every time I receive one, I leave a one-star review for the product. I used to say that it was because they spammed me, and it didn't really reflect on the quality of the review, but then Amazon started deleting any review that mentioned spamming, so now I make up something about the quality of the product instead. This pollutes the review process and diminishes its usefulness, but at least I get my revenge. The obvious way for Amazon to fix this problem would be to stop spamming people that have requested to be removed from their marketing email list.
Double the COST. It currently costs $224 to make the 7.
No, nearly all of that $224 is component costs, which would be the same. The actual assembly labor cost is about $10. Most estimates are that it would cost about $20 in America. So offering Apple subsidies and tax breaks to shift production to America is stupid, but only slightly stupid. Of course, it is also illegal under WTO rules, but that is another matter.
People who literally couldn't care less about the intellectual property of others patent their own stuff?
Poor countries benefit from ignoring IP, because they produce little of their own. As they modernize, they produce more and more IP, and benefit from strengthening protections. China is going through that transition.
Over the last decade, corporate profits have shifted from smaller to bigger corporations, and the most profitable companies all have two characteristics in common: 1) The are globalized, and 2) they own a lot of IP. There are few better investments than building up a patent portfolio. Patents give you monopoly pricing power, and negotiating power to form IP cartels with other companies.
It means that they are taking a higher percentage of your money than any of their competitors.
That depends on why you are buying it. If you are buying it as a status symbol, then the higher prices are a benefit, because they make it more exclusive.
Is there any evidence that products containing aloe are better in any quantifiable way from non-aloe products? If the efficacy relies entirely on the placebo effect, then, by publicizing the absence of aloe, these researchers are actually making people less healthy. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Also, does the manufacturer really save money by leaving out the aloe? I have aloe plants in my backyard, and they grow like weeds, despite getting no water all summer.
But I'm not gonna complain if he flip-flops away from stupidity and toward sanity.
He has already flip-flopped on Hillary, and now says he will not send her to prison after all. The alt-right is livid. Next, he will be telling the Mexicans that they will only have to pay for their side of the wall.
I was mostly joking, but pay-walls will work on most regular users.
I have shown the "Incognito" trick to plenty of non-geek co-workers and they have no problem remembering it and using it. They just don't understand (or care) why it works.
Ironic we can't see it either because of a pay-wall.
Sure you can. NY Times gives you a certain number of free page-views each month, and tracks them using a cookie. So just right click on any NY Times link, and select "Open Link in Incognito Window". It will work every time.
When they run the competition out of business or marginalize them, then they slowly try to bring prices back up again
I have heard this accusation many times, but no one is ever able to give a single example where this has happened. So can you give an actual example where China has driven out the competition, and then raised prices above the previous market price?
Unlikely. Most teachers benefit a lot from the educational status quo, which is defended by the Democratic Party. College professors are the most politically biased group in America. According to some polls, only 3% of them voted for Trump. Our educational system is the problem, not the solution, with a strong vested interest in indoctrination rather than thinking.
Simply with the pre-globalization status, roughly before the creation of the WTO (1994). It was pretty decent for the US middle class, for those who can actually remember it.
This is known as Cargo Cult Economics. Just bring back the policies of the past, and we get back all the positives with none of the negatives, and we just ignore the fact that the world has changed.
Throwing a temper tantrum won't get a better deal, on the contrary.
It would be easy to get a better deal, since the worst crap in TPP was put there by America. For instance, the other countries would be happy to ditch the IP racketeering put into the agreement by the RIAA and MPAA. Many members of RIAA and MPAA are big donors to the Democrats, so a lot of Republicans would love to knife them to get revenge.
The chief reason for TPP was to create a trade alliance to stand up to China, as part of a much larger effort to counterbalance China's growing influence through the rest of this century.
Indeed. TPP excluded China, although China is the biggest trading partner of many of the members of TPP. The often-stated intention was to negotiate and adopt TPP, and then let China join afterwards, so they would be accepting the terms negotiated under American leadership, without being able to tilt the agreement in their favor.
That is obviously not going to happen now. Instead RCEP will be negotiated under Chinese leadership, and if/when America joins, we will have to accept those terms.
As America economically withdraws from the world, Chinese led institutions like AIIB will gain influence. Eventually, the dollar may even lose its status as the world's primary reserve currency, with big negative consequences for the American economy.
Slashdot Mirror
Obama supporters didn't show up to vote for Hillary so the total wasn't what the poll predicted
That was part of it, but they also misjudged how people would vote. For instance, a lot more Hispanics voted for Trump than anyone expected. Same for union members. The unions endorsed Hillary, but the rank-and-file voted for Donald.
From what I've heard, fake reviewers often ARE verified purchasers.
Correct.
They work out deals to buy the products, then return them to the seller for a refund.
It is even easier than that. When my daughter writes fake reviews, she pre-sells the product on eBay or Craigslist, then buys it from Amazon and has Amazon drop ship it directly to the secondary customer. Then the seller reimburses her for the price difference. So the review is from a "verified" customer, when if fact she has never actually seen the product. Since she is a Prime member, the shipping is free, and that cost advantage means she sometimes directly makes money on the eBay transaction.
-instead- choose to do undeserved damage to the reputation of a product with inaccurate reviews.
It is not "undeserved", it is just inaccurate. These people are spammers, and I have specifically and repeatedly said I want off the marketing list. They deserve to lose sales. Amazon refuses to allow me to say the real reason, so I say something else instead. If the manufacturer contacts me about the bad review (they often do), I tell them the real reason. Either way, they are disincentivized from spamming people.
Save yourself a lot of time and energy by learning how to use the filtering features of your email software.
That does nothing to solve the root problem. If you see your neighbor's house being robbed, should you waste "time and energy" by calling the police, or should you just buy a better lock for your own door?
The solution is for Amazon to honor their own email policy, and stop spamming their customers. They should also stop censoring legitimate criticism.
they would say "It's not a witch hunt when there are actual witches involved"
That makes no sense. If I go rabbit hunting, is it not a rabbit hunt if there are actual rabbits involved?
Amazon could solve this issue by only allowing reviews from people who have actually purchased the product on Amazon.
Nope. My daughter writes fake reviews, and she typically charges $20+"price of product" if they want a "verified" review. For more expensive items, she will sometimes charge the difference between what the product costs on Amazon, and what she can resell the NIB product for on eBay or Craigslist, and then she has Amazon drop-ship directly to the secondary customer.
Requiring all reviewers to be verified buyers may help somewhat, but it would be only a partial fix by raising the cost of the fake reviews.
If the polls were off in just a few critical swing states, the case for fraud would be stronger. But they were off by about the same amount in all states. Locations with electronic ballots were a bit more pro-Trump, but that may be explained by demographics, since areas with more minorities are more likely to use old-fashioned paper ballots.
There are only a few grievances I have with this site, and its lack of friendliness to utf8 is one of them.
If I just slap together a webpage, UTF-8 will "just work" by default. So Slashdot must be going through some extra effort to make sure it does NOT work. Is there a reason for this? Maybe the backend database is MySQL 1.0 from 1995.
They're easily spotted.
The easily spotted ones are easily spotted. Many others are not. My daughter makes money on Fiverr writing fake reviews. She is an A-student, and writes impeccable English. Many of her reviews are flagged as "most useful" by Amazon customers, and she uses that fact to promote her services. There is no indication that her reviews are fake or incentivized, so I don't see how Amazon is going to remove them.
They should also do something about "angry reviews" from people that have requested to be removed from marketing email, but are receiving it anyway through "marketplace.amazon.com", mostly badgering for reviews. Amazon refuses to stop those emails, so every time I receive one, I leave a one-star review for the product. I used to say that it was because they spammed me, and it didn't really reflect on the quality of the review, but then Amazon started deleting any review that mentioned spamming, so now I make up something about the quality of the product instead. This pollutes the review process and diminishes its usefulness, but at least I get my revenge. The obvious way for Amazon to fix this problem would be to stop spamming people that have requested to be removed from their marketing email list.
No he would be having them on ships that take weeks or months
Small valuable items such as CPUs and DRAM are not sent by ship. They are sent by air cargo.
Double the COST. It currently costs $224 to make the 7.
No, nearly all of that $224 is component costs, which would be the same. The actual assembly labor cost is about $10. Most estimates are that it would cost about $20 in America. So offering Apple subsidies and tax breaks to shift production to America is stupid, but only slightly stupid. Of course, it is also illegal under WTO rules, but that is another matter.
People who literally couldn't care less about the intellectual property of others patent their own stuff?
Poor countries benefit from ignoring IP, because they produce little of their own. As they modernize, they produce more and more IP, and benefit from strengthening protections. China is going through that transition.
Over the last decade, corporate profits have shifted from smaller to bigger corporations, and the most profitable companies all have two characteristics in common: 1) The are globalized, and 2) they own a lot of IP. There are few better investments than building up a patent portfolio. Patents give you monopoly pricing power, and negotiating power to form IP cartels with other companies.
It means that they are taking a higher percentage of your money than any of their competitors.
That depends on why you are buying it. If you are buying it as a status symbol, then the higher prices are a benefit, because they make it more exclusive.
You either do a lap in that time or you do not, there is no 'capable'.
Yeah, TFA is silly. Instead of having a long drawn out discussion of which racing car is "fastest", why not just ... race them.
Is there any evidence that products containing aloe are better in any quantifiable way from non-aloe products? If the efficacy relies entirely on the placebo effect, then, by publicizing the absence of aloe, these researchers are actually making people less healthy. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Also, does the manufacturer really save money by leaving out the aloe? I have aloe plants in my backyard, and they grow like weeds, despite getting no water all summer.
He is going to run up a massive deficit. How soon before the conservatives try to disparage him?
Do you mean like the way conservatives turned against Ronald Reagan?
But I'm not gonna complain if he flip-flops away from stupidity and toward sanity.
He has already flip-flopped on Hillary, and now says he will not send her to prison after all. The alt-right is livid. Next, he will be telling the Mexicans that they will only have to pay for their side of the wall.
I was mostly joking, but pay-walls will work on most regular users.
I have shown the "Incognito" trick to plenty of non-geek co-workers and they have no problem remembering it and using it. They just don't understand (or care) why it works.
Ironic we can't see it either because of a pay-wall.
Sure you can. NY Times gives you a certain number of free page-views each month, and tracks them using a cookie. So just right click on any NY Times link, and select "Open Link in Incognito Window". It will work every time.
When they run the competition out of business or marginalize them, then they slowly try to bring prices back up again
I have heard this accusation many times, but no one is ever able to give a single example where this has happened. So can you give an actual example where China has driven out the competition, and then raised prices above the previous market price?
But that might lead to critical thinking.
Unlikely. Most teachers benefit a lot from the educational status quo, which is defended by the Democratic Party. College professors are the most politically biased group in America. According to some polls, only 3% of them voted for Trump. Our educational system is the problem, not the solution, with a strong vested interest in indoctrination rather than thinking.
Simply with the pre-globalization status, roughly before the creation of the WTO (1994). It was pretty decent for the US middle class, for those who can actually remember it.
This is known as Cargo Cult Economics. Just bring back the policies of the past, and we get back all the positives with none of the negatives, and we just ignore the fact that the world has changed.
Throwing a temper tantrum won't get a better deal, on the contrary.
It would be easy to get a better deal, since the worst crap in TPP was put there by America. For instance, the other countries would be happy to ditch the IP racketeering put into the agreement by the RIAA and MPAA. Many members of RIAA and MPAA are big donors to the Democrats, so a lot of Republicans would love to knife them to get revenge.
So was slavery. Doesn't meant the South won't go to war over it.
The South lost the war, and slavery ended. The same will happen with coal.
The chief reason for TPP was to create a trade alliance to stand up to China, as part of a much larger effort to counterbalance China's growing influence through the rest of this century.
Indeed. TPP excluded China, although China is the biggest trading partner of many of the members of TPP. The often-stated intention was to negotiate and adopt TPP, and then let China join afterwards, so they would be accepting the terms negotiated under American leadership, without being able to tilt the agreement in their favor.
That is obviously not going to happen now. Instead RCEP will be negotiated under Chinese leadership, and if/when America joins, we will have to accept those terms.
As America economically withdraws from the world, Chinese led institutions like AIIB will gain influence. Eventually, the dollar may even lose its status as the world's primary reserve currency, with big negative consequences for the American economy.