I'm not disagreeing, but I would still prefer to seek solutions.

Most of the time the paths to legitimate profitability are well known. Those paths can be presented as options from a list. In those cases where the google is involved in handling the money, then the google is also in a position to say more about what is going on. I specified that there should be room for "other", but pushing the developers to clarify their plans will at least make it easier for potential downloaders of the app to have a more informed judgement of the risks.

Seems to be a fairly typical response these days. No, your interpretation is not what I wrote or intended and you didn't ask for any clarification or help in understanding my poor writing. I also think your writing is not of the best, but my sadly too typical response is to discount your opinion. Or perhaps I should react defensively and try to explain what I was trying to say?

However I suspect you have some axe to grind (as do I) and therefore there is no reason for me to make so much effort--and the discussion will time out and die in a day or two anyway.

Fairness is a weak sauce problem. Much larger problem is incentives in favor of criminals. How many Android apps are really trustworthy? "Fairness" for crooks doesn't help.

I'm increasingly convinced it's a waste of time to speculate about solutions, but I still think a "business model" tab could help a little bit. Most of the time the developer would just select from the main options, and in most of those cases the google could say yay or nay without revealing too many details. Of course there also needs to be room for new ideas and innovations, but saying what is going on would let you decide what to watch out for and also help predict how long the app will be around...

I was going to quote it, but looking at the continuation of the FP branch it apparently deserves negative moderation. (Notwithstanding the lack of clarity.) I was also going to ask for clarification about the stupid typo, but now I don't care.

One appropriate question might be "What part of the Constitution can't you understand?" Apparently all of it. Or "When did you lose your marbles?" Or even "What have you done with the real person who created that identity?"

I'd guess that it's the senility thing, but I might be projecting from my age. I was already getting up there when I registered on Slashdot, but you might have been a mere child in those years.

Thanks, but even looking at the full context and with that definition, I'm missing the joke. So why haven't the moderators rated it Funny already?

I have to disagree regarding the human cloning. However I think it is being hidden quite carefully because it is illegal.

Having said that, I think the most interesting clone candidate would actually be John Henry. I'm sure there are some gene samples available since he didn't die until 2007.

Pretty sure "gyre" is intended as a joke, but websearch failed me [just] now. Care to clarify the joke?

The "future shape" I was thinking of actually involved smartphone-enhanced clothing. Still don't understand why no one (that I know of) is making clothing with suitable adaptations for smartphones. Also shower proof pouches for people who worry about missing a message when they are in the shower...

ACK, and I was also probably wrong about the location. I had just had my first look at a tiny map and I didn't realize how much farther north the tsunami zone was. Only about a three-meter tsunami, which is quite small compared to March 11th.

Mod parent funny.

And Ponzi schemes are sure to collapse.

Thanks for the heads up. Middle of the night here, but if you want to follow it in English, https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww3.nhk.or.jp%2Fnhkworl... has a live feed. I'm watching it now. Haven't seen the epicenter, but the tsunami warning zone indicates the same area as the quake in 2011 that killed 20 thousand people and led to the Fukushima #1 fiasco.

That's kind of my take on the story, but my wording would be more along the lines of "What are the success criteria?" Or perhaps "Would I donate to support this?" (Surely I would not donate on the basis of the description here and not even feeling motivated to learn more.)

But that's also why I wouldn't donate to support the project. You could think of it as a kind of paradox of choice. There are LOTS of things I could donate money to, but in general the success criteria are almost never clear. Whatever I donate to, it's likely that I could have had "more success" donating somewhere else.

Disclaimer needed? I was weird enough to pay for some freely distributed software. Long time ago, and usually for educational purposes for me or my students. One of the results I was hoping for was that the software would continue to exist with support and possibly even improvements, but can't recall any cases where that actually happened. Later donations often had more clear objectives, but my batting average for "wins" was so low that I mostly stopped donating...

Deserves the Funny, but it's also too true in a sad way. In those days the machines were basic enough that you could actually figure out what was going on. Now they are entirely black boxes at every level and from every perspective.

Obligatory quote against the censor trolls. However I have two substantive responses to your topics.

First, I think the extreme megalomanics with sufficient resources are already cloning themselves. Still a secret, but I think the basic plan involves a series of clones a few years apart, all of them carefully indoctrinated to believe whatever the cloner believes. The "upgrade" plan will involve only one major jump, presumably explained as a "relative" who just looks remarkably similar to the megalomaniac at the head of the chain, and then each few years a fresh prime-age clone will be swapped into the top (and only visible) role. Not sure how long the "prime-age" span is, but the plan will be to make the cloner appear to be ageless. (And by the time it becomes obvious what is going on, no one is expected to be able to do anything about it.)

Second, the extreme sociopathic elitists only want medical care for themselves. The only reason "the peasants" should get any healthcare at all is for the sake of developing new medical treatments for the elite. Human guinea pigs, but treated with less respect. Apart from that, they probably believe that peasants can be allowed to buy whatever healthcare they can afford, but at full market price and while maximizing the profits for the elite.

So I thought I would get an example of a "shooting yourself in the foot" (using JavaScript, but I should have gone for examples with Ruby and JavaScript) to try and extend the Funny moderation. However the google search is so sick and literal minded these days that it went off on the tangent of subtle programming mistakes when using JavaScript. Which devolved into another stupid argument with the AI.

In theory it could have asked me what I was looking for, but in practice I think I human being wouldn't have started out on such a stupid foot.