Unless I'm missing something, assuming you have enough tissue samples from distinct individuals to avoid a monoculture that quickly goes extinct again because of inbreeding, the only real difference between creating two living clones and creating a thousand living clones is that you have to spend about 500 times as much time and money to do the latter, and even then, only if economies of scale don't start to kick in along the way.

Now whether the species will actually stay not extinct in the wild is another question—after all, it presumably became extinct for a reason—but even a species that exists only in captivity isn't truly extinct, just extinct in the wild.

And whether or not anybody cares enough to spend 500 times as much money to bring that species back is also another question, but I already covered that.

That's some pretty convoluted logic there, at least by my reckoning. If the user hasn't purchased the item in question, how exactly are you assuming he/she knows the product sufficiently that they're in a suitable position to review it, judging it's strengths and weaknesses?

I don't, but with the exception of books and movies, you also can't assume that people who bought the product know the product well enough to review it. The majority of reviews are posted within a couple of weeks after buying a product, for better or worse. For anything more complicated than a toaster, by the time people really know the product well enough to give it a thorough review, they've owned it for at least six months.

Worse, if you assume a typical one-year product cycle, that means half the purchasers won't understand the product well enough to give it a good review until after the next product is on the market and nobody cares about the one they bought.

The way I approach buying products consists of different approaches for different types of information:

• Product failures: Analyze first in aggregate based on the number of people reporting failures in the product, then historically based on the number of people reporting failures in previous similar products by that manufacturer, under the assumption that most failures will occur after the next model comes out.
• Product support by the manufacturer (e.g. firmware upgrades): Analyze historically based on similar products in previous years.
• Comparison of features and usability: Seek out people who mention other products in their reviews, either because they chose to buy those other products instead or because they chose to buy this product over the others. Ignore all other reviews, because they rarely contain enough objective data to be of value.

Now that last one isn't precisely true; sometimes other posts do contain objective data, though they are a lot less likely to do so. I usually skim a few 5/5 and 1/5 reviews to see if I spot patterns, and if so, I then decide whether those patterns are indicative of device malfunction or user malfunction... but that's the last step of analysis for products that I didn't rule out in the previous, easy steps. :-)

Also, if the product sucks, assuming the product isn't so bad that folks return it, people who own the product are more likely to feel the need to give it better reviews to justify the money they spent.

Wow... again. I'd bet that people who have purchased a product and are unhappy with it are actually *more* likely to review it harshly in an effort to punish the company for their poor product, and at least warn others against a crappy purchase. There are some old marketing saws that say similar things, I believe.

It's not my theory. We even have a term for people who do that frequently: fanboys. Worse, those rare people who understand a product well enough to give it a thorough review in the first few weeks of ownership are much more likely to be fanboys, because that usually only happens if they've already owned a similar product from that same manufacturer. So the least accurate reviews are likely to be the positive reviews that look the most accurate....

At the very least, that holds true for me. I've purchased a couple of stinkers, and I made damn sure to leave a one or two star review, and explain in detail *why* it was such a terrible product.

Me, too. I've also often posted reviews on products with obvious design flaws that I chose not to buy, in which I explained in detail why it was a terrible product. And invariably when I do, I get a bunch of whining idiots asking me how I can possibly know how well something will work without buying it. And my answer is something like "because I know what a fulcrum is". It is as though people magically think that a design flaw only exists if someone was foolish enough to pay for the product before discovering it, or that an obvious design flaw will magically go away if you wish hard enough, either of which just boggles my mind.

I'm not sure I'm getting your logic, now if this person bought and reviewed both then you might have a point, but just because they bought a different similar product doesn't mean they know anything about the product they didn't buy.

The logic is simple. People don't bother writing reviews about products unless they have a reason to do so. That reason is either because they bought it and liked it/didn't like it or because they chose not to buy it because they chose something else, but took the time to consider it. In the latter case, there's a 100% chance that they are at least somewhat familiar with multiple products. In the former case, there's a much less than 100% chance.

Therefore, you have better odds of learning actual facts that you don't know about the product (as opposed to pure opinions) by reading a review from someone who chose a competing product over the one you're considering than by reading a review from someone who bought the product.

Nonsense. Unique means that something is one of a kind. Suppose that you have a figurine, and there is exactly one other figurine in the world that is like it. If something happens to the other one, your figurine will become unique. Therefore, yours is almost unique, because you haven't found your hammer yet. After you do, it will be unique. :-D

Someone who actually is known to have purchased the item, yea, their review should be worth more than random Internet person #4827341

Not really. A review by someone who chose a different product is likely to be more valuable in choosing a product, assuming that person can articulate why he/she chose the other product, because that means the person knows not only this product, but also other products on the market. By contrast, someone who chose the product he/she is reviewing has a very high probability of being familiar with only that product and not any others on the market. Given a choice, I'd take reviews from non-owners over reviews by owners any day.

Also, if the product sucks, assuming the product isn't so bad that folks return it, people who own the product are more likely to feel the need to give it better reviews to justify the money they spent. And because they're less likely to know other products on the market than someone who chose s different product, they're also less likely to recognize the products' flaws. Between those two factors, owners of the product are more likely to give bad products higher ratings than they deserve.

A review from last month is probably worth more than one from two years ago. The product may have changed.

If the product has changed in a meaningful way (other than possibly fixing manufacturing defects), it should have a different ISBN/UPS and model number. The alternative causes serious customer confusion and can lead to legal problems all around. And in cases where there is a manufacturing flaw, Amazon lets companies make an official response to reviews. The manufacturers can use that mechanism to note that the flaw was fixed in all products made after [insert date here] if they choose to do so. If they don't, it's nobody's fault but their own.

Besides, this isn't sci-fi anymore. Cross-species cloning using genetic material from one species in the ova of another was done sucessfully more than a decade ago (and I'm not sure if that linked study was even the first one). There really isn't much question about whether it is possible anymore. The only real question is whether we care about a species enough to bother to bring it back from extinction....

Asking (young) kids to remember a lanyard, not lose it, leave the house with it every day, and keep it on all day (even during gym) is too much.

Why? You hang it around your neck, and you never take it off, including during gym. That's the whole point of using a lanyard instead of, for example, something that you carry around in your hand or pocket. It is mindless and automatic.

This is how they did it when I was in elementary school. The staff had a pile of cards of people who got free lunch for every class. Those cards were kept in the cafeteria. When a class came to lunch we all were seated at our assigned table (1-2 tables per class, depending on the size of the class). Then the staff called each student alphabetically and gave them their lunch cards one by one, then that student got in line. The cards were punched and given back to the cashier. It was a pretty simple system that worked.

The problem with those schemes is that everyone in your school knew who was on the free lunch program. One of the benefits of everyone having an ID card is that everyone pays with the card, and everyone's lunch is either billed to the parents or to the free lunch program, thus at least reducing the number of opportunities for stigmatization because of poverty.

Really? Where is the Tasmanian-tiger? And the Dodo?

The dodo has been extinct for over 300 years. I'm talking about species that become extinct now or in the future.

They're still not the same species. There's things like the mitochondrial DNA that is lost as well as other things like the intestinal fauna and even the cultural parts that get passed on by example from parent to child may be important.

The intestinal fauna is going to change over time anyway, and there's a nonzero chance that it contributed to the species' extinction by being incompatible with changing food sources, so replacing it would probably make the species more viable. With regards to cultural issues, IMO, there isn't much difference between that and non-extinct species where the only remaining animals were born in captivity.

As for mitochondrial DNA, you're assuming that the species has been extinct long enough to not have full tissue samples. If you have a frozen tissue sample, I would assume you could use the mitochondria from that sample in addition to the chromosomes. If you don't have a frozen tissue sample, the odds of being able to reconstruct the organism go down pretty rapidly because of the genetic equivalent of code rot.

Not quite - the cost of building out infrastructure is a huge barrier to entry, but it is not insurmountable for an individual, organisation or corporation with deep enough pockets - see Google's Fiber initiative as an example.

The problem is that whole "deep pockets" part. The cost of building out the infrastructure isn't insurmountable, but the payoff is over such a long period of time that no bank would give you a loan to do it. That means it is only possible for a company with enough money that they can do it without taking out a loan. And the vast majority of those companies are run by MBA types who would have the same reaction as the bank. "What do you mean, it will take you 30 years to pay off the cost in the best-case scenario? You want a 60-year loan? We don't make loans with periods that long...."

The government is just about the only organization that has both enough funding to do it and enough reckless disregard for turning a profit on their investment. :-)

That's what lanyards are for. No reason to introduce biometrics when a $0.50 string will do.

Cause... umm... you know... extinct is extinct.

Not anymore, it isn't. We now have the ability to snag the DNA of these animals and recreate them by injecting it into fertilized donor eggs from a similar species, and then release them into a habitat that is better suited to their continued existence, assuming that we choose to do so. Before the rise of technology, extinct was extinct. Now, extinct is more like "resource temporarily unavailable". :-)

Even with the standard sizes defined in most airports, I routinely see people bringing aboard bags that if they were forced to check against the model next to most gates, they would not remotely pass.

The problem is that the sizers are built to the same specs that the airlines ignore, and the airlines ignore the speca for the same reason that the passengers do: they are sized for the smallest Embraer puddle jumper that the airline flies, not for the planes that they fly for 95% of their routes. I routinely travel with a backpack that is at least two or three inches too thick to fit in any of the sizers. However, I've never had trouble sliding it under the seat in front of me in S80s or A3x0s, 7x7s, and even CRJs, IIRC.

These newly proposed standards are absolutely ridiculous. They're so small that the smallest camera bags on the market are too tall to comply. In fact, the maximum thickness is barely tall enough to hold a Canon 1-series vertically with no padding. It would require almost every lens to be horizontal, which would mean you'd end up having to carry two bags instead of one. So in practice, no pro photographer would be able to carry their gear on board any aircraft that required compliance with the new rules. And the airlines explicitly disclaim all liability for photographic gear in checked luggage. Which basically means that any airline that decides to follow the rules is basically saying, "Pro photographers are not allowed to fly on our airline."

CUSTOMERS are not PEERS of their TRANSIT PROVIDER. (To put in English: an end-user is not on the same level as their ISP!)

While true, that's a bit misleading. A company that buys multiple pipes to multiple ISPs and has the ability to transport data across their own internal links for the benefit of their ISPs can potentially become a peer of their ISPs. The ISP is not legally obligated to grant them that status, however, and at such a point as they do so, that customer ceases to be a customer of the ISP, by definition.

Of course, a customer is only a candidate for becoming a peer of an ISP if that customer also has connections to other ISPs, and if that customer's ISP does not already have more direct peering arrangements with those other ISPs that fully meet their bandwidth needs.

And as I've said many times before, what made the Netflix deal problematic was that the ISPs provided competing services that avoided the public Internet, thus giving them an unfair competitive advantage when combined with throttling. It wasn't the throttling, nor the refusal to peer for free with Netflix that caused the problem from a legal perspective, but rather the unfair competition. Unless Commercial Network Services (AFAIK, primarily a colo/hosting provider) is similarly a competitor of TWC in some other space, this strikes me as a frivolous lawsuit that is unlikely to succeed.

Sure the DJ may have claimed to have the licenses required, but the business owner is the one who is required to obtain the licenses.

AFAIK, it isn't even possible for the DJ to obtain a public performance license. ASCAP/BMI/SESAC exclusively sell those licenses to venues and delivery media (websites, radio, etc.), not to performers.