This is an issue that you can see Amazon and users taking seriously. If you notice Amazon allows you to meta moderate reviews, as well as comment on reviews. I have spotted a lot of fake reviews by reading comments on reviews, and I make it a point to comment on fake reviews as well providing my rationale for why I think it is a fake review. Just like on slashdot, community moderation is key here.

Amazon also provides an additional level of verification with the "Amazon verified purchase" where by Amazon lets you know that this reviewer at the very least did purchase this product from Amazon.

In the end reviews are like asking for advice. Often you get bad advice, often you get advice from people with hidden motives, and often you get good advice. Amazon's review system is just a representation of real life. Go anywhere on the web, or go call up some real estate agents/mortgage brokers and ask them "When is a good time to buy a house?" and the answer will almost invariably be "If you can afford it, _now_ is a good time to buy a house". They have a hidden agenda they want to push.

I am not singling out real estate agents though. They are doing their job. Dealing with people is dealing with hidden agendas. :)

Agreed Completely.

My boss doesn't have a college degree and he is a good deal sharper than I am (I have a Masters in Comp Sci.) When I look at a resume, or interview a candidate, I look at the education portion the same way I look at the hobbies section if the applicant has included it. Nice to know, but not important one way or the other.

In fact, If a person spent 4 years of his/her life making some solid contributions to open souce projects (perhps became a core committer to some of them). I would actually be more likely to hire him/her than someone who had finished a 4 year college degree. Provided everything else was equal.

They weren't exactly a wildly successful company before they embraced open source. They were already in a downward spiral when they decided to open source some of their projects.

If changing the background is okay with you, then lets not photoshop a zebra into the savannah but instead photoshop a picture of a zebra in a zoo and put a savannah background in. :)

What are the chances that these rubber duckies end up inside the tummy of some sea creature? In which case, that is just more pollution floating around in our oceans.

I dont think anyone is BLAMING the stupid woman who gave away $400K to a liar (or group of liars).

They are doing exactly what you did in your post "the person who left them there like that is, yes, pretty stupid."

The reason scams such as the nigerian 419 one work, is that intelligence like everything else is distributed over a curve of some sort. By definition, approx. half the people you see everyday are of below average intelligence. Scams such as these target people who sit in the below the bottom 1% on the intelligence curve. Which explains their mode of operation, "if you blast this scam to enough people, eventually you'll find someone who'll bite". In other words, "if you look hard enough, eventually you'll find someone stupid enough".