it is not CO2 which is causing the coral to bleach and die. It is really a coral disease which is causing the issue ... The immediate problem is a coral disease - no matter what CO2 does, the reef will die.

I guess that's why your link says " disease is not considered a major threat to the Reef ."

this particular issue requires biologists and scientists to go do some really hard research ...

Although apparently simply reading their own links is too hard for some people...

Or it might be because Australians in general consider Julian Assange to be the Steve Irwin of computer hackers (i.e. a wanker).

That was certainly the opinion of him back in the day, despite what the telemovie said.

You left out the bit about getting your advertising for free...

"I don't like to use the term "fanatic" because while technically correct, I think it's too limiting."

Correct. "Zealot", or even "bigot", would be better terms.

Or, as the extended entry in my dictionary puts it:

An enthusiast displays an intense and eager interest in something. A fanatic is not only intense and eager but possibly irrational in his or her enthusiasm; fanatic suggests extreme devotion and a willingness to go to any length to maintain or carry out one's beliefs. A zealot exhibits not only extreme devotion but vehement activity in support of a cause or goal. An extremist is a supporter of extreme doctrines or practices, particularly in a political context.

But it is the bigot who causes the most trouble, exhibiting obstinate and often blind devotion to his or her beliefs and opinions. In contrast to fanatic and zealot, the term bigot implies intolerance and contempt for those who do not agree.

(and let me thank /.'s execrable handling of non-english characters for ruining that particular joke...)

OP is yet another hipster New Yorker reader confused by the difference between a diaeresis and an umlaut

They meant to type "bügger"...

If we look at something like the Robertson screw head, the patent allowed them a monopoly on that product which allowed them to recoup initial r&d, machine costs etc over their patent life. Fair enough. Don't want a big screw company that does Torx or Phillips to retool then blow you out of the water with lower pricing because they already have their machinery paid for.

Just as an aside, you do realise that neither Torx nor Philips screw drives are particularly good examples to use, don't you? Both were patented until the early/mid 90's - Torx was invented in 1967 & the patent ran out in (IIRC) 1993, while Philips was patented in 1933 and expired in (again, IIRC) 1996.

The difference is that the Philips design was licenced to many manufacturers from the start and gradually became genericised, while Camcar Screw (later Textron) refused to widely licence the Torx design. Robertson had a bad experience with licencing (having to sue, and then buy back the rights from an English manufacturer) and ended up manufacturing the screws himself.

First successful *human* IVF.

The first successful IVF pregnancy & birth was in 1959 - a team at the Worcester Foundation, lead by Dr. Min Chueh Chang, successfully gave birth to a rabbit.

Well, OK, they didn't give birth to a rabbit per se - obviously another rabbit did - but they certainly had a hand in it, as it were...

They're just using the "boiling the frog" method to avoid users from jumping out of the pot.

True. Compared to Microsoft's method of putting the frog straight in the microwave and hitting "Start".

Or the Open Source way: look around, see that everybody is cooking frogs, and choosing instead to do a from-the-ground-up no-cooking-required reimplementation of a toad. Then trying to convince the rest of the world their choice is better because it's not only bigger and capable of jumping further than a frog, but can also kill small mammals and survive in your chlorinated swimming pool...

His source doesn't verify anything, beyond the fact that you can't trust so-called "news" websites to report even press releases accurately.

Read the original press release here, and decide for yourself if "given the fact, that they can not be found in any AppStore list and are very likely to be overseen by the search engine, these apps hardly generate any download" = "2/3's of the apps in Apple's App Store have never been downloaded"

I just got home from the office. You do know that the world has different time zones, right? Why is the fact that the earth revolves around the sun so difficult for some people?

I found your attempt at snark and - ah, just as I guessed, a blog / "news" site post that misrepresents the content of the Adeven press release. I'll leave it to you to use your superior Google skills to find the original source (hint: try searching for the quotes I used in my original comment).

Everyone else, you can all read it here.

narcc, when you eventually find it, you might notice it doesn't back up your claim that "2/3's of iOS apps have never been downloaded" at all.

Care to admit you were either misled, trolling, or deliberately lying?

In light of this comment, I'll make the following offer:

If narcc will cite his source(s), I'll follow up with the source I used for my comment above within 24 hours.

I suspect they're substantially the same, except that his source is another tech blog / news site that misrepresents the original press release.

Think about that.

I thought about that, and came to the conclusion it sounded like BS.

So I googled around, and the closest I could come up with is a recent press release from a new advertising metrics / mobile analytics startup that is - surprise, surprise! - pushing their own AppStore analysis tool.

And that report doesn't say "never been downloaded" at all - it says (to paraphrase their press release) that only 1/3 of the apps hold a rank in the top 300 of their category (43 categories), and the other 2/3 don't rank "any visible position at all" (i.e. they're not in the top 300), and surmise from that figure that "these apps hardly generate any downloads".

Bit of a jump from that to your claim of "never been downloaded", isn't it?

I wont give the marketing scum's name or website - if anyone wants to find the original details they can google for themselves, follow the trail back to the source, and read the original press release.

There are a couple problems with your story

1. $50,000 is not a high amount and doesn't require corporate donations. I've seen missionaires collect more money from friends and family than that.
2. Why are you posting to Slashdot about this? I may not like ABC's position, but have no control over it.
3. Why did Slashdot accept this? They aren't even close to their mission statement on this

That's not "a couple problems". It's THREE problems.

No, he's right. There are a couple of problems (1 & 2) with the OPs story.

The third is a problem with Slashdot...

How about they jam their "social API" up their arse, and use the now-free developer time to maintain feature users want?

Or, at the very least, those developers could be retrained and fruitfully employed. Testing cluebats on the Mozilla community co-ordinators & technical evangelists - who would rather gaslight people with different opinions than listen to them - might occupy a few...