Around 25 years ago, Eisner (the president of Disney at the time) was driving in Florida. He saw a small daycare where someone had painted Disney characters on the walls. He sent them a cease and desist order and threatened to sue if they didn't remove them. You know, they even sell their management technique to other big companies and those companies employees become creepy culture of the corporate cult after that or get fired. I worked for one when they bought us out. We had to go to their headquarters and be inCernerated (what we called their 3 day orientation). If you were a good boy or girl the creepy HR types would throw you a little rubber Disney figurine. Wow I got 3 Goofys. In my opinion, Disney is not a nice happy smiley company. Only their characters are and God help you if you infringe.

People use Gmail because it is generally reliable, they abstract them from whatever ISP they may have at the moment, and appear to be free. But mostly because they appear to be free, because the other two can be had elsewhere. But we all know it isn't free. They have your data. I personally don't believe they don't mine your data. The cost is your personal information not really being personal. But cash money is a powerful thing. And with new job creation tending towards "would you like fries with that," saving cash is more important to most than saving privacy.

The rules weren't posted when I made my comment. Announcing prize money is not the same as posting rules terms and conditions. If YOU had bothered to look you would have seen that. And I had to go through numerous pages before I found the one that said 'rules will be posted in mid October.' I am cynical especially when something is hyped but no conditions place around it.

My uid is low-ish, my age is middle-ish, and my cynicism is high. I always read the fine print.

Wait till the full rules and the Terms and Conditions are made available. I would bet that somewhere there will be a clause that says that people who enter sign over any rights they might claim on the design of their robot and Amazon gets to patent anything to do with it that can be patented... in exchange for a prize. Companies like Amazon don't do shit like this based on the goodness of their hearts.

The other question I have is, is this really a cure? It sounds more like a 'permanent treatment' for the individual (which is a good thing). Genetically they still carry the gene that could pass down diabetes to the next generation.

I wonder if the next (or even real) step to proclaiming a cure to a hereditary disease like diabetes is being able to change a person's DNA so that they no longer have the disease and can't pass it on to their descendents.

What, so it's better to just die? My uncle had diabetes his whole life and kept himself fit, ate right, and followed the rules. He died at 80+ years of old age with no 'complications'. Most of the people, if not all, who had complications from diabetes didn't follow the rules. I'm sure that's not always the case, but these things are far from absolutely certain.

There is nothing in that Wikipedia article saying beta cells come from the spleen. Only that people who have their spleen removed may be at higher risk of diabetes.

For instance, who put the current head of the FCC in place, and where and for whom did he work prior? To summarize:

Thomas Edgar Wheeler (born April 5, 1946; Redlands, California)[1][2] is the current Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

He was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in November 2013. Prior to working at the FCC, Wheeler worked as a venture capitalist and lobbyist for the cable and wireless industry, with positions including President of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA).

Look dude, the concept isn't that hard but I'll explain it. To a person with no money, stealing food may not be immoral. To the person with money, someone stealing their food is immoral. Morality is often defined by the perspective of the person. Get it? It's all relative, and defined by exigencies (in small words, that is 'defined by needs).

I only eat the ones who lose all their money on instant lottery tickets.

Morality social contract whatever... it's only for those who can afford it. If you need to eat you will whether you have to steal it or make like a South American soccer team. We are in the first world, so generally we can afford higher morales (not necessarily high morales).

A/C or not, that's fuckin' funny.

Probably followed the ITIL methodology. Spent the budget on process rather than building a useful system. ITIL being a British government system and all.

What was that? zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...