In the US, bullying isn't a problem so much as it is a national past time. Americans love power, and people with power; one way to increase your own (apparent) power is to decrease the (apparent) power of your rival. And then people will vote for whoever they think has the most apparent power (so long as that person has the right capital letter next to their name on the ballot.)

We do a lot of things weird here. Blow a guy's head off during prime time television? What, you're telling me you only did it once? Do it five times, think of the advertising revenue! Oh, you want to include a scene that shows a woman's nipple for half a second during that same time frame? No, sorry, you have to go to jail now.

I think that America (and Americans) has an incredibly amount of potential, but it's significantly hampered by our weird mix of "morals" and in-fighting over issues which, relative to the country as a whole, are fairly irrelevant but get all the focus.

Who amongst the federal or his state government actually thinks he did something wrong and would want to charge him?

I know the difference between "ingredient list" and "chemical composition." Do you? All ingredients, even "processed" ones, have impurities. The label doesn't need to care about those impurities, but it should reflect the composition relatively accurately.

"Evaporated cane juice" is about 99% sucrose. It's not added to foods for its nutrients or for its flavor. it's usually a whitish powder that tastes just like sugar... because it IS sugar, with a few more impurities that aren't removed in processing compared to regular sugar. The ONLY reason anyone uses it is to disguise the fact that they are using sugar. If they want to call it "evaporated cane juice," I suppose that might be defended by the different processing. But adding an additional label like "no sugar added" is just bogus nonsense. A company deliberately added a processed product that is 99+% sugar to sweeten the result. Putting a big sign on the front saying "no sugar added" is incredibly deceptive... and we have laws in advertising to prevent this kind of weaseling deception. Same with "organic brown rice syrup." Yes, sometimes it can be used specifically for its maltose flavor. But again, it's basically sugar and used in place of sugar or HFCS or honey or whatever because it can have "organic" and "brown" in front of it.

Again, I'm not saying that the ingredient label should be a chemical analysis. My problem is more with companies that deliberately use these things and then claim that there are "no added sugars." That's definitely misleading. Ideally, obscure ingredients should be labeled when possible for their primary function in the food -- that would help a lot. We already see that a lot: "lecithin (an emulsifier)" or whatever.

(By the way, I'm not against sugar. I personally don't buy a lot of stuff with added sugar, because I cook and bake for myself. But if someone actually wants to try to avoid stuff with high doses of deliberately added sweetening agents, they should be able to determine that without seeing labels that say "no added sugar" when it's clearly there and deliberately added for only that purpose.)

Umm, you do realize that I wrote an entire post criticizing this business model, right?

I'm totally against this sort of nonsense, which is why I tried to inform people about it. But I'm also against natural foods wackoism, which is what drives companies to do this crap in the first place. "I'll buy anything that doesn't have sugar or HFCS in it" leads companies to come up with "evaporated cane juice" and "brown rice syrup" and all this other BS.

I'm NOT blaming consumers for a disgusting, dishonest business practice. But I am blaming them for being idiots and flocking to buy stuff that has meaningless labels saying something is "all natural," while often paying 2-5 times as much for the same old crap. They are DRIVING businesses to try this crap.

Instead -- if you really want less processed foods, well STOP BUYING CRAP WITH A LIST OF INGREDIENTS YOU NEVER HEARD OF BEFORE. If you look at a label and see "evaporated cane juice," your reaction shouldn't be, "Ah, well I don't see sugar or HFCS, so this must be healthy!" You should instead say to yourself, "Hmm, I've never seen 'cane juice' on the supermarket shelves, so maybe I shouldn't buy this, or at least I should look up what it is before eating it." If you see "concentrated celery juice" in your bacon and hot dogs, you should start to wonder, "Why are they putting celery in my bacon? And why is it concentrated?"

The vast majority of people (even fairly intelligent people) aren't willing to do the work to find out what's in the crap they are voluntarily buying and eating. That doesn't mean they are to blame for deceptive business practices, but they are partially to blame for what they eat when they mindlessly support that business model... even when the ingredients are listed on the bloody label.

It's hard to evaluate exactly what went on here. If you read the original report of the discovery (which I did last month and is still the first link in TFS), you see this explanation:

In other words, they didn't know what was going on. Then they happened upon some code in the Linux kernel that explicitly blacklisted certain model segments from certain manufacturers. So, at some point someone made the assumption that this must be related to certain models from certain manufacturers, based on code in the Linux kernel.

This could easily have led to confirmation bias in a situation where errors were not occurring frequently. (Note the further explanation that when they first informed Samsung, Samsung was unable to reproduce the issue until they started using a custom "much more intensive script" to increase the error rate of the problem.)

So, I don't claim to know the full situation, but my guess is that Samsung wouldn't have been blamed for this at all if this blacklisting code hadn't already been seen in the Linux kernel.

I'm not trying to place the blame on anyone in particular. But in this case there were various reasons they probably started thinking manufacturers were the problem other than just simple logic, and the "aha" moment apparently was based on looking at code in the Linux kernel already, not on actual prior observation that certain brands of drives were failing. (Otherwise, they would have probably suspected a hardware problem earlier... but instead the post describes a lot of time searching for software issues before they discovered the blacklist.)

It's the fact that they put the boot in to Samsung, claiming that their TRIM implementation was broken. They then stopped looking at their own code and had to wait for Samsung to fix their bug.

I'm closing my account now. It's a damn shame, it's actually quite a good service.

You have no idea what you're talking about. You don't have any idea what you're talking about either. Both of my assertions are grammatically and logically correct, with the former using the "no-negation" form of assertion.

Only temporarily. Your post may be downvoted, and perhaps your karma will be hurt if you keep doing it repeatedly. If you build up a reputation as a complete jerk or shill, you may just have to abandon your uid and start over... and that's what you deserve if you end up that way.

Here's the reality: I've posted MANY things here that disagree with the normal "groupthink" of the Slashdot community, and I've gotten +5 insightful. Why? Because when I do so, I support my points. I explain my position. I often cite reputable sources, particularly when I'm addressing something that's particularly contentious.

You do that here, and people appreciate it. If you provide good information, you WILL get upvoted. Over the years, I've found this site to have some of the most open-minded mods anywhere, as long as you back up what you say. Sure, there have been a few times I've had such a post modded down into oblivion, but only a few. The vast majority of the time when I am reasonable (not a jerk), present rational arguments and evidence, etc., an informative post will get modded up, regardless of whether it agrees with the majority opinion here.

Does it get tiresome to keep having to explain myself and minority opinions or unknown facts over and over? Sure -- but that's what true discussion requires.

The other part of this is that they are running it from solar PV. The air con must have some intelligence to handle a variable supply. It's a great idea IMHO - as the sun warms the house, the air con has more clean energy to keep it cool.

Japan has the most long-running companies in the world. Treating your workers well is essential for keeping the company going for decades, although tends to result in lower profits in the short term.

Wow, someone got out the wrong side of bed this morning...

I think it's pretty clear that by "feel" he means "is" in every practical sense. I mean... How do you make it "feel" fast without actually being fast? Paint go faster stripes on the side perhaps?

The "personal" bit was a little less clear, but he is referring to plug-in support. IE had it but it was shit, and other browsers all have it. Edge will get it soon. Personally I won't be using it until there is a port of uBlock and Privacy Badger or some similar tool, so I'd say it's a pretty important feature.

To be fair I do forget the names of apps some times, particularly these days where all the good ones are taken and we have to rely on stupid abbreviations and faux URLs. Developers also have a habit of giving odd names to sub-apps in a suite, e.g. you might have an electronics cad program with separate schematic capture and PCB layout apps. Fortunately Windows 10 is good at figuring that stuff out and showing it when you search for the app suite name.

Are you seriously suggesting that his leaving contributed significantly to the downfall of Firefox?

Are you also suggesting that people who feel they could not support a company he was head of should force themselves to use Firefox anyway, or perhaps be mandated to do so by law? I imagine a lot of companies would employ bigots if that were the case, just to force people to use their products.

Look, I don't buy Sony stuff because they are a shitty company. I don't eat at certain restaurants because they serve halal meat. And I don't read books by authors who use the profits to fund causes I find abhorrent and immoral. Sorry, that's just the way the world is, you can't completely separate your private actions and beliefs from your professional life.