Congrats on provoking so much vacuous ire?

Not disagreeing with you on the substance, but seems increasingly pointless to me to worry about it. Not just out of my pay grade, but these days all of the crucial decisions are being made by selfish a-holes for stupid and shortsighted reasons. Can't even imagine why they are so concerned about dying with the most toys, but...

Mod parent up? Deserves more visibility than -1, even though I disagree about Liu Cixin. Good, but I wouldn't rate him that highly. Really hard to pick a favorite... Possibly Iain M Banks? The Culture is such an optimistic view of the future, notwithstanding all the gruesome deaths?

But mostly I've been disappointed by most of the current SF authors. Too much rehashing of old themes... Currently reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Pretty goo, but again I wouldn't rate it at the top.

These years I'm losing faith in the value of catharsis. So what even if it makes someone feel better? Too many crucial decisions are being made by selfish a-holes for stupid shortsighted reasons.

Addressed in my other reply on the branch that started out more politely. But the short summary is that most of the honest businesses are basically using tested business models and in those cases the google is usually in a privileged position to confirm the general conformance to the claim.

I've actually written about this topic in the past, but my pie-in-the-sky vision is a two part tab that wannabe downloaders could look at. The top part would be the claims of the developer. Perhaps going beyond the money to motivations. The lower part would be under the google's control and would most often say "Yes, we have evidence to support the above claims" or "This business model is out of our scope and we know nothing". Maybe the google response will go farther in some cases, something like "This business model seems questionable and we caution you about using this app and want to remind you that we are not liable if you do it anyway."

Silicon wafers are the wrong thing to compare against. The CZT semiconductors are like photodiodes (for other radiation), not what they make the logic out of. It would make more sense to compare with InGaN (for blue LEDs), which plays a similarly specific role in common devices.

With one important difference, this reminds me of the 1974 Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, which established a national speed limit of 55 MPH. States had to either adopt a state speed limit of 55 MPH, or else lose out on funding, i.e. get punished.

Of course, that was a law enacted by Congress, not an Executive order. I guess, traditionally, they say that for first quarter millennium of America, Congress held the purse strings because some inky piece of paper said they were supposed to, as if Congress could ever handle that much responsibility! Can you imagine?! Anyway, we've decided Fuck That Tradition, let's try something new and put a thieving tool in charge of the purse.

I'm not disagreeing, but I would still prefer to seek solutions.

Most of the time the paths to legitimate profitability are well known. Those paths can be presented as options from a list. In those cases where the google is involved in handling the money, then the google is also in a position to say more about what is going on. I specified that there should be room for "other", but pushing the developers to clarify their plans will at least make it easier for potential downloaders of the app to have a more informed judgement of the risks.

Seems to be a fairly typical response these days. No, your interpretation is not what I wrote or intended and you didn't ask for any clarification or help in understanding my poor writing. I also think your writing is not of the best, but my sadly too typical response is to discount your opinion. Or perhaps I should react defensively and try to explain what I was trying to say?

However I suspect you have some axe to grind (as do I) and therefore there is no reason for me to make so much effort--and the discussion will time out and die in a day or two anyway.

These days, the market is more trusting of the statement that better tools and processes require fewer employees to serve the same customers if you call that AI. If you get more of your customers to succeed in using your website or app to do what they need without having a human do anything for them individually, you don't need as many employees doing it. But the market doesn't want to hear that you can cut jobs because your website doesn't suck as much any more, so you say AI and they think you've done something futuristic when you've actually done something practical, and you're vague enough about it that the SEC can't say that you claimed to be doing something you're not.

Fairness is a weak sauce problem. Much larger problem is incentives in favor of criminals. How many Android apps are really trustworthy? "Fairness" for crooks doesn't help.

I'm increasingly convinced it's a waste of time to speculate about solutions, but I still think a "business model" tab could help a little bit. Most of the time the developer would just select from the main options, and in most of those cases the google could say yay or nay without revealing too many details. Of course there also needs to be room for new ideas and innovations, but saying what is going on would let you decide what to watch out for and also help predict how long the app will be around...

I was going to quote it, but looking at the continuation of the FP branch it apparently deserves negative moderation. (Notwithstanding the lack of clarity.) I was also going to ask for clarification about the stupid typo, but now I don't care.

One appropriate question might be "What part of the Constitution can't you understand?" Apparently all of it. Or "When did you lose your marbles?" Or even "What have you done with the real person who created that identity?"

I'd guess that it's the senility thing, but I might be projecting from my age. I was already getting up there when I registered on Slashdot, but you might have been a mere child in those years.

NO! This is an outrage! [slams table]

Our religious war should be about reader's choice vs writer's choice!

Ok, but which of those things came with the new law? A lot of what you're describing (I suspect all of it) was already in place. What changed for non-banned users?

Oh, so they're doing it the same way I take "good" photographs: by taking a fuckton of mostly-shitty photographs and trawling through them for the rare few which actually look decent.

Vaporware. If this feature doesn't make it into the Open Source driver so that I can know where my computer is, then I'm not going to buy any Nvidia hardware!