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From the official opinion:

Appellant argues that his "internet use had nothing to do with the issues in this case;" "there was no evidence that there was anything encrypted on the computer;" and that he "was prejudiced because the court specifically used this evidence in its findings of fact and in reaching its verdict." We are not persuaded by appellant's arguments. The record shows that appellant took a large number of pictures of S.M. with a digital camera, and that he would upload those pictures onto his computer soon after taking them. We find that evidence of appellant's internet use and the existence of an encryption program on his computer was at least somewhat relevant to the state's case against him. See Minn. R. Evid. 401.

Minnesota Law Library

Without having the orginal case and just the scurrent decision at hand, there does appear to be evidence that he used the encryption program:

the "evidence tends to show that an encrypting capability was employed by the Defendant;" and there are "occasions that indicate that there was advance notice of that so called surprising and thorough search warrant" executed at appellant's home.

furthermore:

We are not persuaded by appellant's arguments. The record shows that appellant took a large number of pictures of S.M. with a digital camera, and that he would upload those pictures onto his computer soon after taking them.

yet the files a nowhere to be found, hence the first statement and the second make the existance of PGP RELLEVANT to the state's case.

You can read the whole decision here:

http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/archive/ctappub/ 0505/opa040381-0503.htm

and note that nothing about PGP is being used to imply his guilt in anything directly. Merely that the existance of PGP and his computer usage patters are relevant to the state's case.

This is freaky... I actually know one of the judges...

The full opinion is available online at http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/archive/ctappub/ 0505/opa040381-0503.htm

The judges wrote: Appellant argues that his "internet use had nothing to do with the issues in this case;" "there was no evidence that there was anything encrypted on the computer;" and that he "was prejudiced because the court specifically used this evidence in its findings of fact and in reaching its verdict." We are not persuaded by appellant's arguments. The record shows that appellant took a large number of pictures of S.M. with a digital camera, and that he would upload those pictures onto his computer soon after taking them. We find that evidence of appellant's internet use and the existence of an encryption program on his computer was at least somewhat relevant to the state's case against him. See Minn. R. Evid. 401.

It appears the presence of crypto was not viewed as evidence for malfeasance, but instead used to describe a part of the procedure in which the appellant loaded pictures of the victim onto his computer.

Finally, Schaub testified that, in a file entitled "research," he found the text of Minn. Stat. 617.246, which included "the definition of minor sexual performance, sexual conduct, things of that nature." He also testified that he found an encryption program, PGP, on appellant's computer; PGP "can basically encrypt any file;" and, "other than the National Security Agency," he was not aware of anyone who could break such an encryption. But Schaub also admitted that the PGP program may be included on every Macintosh computer that comes out today, and appellant may have had the text of Minn. Stat. 617.246 in his computer because of prior allegations against him.

This appears to be the only discussion of the encryption issue:

ANALYSIS I. Relevance Appellant first argues that he is entitled to a new trial because the district court erred in admitting irrelevant evidence of his internet usage and the existence of an encryption program on his computer. Rulings involving the relevancy of evidence are generally left to the sound discretion of the district court. State v. Swain, 269 N.W.2d 707, 714 (Minn. 1978). And rulings on relevancy will only be reversed when that discretion has been clearly abused. Johnson v. Washington County, 518 N.W.2d 594, 601 (Minn. 1994). "The party claiming error has the burden of showing both the error and the prejudice." State v. Horning, 535 N.W.2d 296, 298 (Minn. 1995). Appellant argues that his "internet use had nothing to do with the issues in this case;" "there was no evidence that there was anything encrypted on the computer;" and that he "was prejudiced because the court specifically used this evidence in its findings of fact and in reaching its verdict." We are not persuaded by appellant's arguments. The record shows that appellant took a large number of pictures of S.M. with a digital camera, and that he would upload those pictures onto his computer soon after taking them. We find that evidence of appellant's internet use and the existence of an encryption program on his computer was at least somewhat relevant to the state's case against him. See Minn. R. Evid. 401.

The entire case is available at http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/archive/ctappub/ 0505/opa040381-0503.htm

http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/cco/rules/mncon/A rticle4.htm

Sec. 17. LAWS TO EMBRACE ONLY ONE SUBJECT. No law shall embrace more than one subject, which shall be expressed in its title.

In fact, we all were reminded here in Minnesota of this constitutional article not too long ago, when the courts struck down our concealed-carry law, not because the law itself was illegal, but because it came attached to a DNR-related bill. (that was unrelated to guns, arms and the like)

If you are intested in Michigan roads, have your legislators look into the results of MnRoad[1]. Minnesota is spending a lot of money on road research, and our climate is at least as bad as yours.

If you look at road research in the last few years, the vast majority are primary reports based on data from this project. Nobody else has spend 25 million to gather data on roads in real world situations. This means that any new roads built to modern standards will be built based on the assumptions of a Minnesota climate. (Since ours is one of the harshest climates overall[2] this means you are getting better roads than you need)

[1]The plane that took the picture on their homepage almost had to fly over my house. Though a good pilot could have avoided it if he cared.

[2]Most places in the world can claim to get something more extreme than MN, but the grand total of it all puts MN as one of the most extreme climates.

As far as fertility going down everywhere, we in the U.S. are now at 2.08 and this is going up (albeit slowly).

This is due mainly to immigration. Fertility rates for those born abroad are much higher than those who were born in the US. The best data I've see on this is in The Economist, but there's Good public data on that, too.

I'm pretty sure there is no universal handling of 911. In my state, here's a guide that shows what should happen with a 911 call, a "best practices" guide for agencies. At least here, dialing a PSAP is supposed to be a 24x7 "sure thing" with trained personnel.

Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch stated that he will appeal Finley's decision. See Ramsey County court decision, Unity v. State of MN (7/14/2004).
...
On January 13, 2005, the Minnesota Court of Appeals heard arguments on the Ramsey County court decision. A Minnesota Court of Appeals decision is pending.

From what I've read it depends on how you figure the energy cost of making it. The figures I've seen are that ethonal is now ~30% over the energy cost of making it.

Besides, a 1/3 hit for going to renewable, while tough, is doable. Manufacturers would simply have to put larger fuel tanks on.

In the renewable energy future, I see vehicle's fuel being selected less for universiality than for most appropriate for the task.

Electric for close range communters, bio-diesel for trucks, ethanol for those who simply must have a gasoline analog. Of course, I think that bio-diesel is going to be a strong contender, seeing as how from what I've read the process is less convoluted, and I've driven european diesels. I actually didn't realize it was a diesel until I went to fill it up. The problem with that here is the sulfer levels allowed burn out the turbodiesel engines. Of course, biodiesel is naturally sulfer free, so it'd work better in those engines.

The problem with diesel versus ethanol is that you get higher yeilds per acre from ethanol, especially if you use suger beets or cane versus corn.

A source
Another

Biodiesel has been energy-positive for quite some time now. It doesn't yet allow for making a profit, though, at least not with U.S. fuel prices. Maybe in europe. Check out "Energy Balance/Life Cycle Inventory for Ethanol, Biodiesel and Petroleum Fuels". Specifically, "the energy yield of biodiesel is (3.2/0.83) 280 percent greater than petroleum diesel fuel". You could also read the cited paper, "Life Cycle Inventory of Biodiesel and Petroleum Diesel for Use in an Urban Bus". (PDF) The significant paragraph follows:

Energy Balance. Biodiesel and petroleum diesel have very similar energy efficiencies. The base case model estimates life cycle energy efficiencies of 80.55% for biodiesel versus 83.28% for petroleum diesel. The lower efficiency for biodiesel reflects slightly higher process energy requirements for converting the energy contained in soybean oil to fuel. In terms of effective use of fossil energy resources, biodiesel yields around 3.2 units of fuel product energy for every unit of fossil energy consumed in the life cycle. By contrast, petroleum diesel's life cycle yields only 0.83 units of fuel product energy per unit of fossil energy consumed. Such measures confirm the "renewable" nature of biodiesel. The life cycle for B20 has a proportionately lower fossil energy ratio (0.98 units of fuel product energy for every unit of fossil energy consumed). B20's fossil energy ratio reflects the impact of adding petroleum diesel into the blend.

In other words; biodiesel has very slightly lower energy density but far superior return as compared to normal diesel. The PDF also describes emissions, which are better on biodiesel.

See link below for more info on Minnesota DLs.
http://www.dps.state.mn.us/dvs/Annoncements/NewDL/ New%20Minnesota%20DL.htm
I've heard that while these "documents" may be very secure, the process of getting one is not very secure. So for example, you could get the Birth Certificate of someone who died and is around your age, and whatever other docs you may need and get a very good looking "valid" ID card.

These museums, with very few exceptions are almost purely supported with government funds. They just can't make back the cost of upkeep, much less salaries, on the few dollars they make through admission fees.

That is almost entirely false, at least for the SMM. It has a yearly budget of ~$25 million. Of that, $750,000 is government money. The rest is from ticket/food/merchandise sales (roughly $20 million) and private/corporate donations (~$4 million). See here - warning PDF.

It does use some federal money for special projects, but those usually only total $3 - $5 million each year.

TFA doesnt say anything, but were they using pre-existing UPCs and copying them, or is it relatively easy to forge/copy UPC codes to ones liking

I've been meaning to research this issue. When I print off coupons from the store's website, the checkers get annoyed with the fact they don't scan. I know I can print off barcodes, but I don't have the same style barcode as UPC uses, I have something called 3 of 9. The last time I looked into it software and fonts for anything like UPC required a massive license fee.

I've used 3 of 9 in small libraries. It worked very well from a 600dpi laser, well from a 300dpi laser, and OK from an inkjet. In theory you can get fonts that automaticly calculate checksums for UPC and ISBN.

I would imagine that joe six pack just used their inkjet and got some software to make UPC barcodes, slapped them on packages and let the checker scan them.

Traffic Map

Add the Twin Cities to the list...

They also have traffic cameras, which I find much more useful.

Add the Twin Cities to the list...

They also have traffic cameras, which I find much more useful.

biodiesel costs more energy to make than you get back from it.

Biodiesel fuel yields 220% more energy than is required to produce it, including all the energy used in the agriculture, transportation and distribution. This occurs because the feedstock crop collects solar energy and transforms it into the biodiesel feedstock oil.

Well I guess it didn't link to the right page, darn ASP. Anyways, here is the correct URL

Interesting too is that Gayle Elizabeth Sample was born in 1958 and is under 18 (birthdate is in red), but not under 21 (no red border around image). And Miss Sample seems to have been issued this new version of the license a month early, too.

More direct links to page and to image, the latter because they've sized the image down slightly in the markup.

I wonder if they're basing the license number on your SSN and if it is a reversible encoding.

Interesting too is that Gayle Elizabeth Sample was born in 1958 and is under 18 (birthdate is in red), but not under 21 (no red border around image). And Miss Sample seems to have been issued this new version of the license a month early, too.

More direct links to page and to image, the latter because they've sized the image down slightly in the markup.

I wonder if they're basing the license number on your SSN and if it is a reversible encoding.

Hey, at least we don't have a loon on our Money, at least not Yet.

Can someone explain to us non-Americans what a "loon" is?

It's the official official state bird.

Here's some more direct info on the card from Minnesota DVS.

I just happened across this the other day. Filling out an accident claim I saw this page on the MN Dept. of Public Safety site which has a picture of the new liscense. My first impression was not terribly positive. To me it looks pretty ugly, but whatever.

Parent post was interesting enough to do some web research:
Minnesota does indeed have a lemon law on _automobile_ purchases. The MN Attorney General web site had more information on consumer laws. specifically states that '...that there is no three day "cooling-off" law when you buy a car...'

The Minnesota law for the three day "cooling off" period applies to In home purchases by door to door salespeople.

I can find nothing specific about 3 day return for anything, including or excluding software in Minnesota. (Although, Down In The Valley record stores reports that Body Jewelry cannot be returned per MN state law.)

I worked for a software supplier in Minnesota and our policy was that the software was yours as soon as you signed the contractual purchase agreement. Opened or not, we would not take it back. Services performed could always be disputed, but we never ever took back software, even with MN State contracts.

I find that most retail stores have a far more liberal return policy like Best Buy a Minnesota Corporation.

I've been seeing the inventor and his "Taxi 2000" (now SkyWeb) display at the Minnesota State Fair for years. I always wondered why this system wasn't adopted due to its obvious place as a transportation analogue to the internet (i.e., a packet switching-like transportation system).

Instead, the State of Minnesota built a single "circuit" transportation corridor in the form of light rail and to date has invested $715M for only 12 miles of track! (...and this corridor is one of the least congested and traveled corridors making such a huge, inefficient investment all the more curious).

If this Personal Rapid Transit website cost estimates are to be believed, then that same $715M in cost would have resulted in 47.6 miles of track (using their high estimate of $15M per mile) which would've provided significantly more transportation relief in Minneapolis/St. Paul than a singular corridor deployment of a light rail system.

Kind of reminds me of stories my Dad told me about when the City of Minneapolis & St. Paul allegedly dumped streetcars in favor of buses see Conspiracy on this page. Even as a young man he was puzzled by the fact that the "circuits" of the streetcars were already built so the perceived efficiency of the "packet switching" buses seemed like a waste. The reasons for tossing out streetcars had nothing to do with logic but rather economics for the motor companies.

When we go to the State Fair and see this SkyWeb display year-after-year, my 79 year old Dad is just as puzzled as he was back then when he thinks about why we're not investing in this obvious efficient transportation system vs. throwing away huge sums on light rail focused on singular corridors.

i think you are wrong about biodiesel - it is a net energy gain:
http://www.mda.state.mn.us/ethanol/balance.html
notice there:
gasoline 19% *loss*
diesel 15% *loss*
biodiesel 220% ***gain***

got any better evidence?

I thought about that... but it turns out that in Minnesota, you can register on election day.

At the Baxter, MN Best Buy they charged $10 to take your old monitor.

"For two days only, the Best Buy store in Baxter, Minn., will serve as a Plug Into e-Cycling site for unwanted electronic items on Fri., May 21 and Sat., May 22 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Most items will be accepted for recycling at no charge. However, due to recycling costs, there will be a $10 fee for each computer monitor and television 27 inches or smaller, as well as a $20 fee for TVs larger than 27 inches or console TVs."

I guess we deserve what we get when we elected a wrestler, but the light rail boondoggle has been an interesting study in how government spends our money.

We've been debating in MN for almost a decade on how to fund the building of a new baseball stadium for the Twins (remember contraction?), which is estimated to cost $438 million. The debate isn't even to fund the whole cost, only part of it.

Instead we build a choo choo train! Current cost is $712 million, although it was only estimated to cost $444 million. For those unfamiliar with Minnesota, we've got some of the best highway infrastructure in the country and we're about as spread out as a metropolitan area can be, so trains aren't exactly an efficient solution to traffic congestion, especially when the train only travels 12 miles.

In our last legislative session the big concern was infrastructure funding for road and bridge repairs. All I could think of was

Marge: But Main Street's still all cracked and broken! Bart: Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken. All: Monorail!

I guess we deserve what we get when we elected a wrestler, but the light rail boondoggle has been an interesting study in how government spends our money.

We've been debating in MN for almost a decade on how to fund the building of a new baseball stadium for the Twins (remember contraction?), which is estimated to cost $438 million. The debate isn't even to fund the whole cost, only part of it.

Instead we build a choo choo train! Current cost is $712 million, although it was only estimated to cost $444 million. For those unfamiliar with Minnesota, we've got some of the best highway infrastructure in the country and we're about as spread out as a metropolitan area can be, so trains aren't exactly an efficient solution to traffic congestion, especially when the train only travels 12 miles.

In our last legislative session the big concern was infrastructure funding for road and bridge repairs. All I could think of was

Marge: But Main Street's still all cracked and broken! Bart: Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken. All: Monorail!

To trigger the maximum penalty, you would have to incur $2,500 in those 10 seconds. So if you could convince the court that sometimes you charge $900,000 an hour....

On another note, if you take a look at 609.87 Subd. 12:

Destructive computer program.

"Destructive computer program" means a computer program that performs a destructive function or produces a destructive product. A program performs a destructive function if it degrades performance of the affected computer[yep], associated peripherals[yep] or a computer program[definately]; disables the computer[partially], associated peripherals[uh huh] or a computer program[of course]; or destroys or alters computer programs or data. A program produces a destructive product if it produces unauthorized data, including data that make computer memory space unavailable[e.g., the copy protection keys]; results in the unauthorized alteration of data or computer programs; or produces a destructive computer program, including a self-replicating computer program[To be determined].

This definition gives a pretty clear cut case against them. Particularly if you were the one that disagreed to the EULA and it installed anyway. However, there doesn't appear to be any other clarifications or penalties definitions referencing this excerpt.

I'm no expert in law, but I'm thinking you could take this as a "no maximums" kind of deal, and claim $50 billion per millisecond of seek time...assuming your running Windows (a.k.a. the Codename Logwhore security model has given the Internet access to your hard drive) and that every employee in North America might have needed to accidentally jack your data at that moment in time for important business. Hey, everything that isn't impossible can happen, no matter how improbable ;)

On a more serious note, the entire Minnesota statutes e-law-book (link goes to chapter 609) can be found here.

I empathize with you. You are in the denial stage. It does seem far-fetched. However, here are a couple more links. I'm sure you are as good a googler as the next guy to take it from there.

Energy Balance/Life Cycle Inventory for Ethanol, Biodiesel and Petroleum Fuels

The GoBiodiesel Cooperative

Be careful, cynics. Just because something sounds too good to be true does not mean it can't be true. Also, being cynical, especially on Slashdot, is far too easy. Wouldn't it be more mature to do a little research before bashing a positive idea ?

The funny part is that it took longer you to write that post full of lies than to actually lookup the truth that biodiesel is energy positive.

While the story was not very clear on this, I do not think that the Feds were involved in this at all. First, it says that the "police" raided his house. This usually refers to local or state law enforcement, not federal. Also, there was a link to the Minnesota Predatory Offender Registration and Tracking Program. So this was probably a local or state of Minnesota, not a federal, action.

IANAL, and apparently neither are many of you, because three minutes of Googling turns up Henneford v Silas Mason Co., 300 US 577 (1937).

Of course, I'm not paid the big bucks to read boring legal cases from 1937, so I'm going to have this page from the Minnesota House offices interpret this for me. I'm told that, in this case, the Supreme Court specifically decided that the use tax did not violate the Commerce Clause.... basically because it's fair to expect local and mail-order businesses to compete on the same playing field.

So. Better hire a lawyer before failing to fill out that Use Tax line on the grounds that "this 'new' tax is unconstitutional"...

Oddly enough, I was about to launch into a counterargument having to do with greenhouse gas emissions and the energy balance comparing biodiesel with fossil fuels, but it appears that biodiesel produces less CO2 and has a more favorable energy balance than petroleum diesel.

Interesting. I wonder why we are sacrificing thousands of human lives and spending hundreds of billions of dollars to control a far away petroleum producer given the data in those two documents. Conspiracy theories, anyone? It might be useful to inject this into the public discussion of the US presidential campaign.

is that they were caught doing exactly what he showed in his sample code with DRDos, and iirc, wordperfect (check the Almost Perfect book). Microsoft tactics of checking which Dos, Microsoft or DRDos, prior to running a program, and showing a warning (and impairing functionality) is documented in court records. In fact, the Microsoft emails currently being posted by the Minnesota court clerk online contain discussions within Microsoft of sabotaging DRDos in this exact manner.

is that they were caught doing exactly what he showed in his sample code with DRDos, and iirc, wordperfect (check the Almost Perfect book). Microsoft tactics of checking which Dos, Microsoft or DRDos, prior to running a program, and showing a warning (and impairing functionality) is documented in court records. In fact, the Microsoft emails currently being posted by the Minnesota court clerk online contain discussions within Microsoft of sabotaging DRDos in this exact manner.

You can easily get all the scanned documents. Site is even very fast. Just go one dir up on the link and you will find a simple dir listing. Download, make sure you rememeber to tell wget not to travel up and read and be horrified.

Reading all the image files it just makes it totally clear that the US was bought and sold in the original trial.

People who voted for Murray, a sock puppet for washington state, should feel so proud.

>>If these documents are real it should be trivial to verify having been shown in a courtoom.

Voila!

The trial exhibits (including the documents mentioned in the NY Times article) are being posted on the court's website.

Nothing to see here, move along.

ps. that third one looks kinda like Tinkerbells legs sprouting out of a frog's ass. Kinda gruesome. Time to order dinner from that Frenchy place on third ave.

The researchers have been collecting samples. Nothing statistically significant. Jump back into your SUV and move along.

Frogs are more sensitive to environmental pollutants and toxins because they're able to absorb many of them directly through their skin. They're developmentally simple animals so mutations show up more easily in their external morphology. Interestingly, since frogs eggs are separate cells and the membrane (which also absorbs toxins) would probably prevent three developmental frogs from sticking, this is one frog that has developed three frogs - not some sort of conjoined twin thing. (Although the difference there is a matter of degree, not kind.)

This is the most dramatic example of what I've seen yet but frog mutations are extremely common. Check out this, or this (warning more gross pics). Does anyone but me wonder why we tolerate this level of contamination in our environment? I'm not a Green but I do object to being poisoned for some companies bottom line.

Frogs are more sensitive to environmental pollutants and toxins because they're able to absorb many of them directly through their skin. They're developmentally simple animals so mutations show up more easily in their external morphology. Interestingly, since frogs eggs are separate cells and the membrane (which also absorbs toxins) would probably prevent three developmental frogs from sticking, this is one frog that has developed three frogs - not some sort of conjoined twin thing. (Although the difference there is a matter of degree, not kind.)

This is the most dramatic example of what I've seen yet but frog mutations are extremely common. Check out this, or this (warning more gross pics). Does anyone but me wonder why we tolerate this level of contamination in our environment? I'm not a Green but I do object to being poisoned for some companies bottom line.

Yes it takes a lot of energy to make - a lot of solar energy and water in a method commonly known as 'growing'.

You might claim it could be made lots better. SO FREAKING WHAT? That is how it is done, and nobody is pushing to make the ethanol tax abatement contingent on the use of non-fossil-derived fertilizers and solar distillation. Maybe if you could get your solar hydrogen plant (making clean but really-hard-to-squeeze-into-tanks hydrogen) to make ammonia without any fossil CO2 emissions, you'd have something. You could use hydrogen in a Sabatier reactor to process the CO2 from the fermentation into methane (a far more useful fuel than H2) and the byproduct heat from the Sabatier reactor to help distill the ethanol. But you'll notice that nobody, but nobody, is doing this.

Chippewa Valley installed a 1500 HP boiler to generate steam for their distillation. However, they are not even co-generating electricity to offset their consumption; the investigation of this was left to the state.

On your first point, I'll point you to this article that attempted to examine the effects of US-imposed drug price controls on overall global drug R&D spending. Note that the 15 largest pharmaceutical companies he studied were Pfizer, Merck & Co., AstraZeneca, Aventis, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, GlaxoWellcome, Pharmacia, Roche, Johnson & Johnson, American Home Products, Eli Lilly, SmithKline Beecham, Abbott Laboratories, Bayer, and Amgen. As is obvious from looking at the list and checking company websites, the pharmaceutical business is a global one. You can also note from the article (on page 23) that many European countries, including where a number of the top pharmaceutical companies are based, have drug price controls of one kind or another. It might be more accurate to say that U.S. consumers are the target market for the lion's share of new drugs.

The conclusion of the modeling study is that U.S. adoption of price controls equal to the average of industrialized European countries would result in lowered R&D spending overall, but that the decline could range in intensity from "a very small decline to a near complete cessation of R&D activity; the latter is, of course, an absurd conclusion". In other words, we probably shouldn't place much faith in any results from his model. The question of whether U.S. price controls would significantly cut R&D expenditures, or simply shift more of the burden for R&D to other global customers is beyond his model to answer.

On your second point, you gave the URL for the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America site which contained a number of links. Not knowing exactly which article you wished to refer to, I'll simply choose the rebuttal article to this report by the Attorney General of the state of Minnesota, as they seem to clearly summarize the viewpoints of the pharmacy trade group and the opposing camp. Anyone interested in the subject should read both, hopefully with an open mind. If you would like to discuss any particular point, just let me know.

On the third point, I think your characterization of scientists is more of a caricature than a true picture. Scientists, whether publicly or privately funded, are people, who have normal human concerns and awareness of things around them. One thing basic research does is provide knowledge that makes the drug discovery phase more efficient. Discovery in finding the right compositions to pursue for new drugs is essential for making sure only the most promising approaches are followed up with more expensive development efforts and clinical trials. The pharmaceutical companies are often better suited for carrying on the later processes, but they heavily benefit from public research efforts that point them in the right direction. It's not just about total dollars spent, but also how much is saved by developing a proper scientific foundation for the search.

This also brings up the point that while the industry likes to brag about how much it costs to bring a new drug to market and how risky the prospects are for success, the truth is that the greatest development costs occur during the latest stages of product development (such as holding large clinical trials involving thousands of subjects). By the time decisions are made to hold such trials, the company must have already experienced enough success from earlier work to have a high degree of confidence in success. Most unsuccessful drugs are thus weeded out early, before huge expenditures are incurred in development. The better the basic science that is available, the more efficient this filtering process can be.