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HHS Plans To Delete 20 Years of Critical Medical Guidelines Next Week (thedailybeast.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: The Trump Administration is planning to eliminate a vast trove of medical guidelines that for nearly 20 years has been a critical resource for doctors, researchers and others in the medical community. Maintained by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ], part of the Department of Health and Human Services, the database is known as the National Guideline Clearinghouse [NGC], and it's scheduled to "go dark," in the words of an official there, on July 16. "Guideline.gov was our go-to source, and there is nothing else like it in the world," King said, referring to the URL at which the database is hosted, which the agency says receives about 200,000 visitors per month. "It is a singular resource," Valerie King, a professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Director of Research at the Center for Evidence-based Policy at Oregon Health & Science University, added. [She] said the NGC is perhaps the most important repository of evidence-based research available.

Medical guidelines are best thought of as cheatsheets for the medical field, compiling the latest research in an easy-to use format. When doctors want to know when they should start insulin treatments, or how best to manage an HIV patient in unstable housing -- even something as mundane as when to start an older patient on a vitamin D supplement -- they look for the relevant guidelines. The documents are published by a myriad of professional and other organizations, and NGC has long been considered among the most comprehensive and reliable repositories in the world. AHRQ said it's looking for a partner that can carry on the work of NGC, but that effort hasn't panned out yet. Not even an archived version of the site will remain, according to an official at AHRQ.

215 of 414 comments (clear)

  1. The Administration that Keeps On Taking by NEDHead · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They just can't stop themselves. Sad.

    1. Re:The Administration that Keeps On Taking by nyet · · Score: 1

      What prevented the database from being copied/archived in the first place?

    2. Re:The Administration that Keeps On Taking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      God I love Trump. After he's done with us the country will be an ethical, cultural and social wasteland. The only thing remaining will be gun owners masturbating to guns. That is XXIst century america boys, yippie ki-yay coastal motherfuckers.

    3. Re:The Administration that Keeps On Taking by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

      Even if it were copied - I would not be surprised if some people are desperately writing bulk-download scripts right now - it's a medical guideline database. It would quickly become outdated unless maintained by medical experts able to take the incoming stream of new guidelines from professional bodies, sanity-check them and incorporate them into the database.

    4. Re: The Administration that Keeps On Taking by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      Apparently all of the various professional medical organisations are too dumb to figure out how to put together a wiki.

    5. Re: The Administration that Keeps On Taking by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

      They had a meeting about it, but afterwards nobody could read the notes they took.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    6. Re: The Administration that Keeps On Taking by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      As I pointed out to someone else earlier, "wiki" does not mean "editable by absolutely everyone".

    7. Re: The Administration that Keeps On Taking by datavirtue · · Score: 2

      They would end up farming it out to the drug companies through a third party like they do with drug information pamplets--any educational materials in a doctor's office is written by the drug companies with the copyright being held by a third party stooge to mask the fact.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    8. Re:The Administration that Keeps On Taking by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      Aaron Swartz tried to do that to JSTOR, seeking to create a freely accessible copy. He kept downloading so aggressively he interfered with its legitimate functions, which is partly why JSTORE cooperated in the investigation and partly how he was caught. Part of the difficulty is that creating and organizing the indices and the databases to store and to link that information is not easy or free. Those indices and the cross-references will not show up in a casual download of the content.

    9. Re: The Administration that Keeps On Taking by kenh · · Score: 1

      the NGC is perhaps the most important repository of evidence-based research available.

      AHRQ said it's looking for a partner that can carry on the work of NGC, but that effort hasn't panned out yet. Not even an archived version of the site will remain, according to an official at AHRQ.

      Got that, it's one of the most important repositories of research published around the world, yet no one is interested in taking it over...

      Gee, you'd think such an important resource would easily find a home somewhere in academia, wouldn't you?

      --
      Ken
    10. Re:The Administration that Keeps On Taking by ProgrammerInMA · · Score: 1

      And you fell for it. All of you should know that the president doesn't appropriate money for budgets. Congress does.

  2. Hmmm. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Stupid is as stupid does.

  3. So actually no value then by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nix has been helping coordinate an effort to get some outside stakeholder to take over the site's operations. She said she's still hopeful, and even days before the siteâ(TM)s scheduled demise, AHRQ spokesperson Hunt told the Daily Beast that the search continued.

    So if it were truly a valuable resource where are the charities or groups of large insurance firms or hospitals willing to pay for this to be kept up?

    The article mentioned how the database had been heavily politicized in the past, is it possible the value of this database is less than we are being told by the article writer?

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re: So actually no value then by bluelip · · Score: 1, Insightful

      You nailed it. People are up in arms about everythingTrump's administration is doing. They will look for every opportunity to demonize a good decision. Trump mandates are minimizing government. That's a wonderful thing. Government is in every nook and cranny. It doesn't need to be there.

      Let the private sector handle what it can. Not everything needs to be a function of government (handout) from taxpayer money.

      --

      Yep, I never spell check.
      More incorrect spellings can be found he
    2. Re:So actually no value then by fyzikapan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually the article makes clear that this source is particularly good because it makes a serious effort to vet articles and weed out the ones that are just pushing a company's agenda.

      The administration really has no good argument for getting rid of it. The budget problem is entirely self-inflicted. Claims that it is politicized aren't particularly convincing considering that people who wound up in the Trump administration are the ones who tried to politicize it in the first place.

    3. Re: So actually no value then by fyzikapan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Far better to be ignorant and have people die needlessly than to suffer the horror of a government-provided collection of medical best practices.

      The private sector isn't magic. Hand this to the private sector and you'll wind up with something that's just drug pimping.

    4. Re: So actually no value then by GerryGilmore · · Score: 1, Redundant

      "People are up in arms about everything Trump's administration is doing. "
      And with DAMN good reason, you omitted.

    5. Re:So actually no value then by GerryGilmore · · Score: 1

      Just HOW in da fuck can a medical database be "heavily politicized"?!?
      You "conservative"s (in quotes for a reason) make me sick!

    6. Re:So actually no value then by fredrated · · Score: 1

      What fucking moron moded you 'insightful'?

    7. Re: So actually no value then by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 2
      You might want to look at how that has worked in other countries.

      Basically, being ruled by warlords is even worse than Trump, and allowing the rich to rule the roost generally ends with something resembling the French revolution.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    8. Re:So actually no value then by q_e_t · · Score: 1

      So if it were truly a valuable resource where are the charities or groups of large insurance firms or hospitals willing to pay for this to be kept up?

      These things take time to organise, even assuming the database is allowed to be hosted elsewhere.

    9. Re:So actually no value then by Cinnamon+Beige · · Score: 2

      From the article:

      --- “Many guidelines are actually written mainly for commercial purposes or public relations purposes,” said Poses, and can be subtly shaped to promote a given course of treatment. A guideline written for the treatment of depression, for example, may emphasize pharmaceuticals over talk therapy.

      “The organizations writing the guidelines may be getting millions of dollars from big drug companies that want to promote a product. The people writing them may have similar conflicts of interest,” Poses said. NGC’s process provided a resource comparatively free of that kind of influence. ----

      Arguably this is just swamp draining. The summary sucks this advertising platform's cock pretty hard, but this is not some thing where "trump destroys science" like all the fucking comments are running with.

      That sounds like it's not even actually evidence-based, given that the point with depression at which pharmaceuticals actually start being significantly better than non-pharmaceutical treatments is when you hit severe depression--especially given that good large swath of antidepressants cause dependency...and, in general, doctors don't know this so they don't know to warn their patients.

      If it's as widely used as claimed, and it doesn't include that sort of info--which we've known for most of a decade at least, as well as the simple fact that you need to go off them if pregnant (meaning, effectively, that pregnancies will have to be planned)--then it may not be worth mourning too much.

    10. Re: So actually no value then by meglon · · Score: 1

      You are a fucking idiot.

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
    11. Re:So actually no value then by meglon · · Score: 1

      There's a handful of right-wing anti-government neo-nazi's on this sight that always bump up each others posts, and neg rate those opposed.... he's one of them.

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
    12. Re: So actually no value then by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      I live in a country with socialized healthcare that was recently measured to have some of the best outcomes in the most expensive fields in the world (oncology) while also being among the most efficient medical systems in the world.

      You are spouting utter garbage. Around here, the most popular medical repository is private. Do you know why? Because it's in a direct interest of both public and private medical organisations to ensure that their doctors are as efficient as possible. That means making treatment plans as quickly and as accurately as possible. Therefore there's a significant financial motivation for both public and private sector healthcare providers (both of which exist here) to have a wide reaching database of as accurate and as widely accepted treatment plan suggestions as possible, which is easily accessible to all doctors.

      So while I think that US healthcare system is just a failure on merits, your arguments against it are just as one sidedly ignorant and awful. This is an example of a case where private sector has a significant vested interest in maintaining a database of this kind, and keeping it as accurate and up to date as reasonably possible.

      That is of course, if said database was indeed doing what is advertised, and not some kind of a political tool, which tends to unfortunately happen when politics get involved.

    13. Re:So actually no value then by magzteel · · Score: 1

      Well you're a moron. This is a database that cost a lot to put together and basically little to maintain, serves a purpose, and Republicans are killing health care plans with no replacement.
      So you're a moron, basically, all wrong on every point you tried to make there, sorry.

      I'm not sure if it "costs little to maintain". My first thought was it wouldn't be super costly from a tech perspective so why wouldn't some outside entity happily snatch it up and put ads on it?

      But this is the likely reason (from TFA):

      "The NGC has a screening process designed to keep weakly supported research out. It also offers summaries of research and an interactive, searchable interface.That gatekeeping role has sometimes made AHRQ a target. The agency was nearly eliminated shortly after its establishment, in the mid-90s, when it endorsed non-surgical interventions for back pain, a position that angered the North American Spine Society, a trade group representing spine surgeons. A subsequent campaign led to significant funding losses for AHRQ, and since then, the agency as a whole has been a perennial target for Republicans who have argued that its work is duplicated at other federal agencies."

      So it's not just about hosting data. It requires a trained staff to research submissions and make judgements. Sure it could have a crowd-sourced model but I don't know if "Wikipedia" is appropriate as an authoritative source for medical guidelines.

    14. Re: So actually no value then by jareth-0205 · · Score: 1

      You nailed it. People are up in arms about everythingTrump's administration is doing. They will look for every opportunity to demonize a good decision. Trump mandates are minimizing government. That's a wonderful thing. Government is in every nook and cranny. It doesn't need to be there.

      Let the private sector handle what it can. Not everything needs to be a function of government (handout) from taxpayer money.

      Don't fucking generalise and ignore the issue. Come on, defend this particular decision if you want to defend it. Specifically. Don't just wave your hard and blame partisan politics.

    15. Re:So actually no value then by DCFusor · · Score: 1
      I don't buy the rejection of corporate propaganda. Not one other gov agency does - look at FCC for example. Do these "guidelines" simply provide an excuse to over treat patients? I bet they do - did they ever have that landmark study on how daily small doses of aspirin prevent heart attacks and strokes? No, didn't think so. But despite lowering numbers at the lab, I'd be they promote prescribing statins despite zero evidence they actually do any good other than make lab numbers good. Maybe it's a cost saving issue indeed - the money all comes from our pockets one way or another.
      .

      Maybe some of the high-minded commentators here have some resources THEY would donate to keep a simple database online if they're so adamant I should pay for it. Why not have those who want to pick my pocket pick their own? Crickets. They still believe the lie that some government is going to pick the other guy's pocket, not their own, to buy their vote and for their good. Guess what, good governments prevent stealing from one person to give to another. That would not include ours, for as long as I've lived - 64 so far.

      --
      Why guess when you can know? Measure!
  4. If it is free to access, fork it. by wierd_w · · Score: 1

    If it is too big for a single group or site to pull, then coordinate, distribute the slice load, and differentially pull the needed slices.

    Then, once the data is secured, see about establishing a trust or group to maintain it free of tiny orange hands.

    1. Re: If it is free to access, fork it. by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1
      the police force should be cut and replaced with groups of privately funded mercenaries keeping our streets safe.

      Most Americans would agree that Hells Angels supported by a couple of Terminators would solve this problem completely. Harley Davidson would probably fund the whole operation.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    2. Re:If it is free to access, fork it. by gtall · · Score: 1

      Bozo the Clown does not have orange hands. Admittedly they are small, but not orange, unlike the doo.

  5. Content is king by bugs2squash · · Score: 2

    This sounds like just the kind of content a private company would love to host. Lots of influential, wealthy eyeballs on it each day. Hell, they could probably sell a backup of the site to someone to get them a quick start.

    --
    Nullius in verba
    1. Re:Content is king by dryeo · · Score: 1

      If they try to monetize it through advertising, then they have to worry about the advertisers being happy with the content. Considering the target audience, the advertisers would probably be drug companies, companies that, for example, want the Doctor to start the insulin course as early as possible instead of when needed as it is more profitable.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    2. Re:Content is king by q_e_t · · Score: 1

      Should that happen, it will return to the web."

      This is just more of the typical panic over everything that happens.

      Well, it's not a given that it will return. If you make people aware of things (which TFA does), then it is more likely to return, so TFA doesn't seem unreasonable, and the loss of federal funding is an accurate summary.

    3. Re:Content is king by gtall · · Score: 1

      It isn't a good idea to have a government site spewing and funded by ads. It's bad enough we have an alleged president more interested in his golf courses than in science or policy or keeping Putin's dirt on him secret, this level of sell-out would really put a cherry on that cake.

  6. These people have no shame. by mark_reh · · Score: 1

    It's going to take the next administration (if there is one) years to fix all the things that the trumpies have laid to waste, if they can be fixed at all.

    1. Re: These people have no shame. by bluelip · · Score: 1

      The politicians only have their paychecks in mind. They'll continue supporting these wonderful cuts, now that many have seen the light, if they want to keep their jobs.

      --

      Yep, I never spell check.
      More incorrect spellings can be found he
  7. America elected an anti-government by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    and anti-science administration. I'm not saying this to troll. We (or the 45% who voter for him) knew exactly what they were getting. Americans have been kicked around non stop for 40 years and unfortunately instead of blaming the billionaires that outsourced their jobs and brought in cheap labor to replace what they couldn't outsource they blamed "elites"; e.g. scientists and college professors. You know, nerds. And, well, this is the result.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re: America elected an anti-government by TheMiddleRoad · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The article is about deleting a valuable health database. Your response is to blame the unions. You're a moron. An abject shithead. For goodness sake, don't have children.

    2. Re:America elected an anti-government by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Point of fact: ~20% voted for him, not 45%. ~21% voted Clinton, another ~1% wasted their votes on throwaway protest "message" which effectively let Trump eke out an electoral victory. The others, nearly 60% of the US population, did not vote at all.

    3. Re:America elected an anti-government by GerryGilmore · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I've got mod points, but I'm gonna burn them here to support you more fully.
      Specifically, we collectively - as Americans - have allowed ourselves to become incredibly stupid and brain-washed to the point that we prioritize who kneels at a sports game over who will guarantee a civilized level of medical coverage for all citizens.
      As an old-school American patriot, it greatly saddens me to say that we deserve our declining fate.
      When the President and Vice-President regularly appear on idiot shows (Fox and Friends, Hannity and Limbaugh, the epitome of "irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas") to get their political blowjiobs and the broad electorate elects them...again, we deserve our fate of decline. Jesus wept.

    4. Re: America elected an anti-government by GerryGilmore · · Score: 2

      And, sadly, a voter is TMR, hence our predicament.'

    5. Re:America elected an anti-government by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      > You're spot on, but it's not "all Americans" who are at fault for that. It's Republican traitors who sell out their country - daily

      There it is. The same kind of idiot blaming one side of a corrupt political system, showing a complete lack of situational awareness. You sir, are part of the problem.

    6. Re: America elected an anti-government by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Anytime someone blames unions you can bet they consider themselves "fiscally conservative" and they vote R almost exclusively. But in this case I'm guessing they probably call themselves "libertarian" which means they want to do away with all taxes and regulations. They claim that they really believe that the general public will step forward and take care of everything the government currently does through private donations and private businesses will get the money and not government employees and red tape. The problem is that nobody who suddenly has an extra 25% or more income is going to immediately turn around and give that money out to people to do what the government did with our taxes.

      My older brother is a good example of a modern American libertarian. He doesn't want to pay property taxes because he doesn't have kids and is 50. He doesn't think he should be paying taxes for public schools on his property. I asked him who should and he said people with children. When I pointed out to him that not very many parent could afford to send their children to what would basically become private schools he said that wasn't his problem they shouldn't have kids. I asked him if he would set aside the same % of his income he pays in taxes to support the programs and infrastructure that money currently goes to. He said he would take a look at what he wanted to support and put some of his income into that. He wouldn't say that he would give what he currently pays in taxes.

      He is just another person who wants to keep more for themselves. He would not give a penny to anything because he thinks his income is his and poor people should just stop being poor. He thinks the roads and bridges will just build and maintain themselves and people will volunteer to serve in the military for free and that business will build all the weapons they need at no cost out of the goodness of their hearts. Conservative and Libertarian voters are basically one in the same. They simply don't care about what happens to everyone else as long as they get a bigger piece of the pie.

      Both parties blame everything on the government and unions because it's an easy target and gives voters something to focus their anger on. I generally just ignore them because they never have any evidence to back up their claims. They can never post any peer reviewed studies to back their claims or any statistics from any official sources. It's all from websites that cater to that voter base and the only links those articles will have go to another similar website with what is basically the same article worded a little differently. They are full of solutions but every solution they offer always benefits them at the expense of others. They are not willing to make any sacrifices for the good of the country or the good of humanity as a whole. The only thing they care about is adding to what they already have. In most cases they already have more than most people but they want to get a new $250,000 RV to park at the lake where they have their $90,000 boat docked. So they blame unions and the government and vote for people who make bad laws that hurt the most vulnerable citizens of the nation and who embarrass the country in front of the rest of the world. Just so they can keep an extra few % of their income so they can add another toy to their collection.

    7. Re: America elected an anti-government by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      There are libertarians, and then there are Libertarians. Some people just take it too damn seriously. Increased social liberties at the same time as increased economic liberties, that sounds good. But then they start adding in lots of litmus tests, and welcome goofy theories like the gold standard with open arms. This is what political parties do, the want to attract those with the extreme views and purist ideologies, leaving moderates who think about things behind.

    8. Re: America elected an anti-government by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The USA has very weak unions overall, although some odd issues with closed shops. Germany has strong unions, but better relationships. Germany seems to have done pretty well in terms of the economy, so I don't think unions are a significant factor.

    9. Re: America elected an anti-government by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not voting is effectively endorsing the winner. You don't care who wins.
      When people quote these figures they are implying that the non-voters oppose the winner, but that is not the case.
      If you don't vote, you are equally responsible for the result as those who vote for the winner.

    10. Re: America elected an anti-government by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's an emotional crutch for people with a fear of feeling inferior.

    11. Re: America elected an anti-government by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      They claim that they really believe that the general public will step forward and take care of everything the government currently does through private donations

      Just like what happened in the golden age before big government.

      I'll tell you another thing, women and darkies knew their place too. NGOML!

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    12. Re:America elected an anti-government by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      God forbid anything is ever privatized and not funded by the govt.

      I'd love to see it taken over by Illinois Lard Inc (est 1872).

      Severed finger: Lard.
      Myopia: Lard.
      Diabetes: Even more lard!

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    13. Re: America elected an anti-government by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Good public education helps everyone, even people without kids. So everyone should pay for it. Better educated labor force creates a greater GDP.

    14. Re: America elected an anti-government by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      I looked this up in the soon-to-be-gone database, and it says that this is what's known as "projection". Recommended course of treatment is referral to a psychiatrist.

    15. Re: America elected an anti-government by meglon · · Score: 1

      Try looking up "fucking idiot." Your picture will be right there.

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
    16. Re: America elected an anti-government by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      Nice try, but they didn't accept your submission. Turns out that doctors don't appreciate your trolling any more than we do.

    17. Re: America elected an anti-government by Joce640k · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not voting is effectively endorsing the winner. You don't care who wins.
      When people quote these figures they are implying that the non-voters oppose the winner, but that is not the case.
      If you don't vote, you are equally responsible for the result as those who vote for the winner.

      Either that or you didn't want to vote for any of them.

      What "democracy" really needs is a meaningful "none of the above" box on the voting papers.

      How should it work? If the number of people who vote "none of the above" is greater than the difference between the top two candidates then it should force a new election with new candidates.

      --
      No sig today...
    18. Re: America elected an anti-government by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "I've never met anyone who cares more about kneeling than healthcare; only a blowhard would claim that "Americans collectively" do."

      This statement is so demonstrably false as to be downright silly. There are a *lot* of people that care more about football players kneeling than about healthcare policy. Further, the general American focus is undeniably more on kneeling athletes than healthcare.

      How can you tell? Because the people upset about the athletes learn their names. They know exactly who has betrayed their concept of "patriotism" in their favorite hobby. Meanwhile, the people who are "more or less fine with the way things are" don't even bother learning *anything* about healthcare policy. These people say "The government needs to keep its hands off my medicare" while opposing medicare. They believe outright ludicrous lies like "government death panels that decide to kill grandma" without putting forth the slightest effort to learn why that's so patently fictional.

      Sounds more like you're either out of touch with what Americans actually care about, or you're just absorbed in your own bullshit cognitive biases that cause you to reactively defend your "team" regardless of the available facts. Probably both.

    19. Re: America elected an anti-government by datavirtue · · Score: 1

      The RV is actually $400k and you would not be very much fun at the parties you don't get invited to.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    20. Re:America elected an anti-government by rcharbon · · Score: 1

      Try 23%. Half the people don't vote.

    21. Re:America elected an anti-government by Joce640k · · Score: 1

      and anti-science administration. I'm not saying this to troll. We (or the 45% who voter for him) knew exactly what they were getting

      I strongly disagree with that.

      The 45% who voter(sic) for him have no clue what they actually voted for.

      (...except more guns and less queers/darkies)

      And if you knew what you were getting, why did you vote?

      --
      No sig today...
    22. Re:America elected an anti-government by mikael · · Score: 1

      It was the economists in the colleges who advised the billionaires and came up all these ideas like "bringing in low-cost foreign workers allows corporations to redeploy staff to positions where they can be used to further increase the value of the company." In other words, make your technical staff managers and have their train up their replacements before firing them. Another one is "foreign workers bring in skills that local workers do not have".

      In some cases, those very same economists would meddle and block the career paths of their own research students in order to prove that their theories were correct.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    23. Re: America elected an anti-government by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2

      There are libertarians, and then there are Libertarians. Some people just take it too damn seriously. Increased social liberties at the same time as increased economic liberties, that sounds good. But then they start adding in lots of litmus tests, and welcome goofy theories like the gold standard with open arms. This is what political parties do, the want to attract those with the extreme views and purist ideologies, leaving moderates who think about things behind.

      Libertarianism is like all other isms some ideas are good, but the ideology always destroys the idea. Its always the core assumption

      Capitalism assumes that the people who are driven by greed to accumulate, are also very generous.

      Socialism (real, not the socialism that crypto conservatives bandy about) assumes the government is always benevolent and honest.

      Communism assumes altruism on the part of the governed.

      And Libertarianism assumes everyone is smart and honest.

      Modern crypto-conservatives have also damaged it by usurping the anti-tax aspects

      And this is why ideologues need kept in check.

      We really do need Barry Goldwater about now!

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    24. Re: America elected an anti-government by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      They claim that they really believe that the general public will step forward and take care of everything the government currently does through private donations

      Just like what happened in the golden age before big government.

      I'll tell you another thing, women and darkies knew their place too. NGOML!

      Glad I read the second sentence after reading the first.

      Some folks are going to point out people like Andrew Carnegie, or even Bill Gates (though most crypto-conservatives hate him for it) as proof that people with a lot of money are generous..

      But those are the very few.

      I've always wondered what the modern gilded class will do after they finish with the pecuniary extraction phase and consolidate their wealth. I suspect when the rest of us have nothing more to take, they will turn on each other.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    25. Re: America elected an anti-government by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

      We all know the problem, what is your solution?

    26. Re: America elected an anti-government by spire3661 · · Score: 2

      Both of those men gave away money to buy a better legacy. Bill Gates would be excoriated if he didnt start giving away his money. Its literally his only redeeming quality.

      --
      Good-bye
    27. Re:America elected an anti-government by spire3661 · · Score: 1

      Because the choices we were given made it not worth voting. Both of them are vile humans unworthy of any position of power.

      --
      Good-bye
    28. Re:America elected an anti-government by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      As an old-school American patriot, it greatly saddens me to say that we deserve our declining fate.

      1) This was done to us deliberately by politicians who desire low-information voters. Like, all of them.
      2) Not all of us are like that, and the people who are don't listen to us. We're victims, and you're blaming us. That's abusive.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    29. Re:America elected an anti-government by gweihir · · Score: 1

      The only good thing about this is that the ones that did this stupid thing will be the ones that suffer most.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    30. Re:America elected an anti-government by gweihir · · Score: 1

      There is enough democracy left in the US that the voters very much did this to themselves (as a group). Stop blaming others. Trump is a symptom, he did not elect himself. I do agree that you are victims though, but it is of your own collective inability.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    31. Re:America elected an anti-government by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      There is enough democracy left in the US that the voters very much did this to themselves (as a group).

      What? Who told you that?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    32. Re: America elected an anti-government by zmooc · · Score: 2

      There's nothing wrong with wanting to keep more for themselves, nor is there with being a libertarian. The real problem is that people fail to understand that the vast majority of their propery, income and quality of life simply would not exist without a joint effort to create a properly organized safe and efficient country. Among western countries, the US already takes quite an extreme position in this w.r.t. health care, crime prevention, homelessness, unemployment and fossil fuels (where the ignorance even affects the rest of the world).

      Your brother just wants to add education to that list. And perhaps infrastructure. He fails to understand that his income, like just about all incomes, fully depends on other people spending money. This simply works best if these people are healthy, safe, educated and able to move from A to B.

      Most somewhat smart animals (e.g. ravens, dolphins or rhesus monkeys) understand this concept naturally because in the long run, altruism benefits groups as a whole. Humans show altruistic behavior out of the box as well. Unfortunately, our society has become so complex and impersonal that our natural tendency and ability to show altruism fails miserably. Our brain simply does not recognize it if it hides behind taxes and people you've never seen. Likely, your brother would naturally understand the value of contributing to society as a whole if it were about real tangible people. But it isn't.

      --
      0x or or snor perron?!
    33. Re:America elected an anti-government by nnet · · Score: 1

      s/lard/xml/

    34. Re:America elected an anti-government by John_Sauter · · Score: 1

      Because the choices we were given made it not worth voting. Both of them are vile humans unworthy of any position of power.

      There weren't only two choices. The Libertarian party was on the ballot in every state, and in some states there were even more choices. Not voting is a cop-out. If you don't like either of the major party candidates, vote for a minor party candidate.

    35. Re: America elected an anti-government by aliquis · · Score: 1

      Why don't you just move here to Scandinavia and let us move to the US?

    36. Re: America elected an anti-government by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      What "democracy" really needs is a meaningful "none of the above" box on the voting papers.

      No it doesn't. You just need a preferential voting system so you don't end up throwing away a protest vote. Combine that with compulsory voting if you want to, but really there are many voting systems around the world that work just fine without having to cast the word "democracy" in quotes.

    37. Re: America elected an anti-government by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Both of those men gave away money to buy a better legacy. Bill Gates would be excoriated if he didnt start giving away his money. Its literally his only redeeming quality.

      If a person decides to do what a good person would do, it is still a good thing.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    38. Re:America elected an anti-government by fafalone · · Score: 1

      another ~1% wasted their votes on throwaway protest "message" which effectively let Trump eke out an electoral victory.

      So it's your contention that had Gary Johnson and Jill Stein not been on the ballot, all of those votes would have gone to Clinton? Steins probably; but (L) would have broken towards Trump, since that party has also gone off the deep end and made me embarrassed to have called myself one with their rampant Trump support. So no, 3rd party votes had nothing to do with Trump winning, and if you don't want so many people staying home or "protest voting" why don't you stop bitching on Slashdot and go work to make the big 2 not both be so god damn awful.

    39. Re: America elected an anti-government by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

      I did the "throw away vote" mentioned above, and voted Green party. They would be the least able to accomplish their goals for domination if elected, so I took the lesser of several evils.

      --
      If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
    40. Re: America elected an anti-government by bestweasel · · Score: 2

      Weird that you should have more faith in a single random doctor than the collected and curated wisdom and experience of thousands. A good doctor would of course use her own judgement and knowledge of the patient combined with the best practice of the rest of the medical community.

      The NGC has a screening process designed to keep weakly supported research out.

      The real reason the database is being deleted is that it's costing medical institutions money.

      That gatekeeping role has sometimes made AHRQ a target. The agency was nearly eliminated shortly after its establishment, in the mid-90s, when it endorsed non-surgical interventions for back pain, a position that angered the North American Spine Society, a trade group representing spine surgeons. A subsequent campaign led to significant funding losses for AHRQ, and since then, the agency as a whole has been a perennial target for Republicans who have argued that its work is duplicated at other federal agencies.

      The vetting role played by the NGC is a critical one, says Roy Poses, with the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.

      "Many guidelines are actually written mainly for commercial purposes or public relations purposes," said Poses, and can be subtly shaped to promote a given course of treatment. A guideline written for the treatment of depression, for example, may emphasize pharmaceuticals over talk therapy.

      "The organizations writing the guidelines may be getting millions of dollars from big drug companies that want to promote a product. The people writing them may have similar conflicts of interest," Poses said. NGCâ(TM)s process provided a resource comparatively free of that kind of influence.

      Underscoring how medical research like that maintained by the NGC can be politicized, AHRQ drew the ire of then-congressmember Tom Price in 2016 when it published a study critical of a drug manufactured by one of his campaign donors. According to ProPublica, one of Priceâ(TM)s aides emailed "at least half a dozen times" asking the agency to pull the critical research down. Price was the first director of HHS, AHRQâ(TM)s parent agency, under the Trump Administration, before resigning under pressure last year over his spending on chartered flights.

    41. Re: America elected an anti-government by apoc.famine · · Score: 3, Informative

      Absolutely correct.

      The GP has tried to work around the problem rather than finding a solution for it. The solution is preferential or ranked voting.

      As an example of how this works, see what Maine just did for their primaries. And that's what will happen there in November too.

      Yes, it's more complicated, but it's far less complicated than the "solution" that the GP describes. Imagine that happening twice in a row!

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
    42. Re: America elected an anti-government by sjames · · Score: 2

      Not voting is just a way to say the election is between "turd sandwich" and "giant douche".

      To top it off, the current president didn't even turn out to be the least unpopular choice in the election, but won anyway.

      Only an egomanic fool would consider that an endorsement.

    43. Re: America elected an anti-government by sjames · · Score: 1

      ...Until they get sick or injured.

    44. Re: America elected an anti-government by cas2000 · · Score: 2

      > Who could I have voted for?

      You didn't have to vote for anyone.

      You vote against the greater evil - Trump.

      Clinton would have been "more of the same" but that's nowhere near as bad as the current accelerated radical path to fascist theocracy.

      That's what you should have done - not vote for HC but vote against the nazi clown.

      Voting against the greater evil isn't even a novel or unusual voting strategy - given that you'll probably never get a great candidate that you can support without reservation, it makes sense to vote so that you minimise the harm that can be done by any politician. i.e. this should be the default strategy of every citizen.

      And then you work to get rid of the electoral colleges and implement a preferential voting system so that third-party votes aren't wasted - if your 1st preference doesn't win, your vote is transferred to your 2nd preference, and then to your 3rd and so on until it eventually ends up with a candidate who has a majority of votes.

      You'll probably still end up with something close to a two-party system but the two major parties have to be careful not to alienate too many other voters - which discourages extremist policies and actions. It also leaves open enough space for new parties to arise and gain enough support to eventually displace one of the current major parties (or at least shift their policies in the same direction).

    45. Re:America elected an anti-government by cas2000 · · Score: 1

      You were given a choice between a populist (and popular) orange Nazi clown (with a theocratic VP) and a corporate stooge same as all the other corporate stooges who've been elected in the past.

      A vote isn't always an expression of support. It's a tool that can be used to prevent the greater evil from winning. You're stuck with one of the two no matter what you do, so the only sane response is to make sure that the worst candidate doesn't win.

      By choosing not to vote against the Nazi, you effectively voted for him. This is (partly) on you - you can't evade your share of the responsibility.

    46. Re: America elected an anti-government by bestweasel · · Score: 1

      I stand by what I said - this is outdated, probably corrupted by profit making enterprises, and a cheat sheet.

      The vetting role played by the NGC is a critical one, says Roy Poses, with the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
      "The organizations writing the guidelines may be getting millions of dollars from big drug companies that want to promote a product. The people writing them may have similar conflicts of interest," Poses said. NGC's process provided a resource comparatively free of that kind of influence.

      “Losing [the NGC] is really losing a valuable resource,” said Ana Maria Lopez, President of the American College of Physicians.

      Have you asked your medical team whether they use the NGC database or had you not heard of it until now?

      What do you think doctors do with a puzzling case when the patient's not around, sit in an armchair going "hmmm" until inspiration strikes from the infinite resources of their mind? No, they seek help, whether that's from other doctors, textbooks, databases such as this, or Google, all "cheat sheets".

      Your PhD level skills will doubtless have appreciated the truth behind the parable of Carson and the Pyramids, where a man brilliant in his field can be a dunce outside it and life has surely shown you that even the best people can make mistakes. A published, vetted and scrutinised database mitigates that.

      I see a lot of the med business...and the corruption in it when I have to do things outside my chosen folks

      Fortunately corruption in the NHS has been minimal till now but that's one of the benefits of a national, publicly-funded healthcare system.

    47. Re: America elected an anti-government by shplopt · · Score: 1

      Traditionally, small-l libertarian has been a synonym for "anarchist" and is still used that way in most of the world. Although in the last hundred years or so it's been more commonly used to describe pro-market mutualists than classical left anarchists. Let's just say there's quite a bit of diversity around the term.

    48. Re: America elected an anti-government by DCFusor · · Score: 1
      Oh, I don't use the widely disparaged as incompetent NHS, don't live on that side of the pond. There's financial corruption and incompetence, which is also corruption (fraud) if you claim to know what your're doing.
      .

      I know docs seek help on the hard ones. They have plenty of resources to contact, often in the same building.
      .

      Just because someone says a source is great, doesn't make it great. The correlation is negative if in fact their paycheck comes from that source - the case here.
      .

      Yes, I'm aware of the effect of knowing one field and being a bozo in another. Not the case here.
      .

      When a doc has a puzzling case, I think it's good if they take the specifics into account as well as use their judgement about whether the patient can reliably relate symptom information - which varies all over as you know if you've done support of any sort. I happen to be a 6' 123 lb person with metabolic issues quite a bit different than most of the data that includes the "whales of wallmart" which skews the data a doctor gets FAR from what fits my case....if you have any sort of relatively rare issue, the value of a big set of unrelated cases quickly becomes zero - or negative.
      .

      What obviously triggered this story was reports by people losing their jobs, not reports from the users... What would you expect the spin to look like?

      --
      Why guess when you can know? Measure!
    49. Re: America elected an anti-government by Agripa · · Score: 1

      Not voting is effectively endorsing the winner. You don't care who wins.
      When people quote these figures they are implying that the non-voters oppose the winner, but that is not the case.
      If you don't vote, you are equally responsible for the result as those who vote for the winner.

      Not voting is not an endorsement of anything. Neither of the viable candidates were acceptable. The only thing they are guilty of is not being persuasive enough.

      If you want more representative results, then fix the voting system. Until then, we can all go to hell together.

    50. Re: America elected an anti-government by Agripa · · Score: 2

      How should it work? If the number of people who vote "none of the above" is greater than the difference between the top two candidates then it should force a new election with new candidates.

      How should it work? Puree the candidates and feed them to Congress.

    51. Re: America elected an anti-government by Agripa · · Score: 1

      How about if you don't like the candidates then you get over your ass and support someone better.

      Having personally watched election shenanigans, I know that supporting anybody other than the two major party candidates is futile. The illusion of choice is another form of control.

    52. Re: America elected an anti-government by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      If you're poor, too bad -- no school, no healthcare, no shelter for you. It's very Darwinian.

      Ironically, most of them don't believe in actual (finches and all that) Darwinism.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    53. Re: America elected an anti-government by Jason+Levine · · Score: 1

      The problem with most of the "-isms" is that they deal with ideal worlds. In an ideal world, rich people would be generous, government would always be benevolent and honest, people would be altruistic, and everyone would be smart/honest. Of course, all of these break down when we move from the ideal world to the real world. In the real world, some rich people are generous, but others just accumulate money/power and don't give back. In the real world, government can be benevolent/honest, but is also often corrupt and dishonest. In the real world, people can sometimes be altruistic/smart/honest, but can also be greedy, dumb, and lie. I don't think ideals are necessarily a bad thing. It's important to have a vision of an ideal world you want to work towards. However, at the same time, you need to acknowledge where the real world diverges from the ideal world and build protections in your "-ism" to handle the case of when your ideal breaks down.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    54. Re: America elected an anti-government by Jason+Levine · · Score: 2

      I really wish we'd move towards ranked voting. Not only would it give a better idea of voter preference over "pick column A or B:, but it would also allow third party candidates to run.

      Imagine a Ranked Voting situation in 2016. Hillary and Trump win their primaries. For the moment, we'll ignore the third party candidates who did run and suppose that Bernie Sanders decided to run third party. Perhaps someone from the GOP (let's say Jeb Bush just to pick one at semi-random) would have ran third party also.

      Someone who votes Democrat but didn't like Hillary could vote: 1) Bernie 2) Hillary 3) Jeb. Someone who votes Republican but didn't like Trump could vote 1) Jeb 2) Trump 3) Bernie. This way they say "I'll still vote for my party's candidate, but I prefer this other candidate more." The 2016 election might have turned out with Bernie or Jeb winning instead of Hillary or Trump.

      Of course, it's precisely this reason why it won't be done. The Democrats and GOP don't want a strong third party.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    55. Re: America elected an anti-government by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      I don't think ideals are necessarily a bad thing. It's important to have a vision of an ideal world you want to work towards. However, at the same time, you need to acknowledge where the real world diverges from the ideal world and build protections in your "-ism" to handle the case of when your ideal breaks down.

      If I were to stake a claim to an ideal, It would be Libertarian. But I'm just too pragmatic to ever believe it could work. I'm big on letting people alone, but few people have that discipline. And that means left or right wing. Neither likes letting people do as they will, if it causes no harm. Both sides just redefine harm.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    56. Re: America elected an anti-government by apoc.famine · · Score: 2

      I agree completely.

      I just hope that the two main parties adopt this thinking it's going to benefit them and hurt the other to the extent that the third parties/candidates can actually make a real difference. For the 2016 election, I don't think we disagree that it would have been better for the country to have had this voting method. We had two of the most disliked candidates ever, and to not have to vote for either one of them would have made most of both parties happier.

      If Maine can do it, that shows it's possible. We just need enough other motivated people in other states to push it forward.

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
    57. Re: America elected an anti-government by sydbarrett74 · · Score: 1

      Or we could just use Ranked Choice Voting.

      --
      'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
  8. How to fix this by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    Test anyone who wants to become a doctor.
    Have anyone interesting in entering medicine in the USA pass exams before getting accepted into starting any US medical education.
    Accept only the very best. Cant pass an exam on merit and be in the top percentage? Consider further university education outside medicine.
    Keep the testing and standards up until the medical professional has gradated.
    The person now allowed to practice medicine in the USA should be able to understand, learn and study at a very advanced level for decades.
    Make entry into any field of specialization in the USA even more difficult. More exams to sort the best from the best and constant peer review.
    Want to work in the USA as a doctor? Pass the same exams as the US doctors did to the same standard.

    Such a system has a few unexpected results.
    Doctors face no competition and can enjoy can set and good wages due to their advanced level of education.
    The medical profession would have the tested ability to study, learn to a very good academic standard. No letting demographics set getting into medicine.

    The "sitting around a table" is peer review. That is what ensures the experts can look aver all the work in their teaching hospital and track all the results of all their staff.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    1. Re:How to fix this by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 1

      That's the way it works in most countries. In the US, the MCAT is no cakewalk and serves as an entrance exam into med school, with a few other things like undergrad grades. Getting into medical school isn't easy, more difficult than it maybe even should be.

      In France, entrance into the first two years of medical school is open-admission, but then the exam required to continue on to the third to sixth year is brutal. Only the top 10% pass and the exam can only be re-taken once in a lifetime.

    2. Re:How to fix this by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Once any advance nation has that level of experts then they write their own books.
      Every doctor has their results peer reviewed. Not getting what all the other doctors can do on average? Time for a look at that doctor and their results.
      All kinds of issues per doctor quickly show up as all the other staff work to the best standards and their results are better.
      When doctors need stop and use a computer when they should know that to do something in the level of education has to be considered.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    3. Re:How to fix this by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1
      When doctors need stop and use a computer when they should know that to do something in the level of education has to be considered.

      What we have here is clear proof of Dunning-Kruger at work!

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    4. Re:How to fix this by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      With a system like this you get a lot of people that are good in passing tests and suck in doing the actual work.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    5. Re:How to fix this by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Most advanced nations have the ability to educate only their best to become doctors.
      That allows for the very best experts to be on duty every shift. People who are experts and who know what they are doing.
      Specialists who are peer reviewed and who know their work.
      Passing test and exams is one way to ensure the person on duty could learn and can learn. Keep learning over the many years of their profession.
      That lets people who will need constant support during their shift and working hours change to other academic areas of study.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    6. Re:How to fix this by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Passing test and exams is one way to ensure the person on duty could learn and can learn.
      That is not what you said before.
      You proposed to let pass only the best in the exams, instead of - what most nations do - defining a barrier above you pass.

      Anyway, you surely will once meet a a person that always passes all tests with top grades but has no clue about the topic.

      In CS I know plenty of them :D

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    7. Re:How to fix this by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Most advance nations know how to keep their teaching hospitals up to standard and know to have the best staff on every shift.
      Selecting from the best graduates. Staff evaluations, peer review then ensures only the best advance.
      That allows for anyone needing advanced medical care very quickly at any time will get only the very best care.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    8. Re:How to fix this by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      You said this already several times, what is your point?

      An "entrance test" to allow one to study is not the solution, it is the problem.

      Tests only are meaningful after the studying is finished, and usually not even then.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  9. It has lots of value by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It may have no commercial value, so no-one can make a profit from it.
    But it can still have huge social value as general knowledge for medicine.

    This is just the kind of thing the government should do.

    1. Re: It has lots of value by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      Why? If wikipedia can host a much larger database, serve it to far more users per month, and fund the whole thing with donations from the public, why in the world does a smaller more specialised database geared towards doctors need government funding?

      Are all those poor MDs so empoverished that they can't afford a $3 donation every now and then?

    2. Re: It has lots of value by meglon · · Score: 1

      You are still a fucking idiot. Government IS funded by the public, and it should be in the "business" of actually helping the citizens.... are you literally too fucking stupid to realize that?

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
    3. Re: It has lots of value by Jason+Levine · · Score: 1

      Have you heard of the issues Wikipedia has? Do you really want a drug company rapidly changing an entry all the time to say "Drug X is the best treatment for Illness Y"? Do you want an editor or group of editors who are so locked into one procedure that they refuse to alter the page to reflect different findings?

      The value wasn't in the database per se, but in the filtering out of influence and only posting the best articles. Shutting this down and turning it into a "Wikipedia" project would be giving it a massive dose of influence to cure a non-existent disease.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  10. So what? not really needed and this was well known by will_die · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This was announced officially back in April.

    Back in February the HHS, which runs the office which runs this, released its budget request for the upcoming year. In it, they identified this as being duplicated in other governmental agencies and requested money to transfer the duties and money to different offices or agencies.
    The office than in April decided to kill this database even before any of that request to kill it off was approved by Congress and divert the money they were spending on it to something else.
    The article being linked to is yet another worthless opinion piece being passed off as actual journalism. The truth is no one really cares about this database and given four months for someone to come forward take it over no one has. The only reason it is being posted here is as a political hit piece.

  11. Won't need "hundreds of thousands" for a static by raymorris · · Score: 1, Insightful

    At the bottom of the linked article, the agency says it would cost them "hundreds of thousands of dollars" each year to host even a static archive of the site - some text..

    If the agency is telling the truth, they don't know how to have a static site hosted for less than hundreds of thousands of dollars, somebody else should be doing it rather than them. That statement indicates they are either incompetent, dishonest, or both.

    1. Re:Won't need "hundreds of thousands" for a static by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 2

      One hundred thousand dollars a year is enough to fund roughly one full-time senior engineer with the the broad skills to automate heavily and keep a bulky site with critical data alive. Anohter hundred thousand for one broadly skilled developer to keep the front end working and compatible with new browsers and new standards is also conservative. If we assume servers in AWS, at roughly $1/hour to support the necessary storage, backups, and web traffic for such a bulky system, hat is roughly $17,500/server per year. If we assume roughly 4 servers to allow one host to be down while others are supporting the load, that is also almost $100,000/year.

      This is not a service that can run from someone's laptop. The fact that a physician is looking up specific information about a specific disorder at a specific moment is sensitive, so it has to be encrypted, which adds computational requirements which translate to fiscal requirements. Hardening it with a commercially supported load balancer, say an AWS load balancer, is another expense.

    2. Re:Won't need "hundreds of thousands" for a static by malkavian · · Score: 1

      Or, if you're an organisation that has those skills already in house (if they don't, then they shouldn't be hosting any critical databases, or doing any development),
      It'll take maybe a day a year of an engineer, and maybe a day a year of dev time to keep it ticking over, if it's working to standards (and dev and ops don't even need to be from the same department!).
      So, if you're going AWS, with two server config, it'll come to $35k per year cost (why 4 servers? I'd love to see a capacity plan workout for what's needed throughput wise).
      Cost saved to the medical profession, millions, and millions, and millions.
      I call bullshit on it needing to be encrypted. It's information on a specific condition, not patient identifiable information. There is no requirement for it to be encrypted.
      What the most likely scale out case is going to be is: Static protocols served from main host(s). Cached at border proxy in each of the organisations where it is used, resulting in extremely small amounts of bandwidth usage at main host. The odd fringe protocol would be served from main host(s) on an irregular basis. Yes, there's still going to be a fairly sizable bandwidth usage due to the irregulars, but nothing that can't be handled by very small servers.
      As a case in point, I used to work for a small company that handled a particular sport as its focus. When each of the large series started up, internationally there was huge demand. As in millions of pages per day.
      These were served from an array of 20 single core low range boxes (at 1999 spec of low range). It's not rocket science, it just takes a little careful thinking about how you're going to do it (which sounds as though it's already done).
      So, having historically worked at this scale, and done it reliably and safely, knowing the clinical requirements for how open protocols need to be handled, I really do take issue with your reasoning.

    3. Re:Won't need "hundreds of thousands" for a static by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      I'm sorry to say that I've seen the type of accounting you describe, before. It's.... optimistic.

      > Or, if you're an organisation that has those skills already in house

      Those skills need to be funded. Given the sensitivity and need for high availability of this service, and the potentially lethal cost of unplanned downtime, I suggest that it needs a full time skilled engineer to support the distinct services unique needs and requirements. If that task can be spread out among a team with other tasks and responsibilities to help them stay trained and alert, that would be a desirable practice. But for the database integration with the basic front end web servers, backup requirements, security updates, etc., I'm claiming that the net responsibilities are a minimum of a full-time engineer. Spreading out the load among the rest of a larger organization doesn't eliminate the cost, it simply funds it from a different budget. The company may be willing to fund that as an overhead cost, but it still comes from _somewhere_.

      I suggest a similar cost for the front end support. Web protocols and web browsers change. It's unlikely that the current service supports the very latest protocols, and there is very likely to be technical debt on the front end. This is why you factor in support costs _early_ in the budget process, to be able to handle next years changes in web standards.

      > I call bullshit on it needing to be encrypted. It's information on a specific condition, not patient identifiable information. There is no requirement for it to be encrypted.

      The data needs to have search requests and transmissions encrypted because it can be packet sniffed anywhere along the way from the physician's office to the upstream storage center, and tied to separate information about the patient present in the office. A search for AIDS treatment, pregnancy, or diseases involving mental acuity has especial value for a private physician's office who treats the wealthy: knowledge that Steve Jobs's physician was looking up liver cancer treatment could have profoundly affected Apple's stock prices.

      > Cached at border proxy in each of the organisations where it is used,

      These proxies are not free. One can "Akamaize" the content, at a cost. This particular service is likely to be variable on a daily basis, with some very interesting trends on a seasonal or news-sensitive basis.

      > When each of the large series started up, internationally there was huge demand. As in millions of pages per day

      You're referring to fundamentally static content, served at a large scale but not really that much unique content. It will proxy well. This content is likely to involve a lot of searching and exploring of less predictable content. It's not clear how much churn the proxies would see, I suspect it would be large. It is an interesting question.

      > but nothing that can't be handled by very small servers.

      These "small servers" are not free, and the optimistic steps taken for an optimistic small startup do not necessarily scale well for a health service. I've worked with smaller, and considerably larger, clusters of "small scale servers". There is a minimum engineering cost per server: it used to be roughly one hour/week/server, and has gotten much better with good automation tools and practices. But the engineering cost for this would include database, backup, backup, front end web service, and security support, none of which are free. That's why I estimate roughly two full time engineers.

  12. Re:Compared to what? by dryeo · · Score: 1

    From the outside looking in, it was pretty depressing how few votes went for anyone else. There's something really broken when with such shitty candidates, only roughly 1% voted for other.

    --
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
  13. I don't think we deserve our fate by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    for one thing less than 50% of us choose that fate. It's only because of a messed up political system designed specifically to favor wealthy land owners (seriously, look it up, the electoral college, senate and even the SCOTUS were all checks not on the president but on the voters).

    There's a lot out of folks hands. Hell, I'm stuck in a red state with a ton of problems I wouldn't have healthcare wise if I lived back east or even California. Why am I stuck here? Mom moved me here when I was 6 and by the time I was old enough to know better I couldn't afford to move. This country crushes people, and when it does you can't just go where life doesn't suck. You've got to make due with what you got.

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    1. Re:I don't think we deserve our fate by Solandri · · Score: 4, Informative

      2016 was different from 2000. In 2000, Gore won a plurality of the popular vote (but not a majority), and liberal parties (Gore + Nader) won a majority of the popular vote. The Electoral college did not reflect a majority of the popular vote in 2000.

      In 2016, Clinton won a plurality (but not a majority) of the popular vote. However, Conservative parties combined won more popular votes than liberal parties combined (49.88% vs 49.13%, with the rest being cast for candidates without a party affiliation). So in 2016, the Electoral College awarded the election to the candidate whose ideology came closest to winning a majority of votes, rather than the individual who came closest to winning a majority. I didn't vote for Trump, but he was probably the correct winner in 2016.

      People like to criticize the Electoral College. But IMHO the plurality-wins system they propose be used instead is nearly as bad (consider the California primaries where some candidates won one of two slots in the general election with barely 20% of the vote). We really need to switch to instant run-off voting, which is designed so that a candidate always gets a majority of votes before being declared the winner.

    2. Re:I don't think we deserve our fate by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Probably the best thing to do would be to stop the gerrymandering of the districts. In Canada there is an independent third-party organization that sets the ridings (districts) according to a strict set of rules.

    3. Re:I don't think we deserve our fate by currently_awake · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Or Proportional Representation where you add up the votes nation wide and you get a percent of the seats equal to your percent of the votes.

    4. Re:I don't think we deserve our fate by iMadeGhostzilla · · Score: 1

      It would seem that you would consider San Francisco for example a slice of heaven compared to all the redneckness you are surrounded with. And yet if you actually lived in SF or visited long enough you'd realize that people in such a place often feel isolated, lonely and depressed, and I guess that is in large part to their ultraliberal worldviews. In my limited experience this crushing soul-from-soul isolation happens less in rural and conservative areas, even if they have other problems.

    5. Re:I don't think we deserve our fate by fafalone · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sorry, conservative parties? Libertarians might have supported Trump slightly more than Clinton as I just posted about above; but it's hardly unanimous, and it's absurd to call them a conservative party and chalk their votes up to the right. If you break it down point-by-point by ideology, Trumps didn't even come close to winning, because Libertarians diverge in majority percentages in just about every area outside domestic economics and regulatory issues (some; for instance NN has majority support among (L)). Trumps social conservatism, criminal justice policies, international trade policies, foreign intervention policies, and more, are all deeply offensive to most libertarians.
      I've heard some ridiculous spin before to try to get past the fact you lost the popular, but claiming libertarians are conservatives and count towards conservative ideology is one of the great manipulations that sounds intelligent to people who have no idea what libertarians actually stand for. And the bottom line, the electoral college is a system that says "you live in a rural area, so your vote counts for more".

    6. Re:I don't think we deserve our fate by mpercy · · Score: 1

      In 2016 there was no "popular vote". There never has been. What we're talking about is the aggregate vote of the different states, votes which were cast under the rules in place at the time, which was not a "popular vote". If we had a "popular vote" it is almost a certainty that the tally would have come out differently. Some conservatives who stayed home in California, knowing that their state was overwhelmingly in the bag for Sec. Clinton, likely come out and vote. Some Democrats in Alabama might have done the same. Personally, I have voted Libertarian for years in Georgia confident that my L votes would never crack the Republican lock and accidentally elect a Democrat for Senate or President.

      But the campaigns and elections were based on the rules of the Electoral College as they have for 200+ years. Everyone planned (or should have planned) their strategy for campaigning based on garnering EC votes, not on amassing run-up-the-score votes in red or blue states. At least some voters in locked-in red or blue states made their Election Day decisions to perhaps stay home knowing their candidate had basically already won (or lost) their state. At least some voters voted for Libertarian or Green candidates, perhaps thinking their votes were not going to matter.

      Based on the final score of, say, a football game played under the current rules it is impossible to say who'd have won if 2 points were also awarded based on each first down gained, because team strategies would change based on the different rules in effect at the time of the game. If fouls in a basketball game resulted in 2 points being deducted from your team score rather than allowing the other team the chance to shoot 1+1 or 2 free throws, think the game would be played differently?

      If we elected the President based on elections allocated by Congressional district one vote per district plus 2 statewide votes, think the campaigns and votes would be different? So the same is true of saying "popular vote". We don't have a "popular vote", so saying Clinton (or Gore) won the "popular vote" is not true.

      It is true that when aggregating the votes across all states, that they had pluralities. But that's like saying Clinton had 658 yards of total offense (she had 65.8M votes) and Trump had 629 yards of total offense (62.9M votes), and saying she should have won the football game. But the fact is, that despite moving the ball up and down the field somewhat better than Trump, she essentially turned the ball over 5 times (lost 5 state that Obama carried twice) and failed to score points when it counted.

      If someone wants to play "what if" for ex post facto results, imagine "what if" we had had instant run-off, where the people who voted for Gary Johnson (4+M) and Jill Stein (1+M) and the 800k "other" voters had selected a 2nd-choice vote? How many Libertarians and Greens would have selected Trump and Clinton as their second choice? How many of those L and G votes were "protest" votes in "safe" states.

  14. Bernie Sanders by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    or hell, even Hilary Clinton. Yeah, she's a right wing corporatists bitch, but at least she isn't openly anti-science. As terrible as she was/is it's always better to pick the lesser of two evils.

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    1. Re: Bernie Sanders by giggleloop · · Score: 5, Insightful

      At least some of those were policy/opinion changes she made over the course of several decades. If she held the same views in 2016 as she held in 1986, she'd be an idiot. Trump's lucky if his policy opinions are the same at the end of a sentence as they were when he started it.

    2. Re:Bernie Sanders by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I thought Clinton was supposed to be left-wing.

    3. Re:Bernie Sanders by The+Rizz · · Score: 1

      I thought Clinton was supposed to be left-wing.

      In America, neither the Democrat nor Republican parties are left-wing. Democrats are only considered such in comparison to Republicans; they're really much more centrist than anything else.

    4. Re: Bernie Sanders by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Characterizing a segment of his speech as a sentence is being a little too generous.

    5. Re:Bernie Sanders by John_Sauter · · Score: 1

      or hell, even Hilary Clinton. Yeah, she's a right wing corporatists bitch, but at least she isn't openly anti-science. As terrible as she was/is it's always better to pick the lesser of two evils.

      Even better, pick someone who isn't evil. The major party candidates were not the only choices.

    6. Re:Bernie Sanders by apoc.famine · · Score: 2

      Good idea! Lets pick minority candidates who can't win, making it a toss-up between whether we get the greater or lesser evil. That's much better than picking the lesser evil, right?

      In a first-past-the-post system, the majority party candidates are the only choices. If you don't like that, you're SOL. The only option is to change the system. You can't fix anything by choosing a third party candidate.

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
    7. Re:Bernie Sanders by John_Sauter · · Score: 1

      Good idea! Lets pick minority candidates who can't win, making it a toss-up between whether we get the greater or lesser evil. That's much better than picking the lesser evil, right?

      In a first-past-the-post system, the majority party candidates are the only choices. If you don't like that, you're SOL. The only option is to change the system. You can't fix anything by choosing a third party candidate.

      In the long run, you can. If the vote for a small party is greater than the difference between the votes of the big parties, the big parties will attempt to attract those small party voters by changing their platforms, and even their actions. Also, a big party can collapse and be replaced, though that hasn't happened since the Civil War.

    8. Re:Bernie Sanders by apoc.famine · · Score: 1

      In the long run, you can....though that hasn't happened since the Civil War.

      No, you can't change anything by voting third party, by your own admission.

      Look at what Maine did. In the span of just a couple of years they started the process of breaking the two party hegemony with ranked-choice voting. That's a little quicker than the 150+ year example you cited as an example of how voting 3rd party in first past the post elections can work.

      I don't see how that's a preferable option, unless you're a die-hard republican or democrat interested in self-preservation.

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
    9. Re:Bernie Sanders by John_Sauter · · Score: 1

      In the long run, you can....though that hasn't happened since the Civil War.

      No, you can't change anything by voting third party, by your own admission.

      Look at what Maine did. In the span of just a couple of years they started the process of breaking the two party hegemony with ranked-choice voting. That's a little quicker than the 150+ year example you cited as an example of how voting 3rd party in first past the post elections can work.

      I don't see how that's a preferable option, unless you're a die-hard republican or democrat interested in self-preservation.

      Breaking down a big party isn't the only path to change. Even if it were, everyone who rejects the big parties by voting for a small party is contributing to the process, even if the final breakdown doesn't come for another 150 years.

      Ranked choice voting lets people vote for a small party but also list the lesser of the two evil big parties as their second choice. That eliminates the argument that voting for a small party is "wasting your vote", an argument I don't buy but some people do. It appears that in Maine, one of the big parties is trying very hard to repeal ranked choice voting, which must mean they are concerned that it will mean less power for them.

  15. Re:Compared to what? by GerryGilmore · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wrote-in Bernie. Living in North Georgia, I knew that Trump would win Georgia anyway so I voted for the guy who would have wiped the floor with Trump.
    I say that knowing that 90%+ of Trump's vote was actually ABC (Anybody But Clinton).

  16. Um... there utterly and completely overwhelmed by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    you do know we just spent the last 40 years systematically dismantling the social safety net so we could make way for tax cuts for billionaires, right?

    In the entire history of humankind charity has never once solved any problem long term. It's always been civilization in the form of government that did. A few nice people at the middle can't make up for the bad done by folks up at the top. Complex, widespread problems (like public health) need comprehensive solutions done an a society wide scale. You and me dropping change into a plastic bucket twice a year is not a viable solution to the world's problems.

    --
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    1. Re:Um... there utterly and completely overwhelmed by shplopt · · Score: 1

      Right, with global capitalism extracting resources and forcing austerity measures. No way that could have ended poorly.

  17. Archive.org to the rescue? by Narcocide · · Score: 2

    Is there any chance they will let the public sector copy this database before they just burn it along with all the books?

  18. Re:So what? not really needed and this was well kn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    That is all the democrats...errr journalists... are capable of any more, hit pieces. If this had happened when the last guy was in office it would be held up as model of government efficiency and success by the same people now condemning it (FOX would complain loudly about it loudly though). Salve sclave.

  19. Re:Compared to what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Any other Republican in the primaries except for Cruz.
    Everyone pretends it was only a Trump or Hillary choice. That was the choice only after months of primary campaigning. Either all the normal, fiscally conservative, patriotic, and rational Republicans stayed home in the primaries or the GOP really is totally full of sh--heads at this point.

  20. Re:So what? not really needed and this was well kn by lastman71 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not really needed by some pharmaceuticals lobby, maybe?

    https://www.propublica.org/art...

    Also you should remember:

    "Price was the first director of HHS, AHRQ's parent agency, under the Trump Administration, before resigning under pressure last year over his spending on chartered flights."

    And of course people appointed by Trump Administration think it's a duplicate. How convenient... Less money spent in research, more budget available for chartered flights!

  21. Re:So it's not going to be deleted... by Calydor · · Score: 1

    Yes, because we have discovered everything we'll ever need to know about medicine and treatment, and no bad actors are going to put up a revised version on AwezomeHealthCare.com.ru .

    --
    -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
  22. You're a moron, no brother, oh brother! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Your economic paradigm is as simplistic as your support of a traitor who earned so little of his still-exaggerated wealth, Donald Jumpsuit Drumpft, AKA Prisoner SD-4823-001

  23. Re:Slashdot editors are probably not Americans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's so nice when you inbred red state trash faggots come on slashdot to whine. I love it. It reminds me of all the ways we are empirically better than you backwards trash-living inbred traitor supporting faggots in your welfare red states, sucking off the tits of California and New York like bitch puppies destined for a Chinese handbag with Trump's whore daughter's label on it, you actual traitor faggots. #Enjoy Life in Federal, State can wait lol!

  24. so they're not "deleting the database", eh? by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 1

    TFS says they're dropping the URL. Nothing about the database being deleted.

    And then there's TFA, which says that the group that maintains the database are looking for someone else to host it. Again, no suggestion that the database is being deleted.

    So, chill, people. It's not the end of the world. It's not even the end of medical science....

    --

    "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  25. Re:Perhaps you should read the entire article by Cinnamon+Beige · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What I see on Slashdot is an awful lot of non-doctors (myself included) pontificating on this move. Is it really widely used? I don't know. All *I* (and the rest of you) have to go on is the demonstrated value which currently is zero as there are no takers to carry on this data.

    Not a doctor yet, but I am a biomedical nerd and aware of how useful those in the research area tend to consider best practices guidelines--and my first question about this actually was "Why is this not at NIH?"

    The general rule of thumb is that the lag time is too long between where the research says are the medical best practices and what any published list anywhere will say--part of this is because, to put it bluntly, most doctors aren't particularly into research and don't keep up with it. Those best practices databases aren't going to be getting kept up-to-date and current, and I honestly don't think there's a solution for this short of starting from scratch--if nothing else, because each and every entry should have a date on it saying when it was last checked on and it should be routinely gone into to add data. There is no such thing as too much data if you're trying to figure out what works in which populations; the more you have, the more certain you can be...and the more likely you are to be able to pin down which populations that have strange responses, which is pretty much a basic requirement if you want to do anything more than shrug and move on...and it's also a requirement for improving and fine-tuning the evidence.

  26. Re:Apologist Superfaggot Ken Doll here to do that! by q_e_t · · Score: 1

    Personal insults do not help rational debate.

  27. Re:Perhaps you should read the entire article by q_e_t · · Score: 1

    Is it widely used

    It says 200,000 users per month in TFS. That seems pretty significant.

  28. Slashdotted... by spiritplumber · · Score: 1

    ... guess people are backing it up.

    --
    Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
  29. Re:Useless database. AI is better at diagnosis by q_e_t · · Score: 1

    AI is better at diagnostics in certain areas where the classification task is relatively well-defined, but not necessarily general practice, or recommending a course of treatment. At the moment AI is limited to things such as interpreting a scan and asking a question such as "Is this cancer?". This may, and is likely to, change over time, but I wouldn't overstate it. Indeed, I worked on AI with a doctor who was also working in AI on systems that beat humans in some diagnostic tasks over 20 years ago, and then we worked on cancer detection in scans, and also beat humans about 15 years ago, yet we don't have ubiquitous AI in healthcare, as the tasks are not always so clear-cut.

  30. Re:So it's not going to be deleted... by q_e_t · · Score: 1

    You can't necessarily crawl it and put it up elsewhere. If articles in the database were contributed by individuals for the express use for that database and no other purpose then replicating them could be an infringement of copyright. There may be a number of issues like that to be worked out, and apparently this is being looked at.

  31. Re:Compared to what? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I say that knowing that 90%+ of Trump's vote was actually ABC (Anybody But Clinton).

    I really don't get the attitude of "we hate clinton so much we'll vote for someone far worse!".

    I also don't get the hate for Clinton (actually I do). I mean she's basically another poltician and has the same sort of patina that people grudgingly accept on most other politicians. And yet she gets far, far more hate for it. I wonder why...

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  32. Re:Compared to what? by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Informative

    I really don't get the attitude of "we hate clinton so much we'll vote for [anyone else]!".

    I'm not sure very many people have that attitude. The Trump supporters I know actively like him (that's why they're supporters). Everyone I've talked to who voted for him can articulate some reason why they think he is better than Hillary. It's not always a fact-based reason, but they feel like they voted for the best candidate.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  33. Re: VD guidelines by c6gunner · · Score: 1

    lol. That page looks like it was designed by the Time Cube guy.

    I don't think I've ever seen a vitamin-shilling crank on slashdot before. Congrats on breaking new ground!

  34. It's the fault of your dumbarse electoral system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Your current system guarantees nutball vs shithead elections.

    You need a preferential voting system. Only your main parties can field candidates with any chance of winning and thus every vote for an alternative is a lost vote. You need a system where voting for a minority party is not equivalent to putting your vote in the bin.

    Also you need compulsory voting. Your main parties no longer target the middle. They target the extremes. And the extremes DO NOT want to vote for anyone who would compromise with the OTHER guys. Until you force the middle to vote, nobody will want to attract their votes (by being centrist).

    You are destined for the toilet unless you can get some centrists voted in. The only way to do that is to fix your voting system.

    Or just give in and have that series of secessions and/or civil war that seems inevitable at this point.

  35. Obvious solution ... by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

    ... Be rich and/or don't get sick.

    Multiple Choice Quiz
    With regard to healthcare, the current Administration and Majority Party (not to name any names) doesn't really care about anyone: [select all that apply]

    (A) poor
    (B) sick
    (C) both A and B
    (D) all of the above

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  36. Re:You are an aspiring murderer by meglon · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Calling for political violence? You're no better than an actual 1940's Nazi. "Antifa" routinely uses Nazi tactics against nazi's.

    Fixed that for you. NAZI's were enemies of this country, in a war that killed over half a million US service people. ANYONE who defends nazi's or neo-nazi's should be considered enemies of this country. That antifa you whiny bitches complain about.... 70 years ago they were called the US Armed Services. So fuck you you fascist nazi piece of shit. If you hate the US so much, get the fuck out.

    --
    Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  37. Re:Compared to what? by Ichijo · · Score: 2

    Some might say you threw your vote away, but I like how you gave it meaning when it had no chance to affect the outcome of the election. I wish people would vote their conscience more often.

    --
    Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
  38. Re:Compared to what? by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't think it's because she's a woman, if that's what you mean. Remember Sarah Palin? And Obama was, well, you know...

    There were a few iffy things in her past - nothing proven, but mud sticks. She has the charisma of a tepid lettuce. And the whole dynasty thing, though I suspect we ain't seen nothin' yet on that front.

    The survivors in 2050 or so might speak of 1776 as being the First American Revolution.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  39. Re:Apologist Superfaggot Ken Doll here to do that! by meglon · · Score: 1

    True, but sometimes people are so fucking stupid you have to keep reminding them that they are truly fucking idiots. I believe it's part of the social compact that we try to get those with cranial/rectal inversion syndrome to pull their heads out.

    --
    Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  40. Re:Perhaps you should read the entire article by meglon · · Score: 1

    Because BUSINESS needs to make a profit. So you're left with charities many of which are just as anti-science as the fucking idiots in the Trump administration.

    What i think we need to do is let republicans pass all the laws they want, BUT, they one apply to republicans. Want to cut social security... go for it... BUT, those cuts only affect republicans who get SS. Lets see the fucking conservative base have a collective head explode when they realize what fucking assholes they are.

    For this it'd be simply: you vote for this administration, well, sorry.. you don't have to pay for insurance or that pesky ACA.... BUT.... hospitals don't have to treat you unless you're paying cash up front. AND, your debt can't be written off through government subsidies (like they are now). They don't give a shit about anyone else, let them pay up or die.

    As for the value of this database.... YOU are a fucking idiot. I can only hope that someday you are in a position where your life depends on something that you fucking conservatives have fucked up and is no longer there. That's the only way fucking idiots like you seem to learn.

    --
    Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  41. Are you sure homeopathy cures gunshot wounds, doc? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    It's not the servers and all that. it's the data, and especially the quality of the data. That requires people. Trained people.

    Would you trust your life to the database that anyone can edit, and probably did?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  42. Re:Thank god! by meglon · · Score: 2

    Clinton had to fix what Reagan and Bush sr did driving up the debt; Obama had to fix what Bush Jr did basically fucking up everything, crashing the economy and driving up the debt.... he just didn't have enough time; for Trump, it's going to probably take 16-20 years of democrats to fix his fuckups so far, let alone all the shit he's going to fuck up tomorrow.

    This country works much better under Democrats...except for the neo-nazi's and other fascist and bigots, but they all need to go fuck themselves.

    --
    Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  43. Re: Are you sure homeopathy cures gunshot wounds, by c6gunner · · Score: 1

    It's not the servers and all that. it's the data, and especially the quality of the data. That requires people. Trained people.

    Would you trust your life to the database that anyone can edit, and probably did?

    I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but wikis don't actually have to be editable by random anonymous nobodies. This database is already essentially a wiki; one which only medical professionals can contribute to and curate.

    I'm not sure what you think it is that I'm proposing, or how you think it differs from what they currently have, so, just to be clear, the only suggestions I was making was that:

    1. It can't possibly be significantly more expensive to run on a per-user basis than Wikipedia; and
    2. If doctors truly do find this to be a valuable resource then there is absolutely no reason why it couldn't be funded via donations from the users.

    Whatever else you've read into my comment is entirely due to your own imagination.

  44. Re:Compared to what? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Everyone I've talked to who voted for him can articulate some reason why they think he is better than Hillary. It's not always a fact-based reason,

    Well, that's part of the problem. Lots of people here seem to be willing to believe outright lies in order to justify the thought that Trump was less bad than Hillary. The thing is they have an irrational hatred for Hillary and won't vote for her no matter what.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  45. Re:Compared to what? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

    There were a few iffy things in her past - nothing proven, but mud sticks.

    See this is the thing. A lot of people who said "Hillary did X so I'm voting for trump", in most cases Trump did X or worse. Yes there were iffy things in Hillary's past; Trump's past is FULL of iffy things. Hillary wasn't against offshoring; Trump has actively offshored labour. Hillary is in the pocket of big corporations; Trump IS a big corporation (that cuts out the middle man at least).

    And so on.

    so, I think those reasons are not actual reasons but rationalisations.

    Which means there's an underlying reason.

    And the whole dynasty thing, though I suspect we ain't seen nothin' yet on that front.

    that is a problem in American politics for sure.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  46. Re: Compared to what? by datavirtue · · Score: 1

    Bernie. Yet another sad possible outcome.

    --
    I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
  47. Re:Compared to what? by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

    What you say is true. The way they go on about Benghazi you'd think she was on sentry duty. But she somehow failed to win people over on those issues. A lawyer who can't defend herself, FFS! Maybe she was just too old, by about 8 years.

    The way the primary (I almost wrote primatary - Freudian slip?) was biased against Bernie probably turned some natural Dems against her too.

    300 million people and those two were the least bad they could find? Then again, Boris ...

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  48. Re:Apologist Superfaggot Ken Doll here to do that! by q_e_t · · Score: 1

    It doesn't seem like an excuse for rudeness to me. I do my best not to be.

  49. Re: Are you sure homeopathy cures gunshot wounds, by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    Which part of "trained people" did you fail to understand?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  50. Re: Are you sure homeopathy cures gunshot wounds, by c6gunner · · Score: 1

    You know the part where you're saying stuff which has nothing to do with what I said? Yeah, that bit.

  51. Re:Compared to what? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

    What you say is true. The way they go on about Benghazi you'd think she was on sentry duty. But she somehow failed to win people over on those issues. A lawyer who can't defend herself, FFS!

    Of the things that made a difference, I think there are a whole pile of reasons.

    Some of it was flat out anti-estblishmentism (Trump isn't from the political establishment, though one could argue the buisness establishment is awfully close). Likewise there was an anti-dynastic element.

    Some of it is some people will never accept Hillary no matter what (irrational dislike).

    Some people were pissed at not getting Bernie and through a tantrum voting "anything but democrat" no matter how bad.

    The late announcements by the FBI didn't help.

    Trump is solidly populist and those unachievable, simplistic promises go down well when people feel things aren't going great (the wage stagnation, for example)---Hillary didn't offer any easy, simple and wrong solutions.

    And finally there's the odd historical artifact of how the US president is actually selected from the votes.

    Maybe she was just too old, by about 8 years.

    Though Trump is a couple of years older.

    The way the primary (I almost wrote primatary - Freudian slip?) was biased against Bernie probably turned some natural Dems against her too.

    Yep. There's a pretty common out and out stupidity in some voters (equally present in the UK) which is if people don't get what they want they throw some sort of tantrum and vote massively against what they want in general just out of spite.

    Thing is though the Democrat party (and it's the party not overall voters who select the candidate of course) was biased against Bernie since he's not a Democrat. I think the claims of unfair process however are fairly overblown partly by the irrational "never hillary" crowd which infests both sides of the political divide.

    And Sanders is even older!

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  52. Re:So it's not going to be deleted... by kenh · · Score: 1

    AHRQ said it's looking for a partner that can carry on the work of NGC, but that effort hasn't panned out yet.

    So it's a vitally important and singularly useful repository of medical information, but NO ONE wants to take it over?

    If only a fraction of the energy invested in bashing the current administration for closing the resource went towards creating a new home for this repository there'd be no issue - but what's the fun in that?

    --
    Ken
  53. Re:So it's not going to be deleted... by kenh · · Score: 1

    Explain this quote from the summary:

    AHRQ said it's looking for a partner that can carry on the work of NGC, but that effort hasn't panned out yet.

    It's simultaneously a vital, important resource garnering 200K hits/month AND unappealing to anyone in the private sector to take it over?

    --
    Ken
  54. Re:So what? not really needed and this was well kn by paazin · · Score: 1
    Clearly physicians care about it:

    "Killing these resources to save a few hundred thousand dollars per year is a penny-wise, pound-foolish decision, and your health and mine will be poorer for it," said Dr. Kenny Lin, a family physician in Washington, D.C., who is also on the faculty at Georgetown University's medical school.

    Dr. Roy Poses, a Brown University professor of medicine and president of the Foundation for Integrity and Responsibility in Medicine, said doctors "will be losing an important resource for research, education and evidence-based practice."

    The prior politicization of the NGC is also somewhat notable:

    Underscoring how medical research like that maintained by the NGC can be politicized, AHRQ drew the ire of then-congressmember Tom Price in 2016 when it published a study critical of a drug manufactured by one of his campaign donors. According to ProPublica, one of Price's aides emailed "at least half a dozen times" asking the agency to pull the critical research down.

  55. Re:Thank god! by mark_reh · · Score: 1

    So your solution is a dictator who lies almost every time he opens his mouth, and makes the US look bad to the rest of the world? You think that starting fires and bomb throwing is great, but it doesn't make trump look like he's smart or the US is great. It makes us look stupid for allowing the Russians to manipulate people like you into voting for him. In your house, a gun and a bible verse may solve all problems, but the world is more complicated than that, in spite of what the Russians, your church leaders, the NRA, and Fox(aux) News want you to believe.

    I wonder if you'll still support him when he has taken away your health insurance and his trade wars have caused your crop prices to fall...

  56. Re:Apologist Superfaggot Ken Doll here to do that! by meglon · · Score: 1

    As you get older you start to realize that sometimes for someone to take notice you have to be a bit more rude than you should have to be. That's kinda where i'm at, although i do have to admit, i absolutely hate liars (which a lot of the conservative commentators on this site continually do bringing up debunked bullshit that they get from fauxnews and Hannity the neo-nazi sympathizer https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/...) and i hate nazi's (again, a number of right wing commentators on here seem to follow that line of politics, and lets e honest, if you defend war time Hitler, you're a nazi plain and simple).

    So, while it's sad and unfortunate that that such language has to be used, some wothless shits can't seem to understand anything else. Of course, those shits then seem to complain a lot... almost like they want people to be "more PC" to them all the while being absolute shits to other people. So eventually you get old and start saying "fuck the nazi sympathizers."

    --
    Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  57. Re:Compared to what? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

    Well you have provided an excellent illustration ot my point that many Trump supporters are delusional.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  58. Re:Compared to what? by Daemonik · · Score: 1

    ..biased against Bernie..

    Uh, yes, who would imagine a political party that was against being hijacked by an independent who was blatantly using you for the votes over a candidate who actually supported the party? Bernie Bros need to get over that, make a Bernie party and then see how popular your guy is, stop whining that the Dems didn't like you poaching their voters when they already had a candidate.

  59. How much time... by archer,+the · · Score: 1

    Just because it's doctors that access it, doesn't mean they are the only ones who benefit from it. Anyone living in the US will probably benefit from it at some point in his or her life.

    If we were to "charitize" all government services, how much time would it take to donate to all of the various organizations that would be created if we got rid of government? Would you remember all of those organizations? Or would you forget some, or just say "I've spent a week donating to charities. There must be some better way..." I have a hard time just tracking 5 charities. Imagine if that were 500?
      - various medical research programs
      - various tech research programs
      - various energy research programs
      - various military research programs
      - various infrastructure maintenance programs
      - general military support
      - general law and order support
      - legislation
      - trade regulation
      - weather monitoring
      - communications regulation
      - environmental regulation
    and that's just the stuff that comes to mind quickly.

    Yes, there are bad parts of our government. Getting rid of it will create even bigger problems.

  60. Re:So it's not going to be deleted... by Calydor · · Score: 1

    I'm guessing AHRQ said "No ads or tracking cookies allowed." and no one in the private sector wanted anything to do with it after that.

    --
    -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
  61. Voting by the numbers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Using the majority is useless. In 2016, 65,853,514 votes were cast for Clinton. Trump received 62,984,828 votes. There were 2,868,686 more votes cast for Clinton than Trump, enough to fill a football stadium with 57,373 people in each of the 50 States.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016

    While 39.6% of the total population of the United States voted for either of these candidates (65,853,514+62,984,828)/325,700,000 (est), there were actually 250,056,000 (est) people of voting age population (VAP). That means among eligible voters, (65,853,514+62,984,828)/250,056,000 or 51.5% actually voted. However, that leaves 48.5% of voters on the sidelines.

    There are two simple things that we could do to resolve both voter apathy and make the electoral college more representative. First, require all eligible voters to vote as they do in Australia. There is a financial penalty for not voting.

    Second, increase the number of representatives to 900. This would also affect the electoral college, has been done many times in the past, is constitutional, and addresses an imbalance in both State apportionment for national elections and Gerrymandering within each State. This would require the repeal of the Apportionment Act of 1911.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_House_of_Representatives

    Both of these remedies would be opposed by Republicans as they depend on voter apathy and disproportionate representation to win elections.

    1. Re:Voting by the numbers by cas2000 · · Score: 2

      > First, require all eligible voters to vote as they do in Australia.
      > There is a financial penalty for not voting.

      Yes, there's a fine for not voting here. It's only ever paid by those too stupid to tick the "I was too sick to vote" box on the "Why didn't you vote?" form you get sent - i.e. almost nobody.

      This might seem pointless, but it has the effect of making not-voting almost as much work as voting. Actually, an equivalent amount of work since it's trivially easy to ask for a postal ballot so you can vote by mail. It also reminds you that it's your duty as a citizen of a democracy to get off your fucking arse and vote - it's less than an hour once every few years.

      Every electorate here has polling booths in local schools and town halls and other places anyway, so even voting in person rarely takes more than half an hour or so. On a Saturday (not a fucking Tuesday - which disenfranchises many workers). Voting is open all day up to 6pm. Or you can vote early at your local town hall or by post.

      Both early voting and postal votes are still anonymous, your vote is inside a sealed envelope which is inside another sealed envelope with your name on it (matching your electoral enrolment). When the votes are tallied, the external envelope is checked to make sure it's a valid enrolment and to prevent multiple-voting, and the internal envelope is added - unopened - to the pile of votes to be counted.

      and if you don't like any of the candidates you can always invalidate your ballot (i.e. vote "informal") by writing some "fuck you all" or some shit on it.

      The ballot papers are randomised so that nobody gets the advantage of being the first on the ballot paper - some fuckwits just vote 1 2 3 4 5 ... in order down the page. AKA donkey voting

      BTW, our last federal election was an anomaly with much lower voter turnout than usual (about 9% didn't vote), but Australia routinely gets 95+% voter turnout in every election.

  62. Re:So what? not really needed and this was well kn by magzteel · · Score: 1

    This was announced officially back in April.

    Back in February the HHS, which runs the office which runs this, released its budget request for the upcoming year. In it, they identified this as being duplicated in other governmental agencies and requested money to transfer the duties and money to different offices or agencies.

    The office than in April decided to kill this database even before any of that request to kill it off was approved by Congress and divert the money they were spending on it to something else.

    The article being linked to is yet another worthless opinion piece being passed off as actual journalism. The truth is no one really cares about this database and given four months for someone to come forward take it over no one has. The only reason it is being posted here is as a political hit piece.

    Thanks for an informed and interesting comment

  63. Re:Compared to what? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Very true:

    Hillary told lies so I voted for an much bigger liar. My point exactly.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  64. Re:So what? not really needed and this was well kn by will_die · · Score: 1

    That that might be shown in the February request for funding. However, none of that is in effect and would not be until next years funding.
    It looks like it is a duplicate because no one is wanting it.

  65. That's it! by Billy+the+Mountain · · Score: 1

    Next time Trump goes to the doctor he's getting leaches!

    --
    That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
  66. The site is really slow by MobyDisk · · Score: 1

    I am browsing the site just to see what is on it. It is really really slow. Was it always like this? I wonder if various groups are hitting it en-mass to download the articles. There's only 2 days before it goes down. If it is really so valuable, I am surprised they aren't selling it. Hopefully someone in the medical field will chime-in here.

  67. What I find especially funny by rsilvergun · · Score: 2

    about "fiscal conservatives" is while claiming people will take that extra 25% and solve the world's problems they simultaneously believe that raising wages (especially the minimum) is pointless because prices will just go up.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  68. Re:Perhaps you should read the entire article by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    An insurance company makes more of a profit the less it spends, if the database were valuable that's why a group of insurance companies would maintain it - to lower cost of care. Again as I said to store the data would be absurdly cheap, compared to the return any medical group would get form the data... IF IT WERE ACTUALLY VALUABLE DATA.

    But then I guess you and other Slashdot readers are either too stupid or blinded by hate to take just one step beyond the first one in analyzing what is going on here.

    Truly I am t he one-eyed man in the land of the blind... that's the last response I have on the subject since none of you can seem to follow the most basic logic anymore. Sad.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  69. Found the government employee by raymorris · · Score: 1

    > . Web protocols and web browsers change.

    Yeah the http (web) protocol has changed as follows:

    1991 0.9
    1990 1.0
    1997 1.1
    2015 2.0

    Yeah, every five years or so you need to run "yum update http" in order to support the latest version of the web protocol.

    > The data needs to have search requests and transmissions encrypted because it can be packet sniffed

    We charge $15 for a TLS cert and $25 to set it up. We suggest getting a 3-year cert, so that comes to $20/year.

    The summary says 200,000 visitors per month. Guesstimate 10 pages deep, so 2 million pages. One VM with 1GB RAM running Apache can serve about 150 requests per second of static content. If your joining database tables, get 2-4GB of RAM and call it 100 rps. 100 requests per second is 260 million pages per month, so about 100 times as much as you need.

    > These "small servers" are not free

    Right, they are $120 for managed hosting of a dedicated server.
    https://www.hostgator.com/dedi...

    The $20 VPS would probably be sufficient for only 200,000 visitors, but let's over-engineer by two orders of magnitude and get a managed dedicated server.

  70. Re: How about cloning the database? by kenh · · Score: 1

    The amazing thing in the summary is that NO ONE wants to take it over. They get 200K hits/month for a hand-curated list of research available elsewhere on the web. Sounds labor intensive and not very profitable.

    --
    Ken
  71. Re:How about cloning the database? by Joce640k · · Score: 1

    Since the subject is a database, can't you guys organize a 'database download and cloning' party instead of name-calling on slashdot?

    Luckily for us they gave a couple of months warning and put the web site source code and multi-terabyte SQL file on an FTP server so we could get ourselves organized and make sure we don't miss anything.

    Oh, wait... my bad! They're just going to unplug the server a couple of days from now.

    --
    No sig today...
  72. The electoral college did what it was supposed to by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    it elected the more pro-business, pro-oligarch candidate.

    Hilary one 48% to 46%. Almost 3 million more people vote for her. The fact that we still end up with Trump shows how unfair things are in America. A voter in, say, Montana has around 46 times more voting power than one in California.

    Again, this is by design. When the constitution was drawn up the wealthy's interests were aligned with rural voters. So our government was specifically built to give them more power. As time went on it became easier to mange those rural voters and control their voting. Easier to keep the wrong ones from voting (e.g. voter suppression). Easier to gerrymander their districts (fewer people to fight back and with less money to do it) and easier to blitz their media (mostly talk radio and TV).

    If we had a functioning democracy Hilary would have won. Hell, if we had a functioning democracy _Bernie_ would have won (thanks, Democrat Super Delegates).

    The left wing of the Democratic party is trying to kill super delegates. If it works then Trump won't have a second term. If it fails they'll bury Bernie in the next primary and say hello to Trump term 2. You do not want this. Look into his fiscal policy and compare it to the run up to the 2008 crash. We are all screwed if he gets a second term.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  73. I should add by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    my other fav contradiction is that they like to claim that raising minimum wage will cause prices to spiral out of control while also arguing that the only people who earn min wage are high/college school kids doing it for videogame/beer money and bored retirees.

    So which is it? Are Minimum Wage employees the bedrock of our economy without whose sacrifice at the alter of capital inflation goes crazy or are they a bunch of kids and bored retirees who hardly matter? It can't be both.

    You'd be amazed at the convoluted logic I hear trying to justify _why_ it's both when I point this out to the "fiscal conservative" crowd...

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  74. Re:Apologist Superfaggot Ken Doll here to do that! by q_e_t · · Score: 1

    I'm old enough. Disliking a person shouldn't be the default response because you dislike their views. Sometimes people have particular views but can be persuaded to change them. Not that I am going to claim that there is an objectively good set of views as to some extent they stem from the set of principles which you hold dear.

  75. Re: You are an aspiring murderer by meglon · · Score: 1

    Fuck NAZI's, fuck NAZI apologists, and fuck NAZI sympathizers.

    --
    Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  76. Re: Perhaps you should read the entire article by dargaud · · Score: 1

    Which is why I think, in every country with socialized medicine, there should be a feedback mechanism: you go to the doctor and at the end you get a receipt with a code, some time later, maybe more than once, you receive an email that simply asks you if the treatment was effective. Simple yes or no answer, with possibly bonus questions about side effects etc... It would be invaluable to find useless drugs, side effects, bad doctors, groups of people with different drug reactions than others, etc... And if you never answer you get a blame or something; I mean, at least you give something back this way.

    --
    Non-Linux Penguins ?
  77. Re: Are you sure homeopathy cures gunshot wounds, by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    The userd are the doctors!!!!
    Why the fuck should they fund something that either should be funded by the patients, their health insurance or their government? For what actually are you paying taxes?

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  78. Gerrymandering has almost ZERO impact by mpercy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Gerrymandering has almost ZERO impact on US Presidential elections.

    Unless one considers state borders to be gerrymandered. Because 48 states use a winner-takes-all method for allocating electoral college votes. That is, the person receiving the most presidential votes within a state gets all the EC votes from the state. Maine and Nebraska have different rules that are impacted somewhat by district lines, but they have so few districts that its hard to figured gerrymandering has much impact. Maine has all of two districts, with Augusta and Portland and the section of the state between them comprising one district, and the rest of Maine the other, and Nebraska has 3 and their map is hardly what I'd consider gerrymandered, with the tow countries comprising Omaha in one, the suburbs of Omaha in another, and the rest of the state comprising the 3rd.

    Further, gerrymandering does not impact Senate seats either. Senate seats are at-large within each state (no districts, only state borders).

    Gerrymandering does impact the House of Representatives. It also impacts State legislature seats.

    But please stop throwing gerrymandering around as a problem for Presidential elections...

    1. Re:Gerrymandering has almost ZERO impact by apoc.famine · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You are absolutely incorrect. I can understand why it doesn't seem like it could impact national elections, but it absolutely does.

      Gerrymandering has allowed mostly republicans to hold onto state legislative majorities while receiving far less than half the vote. In 2012 in Wisconsin, Democrats won 52% of the aggregate vote but only 39% of the seats in the Assembly.

      That majority in state legislature has allowed republicans to install laws designed to prevent voting, which disproportionately impacts democratic voters. If likely democratic voters aren't allowed to vote at all, national elections are absolutely impacted by gerrymandering.

      As a great example, look at Wisconsin. While I know Mother Jones isn't necessarily a great source, feel free to click through and listen to the interview where Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel says:

      How many of your listeners really honestly are sure that Sen. Johnson was going to win reelection or President Trump was going to win Wisconsin if we didn’t have voter ID to keep Wisconsin’s elections clean and honest and have integrity?

      It should be noted that you can count the voter fraud convictions in WI over the last decade on one hand. "if we didn’t have voter ID to keep Wisconsin’s elections clean and honest" is absolutely saying, "if we didn't have Voter ID to keep democrats, especially blacks, from voting".

      23k-45k voters are estimated to have not been able to vote due to the voter ID law. Trump won the state by 22k votes.

      If the state wasn't gerrymandered, that law wouldn't have passed, and those people would have voted. The supreme court has decided to pass on this lawsuit, because apparently the democrats didn't have standing? Apparently it will take someone losing a gerrymandered district to sue, and then proving that it was the gerrymandering that caused it. I.E., gerrymandering by political parties is fine according to the supreme court. That's fucked up, and pretty undemocratic.

      But we got a supreme court that thinks this way in part due to gerrymandering. How's that for full circle?

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
    2. Re:Gerrymandering has almost ZERO impact by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      They could easily help people get voter ids, paying for bus fare or whatever.

      It is unconstitutional to require someone to pay a fee to vote.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  79. Electoral College magic trick... by mpercy · · Score: 1

    California passes legislation that allows the governor to simply appoint the state's electors. Perfectly Constitutional..."Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors,..."

    Had this been in effect this election, we can assume Jerry Brown would have appointed 55 Democrats for Sec. Clinton.

    The EC remains unchanged, but the "popular vote" swings to Trump by about 1M. Without popular votes from California, Sec. Clinton would have 8.7M fewer popular votes and Mr. Trump would have 4.4M fewer popular votes. So the final tally would be Clinton with 57M and Trump with 58.5M.

    I notice that Democrats have no problems with Sec. Clinton winning only 3/5ths of the California vote but getting 100% of the 55 of the state's electoral votes...

  80. False dichotomy by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You're suggesting a strong social safety net with guarantees of healthcare, food and shelter would result in miserable and isolated people. As if people can only make friends if they're in a constant state of desperation. No matter what you saw in a jug band once poverty does not bring people together. Money is the #1 cause of divorce you know? People can be economically secure and happy.

    San Fransicso's problem is that it's stuffed with people who don't want to live there but do so because that's where the work is. They're unhappy because the city is a bad fit for them, but when you've got no social safety you can't take risks like moving to a smaller city with less job opportunities and worse schools for your kids. So you suck it down. For the people who _want_ to live in San Fransisco it's a paradise and they'd never leave.

    Basic income's a great way to solve this. People could live where they want to instead of where they have to to find work. Also, it would be a nice way to distribute the productivity gains from the last 40 years (which have doubled).

    Or we could do your way and keep giving all the gains to the rich plus a huge chunk of what the working class already has. That's what we've been doing for 40 years. How's that turning out for you, Mr takes time out of their day to post a bitter rant on /.?

    --
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    1. Re:False dichotomy by iMadeGhostzilla · · Score: 2

      Just because I consider far left views harmful it doesn't mean I am on the opposite side. I am against big corporations as much as I am against big government. What I consider harmful in the far left is not the humanity of it, on the contrary any decent social system has an obligation to protect the weak. What I'm arguing against is the left's worldview of what I see as a blind faith in pseudo science and "experts" and mental models -- something I've grappled with in myself for much of my life. Applied beyond its usefulness I believe such worldview leads to misery inside.

      All that said, I wrote the post as I felt for your situation and know that anyone can find themselves in it. I reasoned that by pointing out that there may be some good sides of living in the redneck country which may be taken for granted, it might serve to lessen the suffering. Of course that never works.

  81. if it's that important, scrape it by reanjr · · Score: 2

    Is there anything stopping somebody from just downloading everything and hosting a mirror?

  82. Re:Compared to what? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

    Well; thankyou for proving my point:

    We were tired of the constant parade of identity politics being shoved down our throats

    So tired of it that you voted for the guy who does that more than anyone.

    We were tired of politicians who supported offshoring everything, resulting in the destruction of the middle class.

    So you decided to vote for someone who not only supports it but actively does it.

    We were tired of politicians who put the interests of other countries and peoples ahead of ours.

    So you decided to vote for the guy who only puts his own interests first.

    Trump ran a platform against all of that.

    If you looked at any of his actions you'd know he wasn't against any of that he active is all that. The only reason you refused to acknowledge that was because you have an irrational dislike of Hillary (only one reason I can think of) and want to rationalise your decision to vote for Trump.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  83. Re: Perhaps you should read the entire article by Cinnamon+Beige · · Score: 1

    Which is why I think, in every country with socialized medicine, there should be a feedback mechanism: you go to the doctor and at the end you get a receipt with a code, some time later, maybe more than once, you receive an email that simply asks you if the treatment was effective. Simple yes or no answer, with possibly bonus questions about side effects etc... It would be invaluable to find useless drugs, side effects, bad doctors, groups of people with different drug reactions than others, etc... And if you never answer you get a blame or something; I mean, at least you give something back this way.

    Well, you'd also need to randomly ask the doctors, too, to control for some patients confusing 'effective' for 'functioning potion of cure-everything.'

    Overall, though, improvements in study design protocols would go a long way here too--within-subjects designs will give you good data even if you've got a total sample of one person, though this will limit your ability to generalize the results since the rule of thumb is that your sample must represent the population it's supposed to be from. (Yes, this means representation is incredibly important: A sample made up of White male college students can only tell you about White male college students. Not bad if you mostly are trying to show that your experiment can be done in the first place, but very bad if you want to directly apply the results to, say, elderly African-American grandmothers.)

    However, it's a lot faster and easier to run between-subjects studies, because those designs are a lot simpler. For the same reasons, there's quite a bit of research where the sample is quite representative...of the population who might pass through a particular hallway at the local university, or other strangely specific populations. This also is a reason some studies' results are not replicable--different population is different.

  84. Good. by sproketboy · · Score: 1

    moar dead humans.

  85. Re:Compared to what? by Agripa · · Score: 1

    Lots of people here seem to be willing to believe outright lies in order to justify the thought that Trump was less bad than Hillary. The thing is they have an irrational hatred for Hillary and won't vote for her no matter what.

    I will just pick one thing; unless you want to argue that the FBI lied, all it took for me was reading the FBI report about the death of Vince Foster.

  86. Re:It's the fault of your dumbarse electoral syste by pnutjam · · Score: 1

    No mod points, but this is spot on. Compulsory voting and an amendment that money does not equal speech and corporations do not have rights as people.

  87. Re:Compared to what? by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

    Though Trump is a couple of years older.

    Not what I meant and you know it. Compare her to when she ran against Obama. Can't you see the difference? She's clearly past her prime.

    Same with McCain. I think he'd have been better than Shrub, but when he ran with Palin he just looked kind of frail. Then again maybe it was being around her...

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  88. Re:How about cloning the database? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    Oh, wait... my bad! They're just going to unplug the server a couple of days from now.

    I'm sure blockchains will come to the rescue.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  89. Re:Compared to what? by Jason+Levine · · Score: 2

    The Republicans have been building a hatred for Hillary Clinton since 1993 when he took office. The 2016 elections were over two decades of hatred erupting. You can see it how they still go on about Hillary even after she hasn't been in or running for public office for 20 months. They will STILL go on about her supposed crimes and how horrible she is. They turned her into a boogeyman (boogeywoman?) representing all evil in the world. Now that she's gone from public life, they need someone else to focus their hate on. Yes, they can direct hatred at Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, or Elizabeth Warren, but it's not the same as the hatred they've had for over 20 years.

    --
    My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  90. Re:Compared to what? by Jason+Levine · · Score: 2

    Hillary and Trump really represented two opposite types of people. Hillary loved getting into the details on policy and learning everything about it. Her problem here, though, was that she wasn't really good at boiling that policy knowledge down to catchy statements and energizing speeches. "Read my twenty page policy proposal on Immigration on my website" doesn't exactly draw crowds to the voting booth.

    Trump, on the other hand, has zero knowledge of policy and no desire to learn. He seems to go based on whatever pops into his head at that moment or whatever someone told him last. However, much as I hate him I've got to admit that he seems to know how to fire up a crowd. He might not know how to deal with the complex immigration issues, but he can shout "Build that wall" and get people cheering for him.

    This election was between no flash/all substance and no substance/all flash. Flash won and substance lost. Yes, this is a huge simplification, but I think this was a big part of it. Trump actually won by about 77,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Had just over half of those votes gone to Hillary instead of Trump, she would be President now. Had Hillary been able to resonate more with those people, she might have won the election. Sadly, this isn't the only instance. All too often, Americans seem to go for a flashy option even if the "more boring" option is better in other ways.

    --
    My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  91. Re: Are you sure homeopathy cures gunshot wounds, by Jason+Levine · · Score: 1

    Fine. Random people can't edit it, but could drug companies? Could a company looking to push Drug X as a treatment for Condition Y give a big donation and have the Condition Y page edited to say that Drug X should be used? Alternatively, could a group of page editors, set in their ways, keep control over Condition Y's page and keep any new treatments from being listed because they think Drug X is the best and that's how they always treated it? (Much like Wikipedia has some editors that control pages and will refuse to change those pages even when confronted with actual experts.)

    --
    My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  92. Re:Thank god! by Jason+Levine · · Score: 1

    And the problem is always that, as the Democrats clean up the messes the Republicans left behind, they sometimes have to make some unpopular moves to tidy things up. Then the Republicans come in blaming the Democrats for the mess and claiming that they aren't fixing it right. People - who tend to have short memories - then blame the Democrats and vote Republican. The Republicans take office and mess things up again. And thus the pattern repeats. The Political Circle of Life.

    --
    My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  93. Can someone explain this to me? by Miser · · Score: 1

    Subject about says it all. Can someone explain this to me? What in the FUCK would you remove this treasure trove of information that doctors use? What possible reason could they use that could even be REMOTELY valid?