I agree with the previous poster. A framework in nothing but a tool. You are free to use any framework you want, or build your own. If you want a web framework for Ruby, for example, you can use Rails, or Merb, or Sinatra, or any of a number of others... or make your own.
I think the whole point of the thread is that things like app stores are the opposite. They filter what choices you get, based on arbitrary criteria set by the store owner. This will, almost by definition, inhibit innovation in some areas.
So, frankly, I think your mention of frameworks is pretty much off-topic.
In the general case, I was right. Conspiracy does require an overt act. See the general law (as referenced by Shabani: U.S.C. Â 371.
It is only matters of conspiracy to distribute illegal drugs that this explicit exception (i.e., U.S.C. Â 846) applies to.
Why Congress saw fit to make this explicit exception, I do not know. But it does not apply to the general case, as the court itself said in Shabani, as you can see if you read just a bit more carefully.
"If that was the case there'd be no need for a specific offense of conspiracy, since you'd be committing the main offense."
Not even remotely. You haven't robbed any bank! You only engaged in an act that proved conspiracy to rob a bank. They are not even close to the same things.
"The Supreme Court appear to agree - see United States v. Shabani."
Perhaps they did, but they used completely circular reasoning in order to do so.
If one is not guilty of "conspiracy" unless one commits an overt act, then the statute is not violated. But if one need not commit an overt act in order to commit "conspiracy", then the statute would hold in the case of Shabani.
This is a matter of changing the definition of "conspiracy", not of interpreting the law. And frankly, it is a bad decision, because it runs smack up against the First Amendment.
"He's already violated several conditions of the Computer Fraud and Abuse act..."
Probably not.
If I am not mistaken, actually being guilty of CFAA requires intent. He says he discovered the hack accidentally. Since I discovered a similar thing some years ago, I see how that can happen.
Also, chatting about something does not constitute "conspiracy". Contrary to popular belief, conspiracy requires you to commit actual physical acts intended to carry out your plan. You can talk with your poker buddies about robbing some bank for 10 years, draw up floor plans, and more... but until somebody saws off a shotgun or gets in a car to go do it, you haven't committed any crimes; you've only been playing a child's game.
By "other sources" I meant like Wikileaks, etc. But hey... if the "authorities" hassle him over something that is clearly an act that benefits society as a whole, then give the damned thing to Anonymous. Who cares?
Some years ago I was in a similar position, having discovered accidentally that there was a severe security hole in a bank's online banking system. I mean to the extent that I could get anybody's information, bank, personal, and otherwise off of any computer they had used to access it. Really bad.
The first thing I did was call the bank, and explain what the problem was, and that I would like to talk to their programmers about this. They connected me to the programmers, and I told them all about it. They agreed, "Yes, that is a pretty bad problem. We'll fix it right away."
Months go by, and nothing had changed. I contacted the bank again, and talked to one of the many "Vice Presidents", who assured me that it was being taken care of. Etc.
This went on and on. I finally threatened to go to the press with my story if they didn't get their act together. If I recall correctly, it was a year and a half before they actually fixed it. Totally unethical. I can think of about 3 or 4 ways, if I had been a dishonest person, that I could have cleaned out hundreds of people's accounts in the meantime. Not only that, but I would also have their names, addresses, telephone numbers, and more.
I disagree completely. Since presumably the hack itself is a process, not a piece of data, he can "leak" this information to other sources who will notify the authorities or make it public... I dare say based on the response that is received.
While I agree that he may have placed himself in jeopardy, there are ways he can get this information out without divulging his identity. And that would be the ethical thing to do, despite the laws.
Apologies for the long responses, but (at least in this case) there were quite a few documents to link to.
But I can summarize my overall point in few words:
For whatever reason, a lot of people have been going out of their way to characterize Dr. Burzynski as some kind of charlatan, and they point to a lot of vague, indirect evidence to support their claims.
But the actual, direct, hard evidence (which of course they never seem to reference) tells a far different story.
Well, I will respond this one more time, too. I happen to have found some actual documented evidence that supports Dr. Burzynski's position.
Do you know what "confirmation bias" is?
You link to some unnamed person's blog as evidence? And decide to stop there? Didn't you notice anything strange? I had more to say about the blog but I'm going to skip it. There are far more interesting things going on here than some bureaucratic warning about what amounts to a paperwork snafu, that wasn't even addressed to the clinic itself anyway.
"There were 61 protocols on www.clinicaltrials.gov, with only 5 publications."
And I have already pointed out why those studies take years to complete, and why some of those were either withdrawn or terminated early for lack of enrollment. You can hardly count those. Seriously. You are blaming him for the circumstances he is working under. I repeat: compare the studies he is involved in with others on the same site. Apparently you didn't bother.
"Incidentally, peer-review does not examine the possibility of fraud, it only examines the quality of the paper and method listed. He could have completely made it up, (people have) and it could still pass peer-review. "
Now you're just being an ass. YOU brought up the subject of no peer-reviewed papers, and now that you have been shown to be wrong, you say it doesn't matter. R-i-g-h-t. Sure.
At least tell me this: did you even notice that your earlier source, and this one, give two completely different reasons for the termination of that trial? I did. Somebody is lying. I followed that up. And as it turns out, the story is pretty interesting. And according to the evidence, the liar isn't Burzynski.
"Further, the writer mentions he has never, in 36 years of clinical science, seen a clinical trial that requires payment."
Really? How surprising. Tell me this as well: in his 36 years, has he also seen many doctors who are supporting their research on their own budget? Rather than grants from government or some Big Pharma company with a billion-dollar budget? Even one? Since when is it a crime to try to pay your bills?
Seriously, you need to look at real evidence. That study you linked to earlier? The one involving NCI, and Mayo, and Sloan-Kettering? I have linked to some actual documentation below. Not just some detractor's blog. I honestly don't know what it costs to synthesize the chemicals that Burzynski uses, but he mentions costs of over 2 million dollars related to that study (they were getting the medicines from him). Where the hell is that money supposed to come from? According to the documents, NCI hadn't paid Burzynski for the supplies, as it had agreed to.
I'm not defending the numbers. I don't know where they come from. But they are in a letter that was evidence in a court case, and openly published. That's more than I can say for the NCI and what it has seen fit to make public.
And just as an aside, HERE is that page I mentioned earlier, that lists the 11 current government-approved Phase II clinical trials that Burzynski has going on. On his own budget, not some big grant.
Anyway, how about some facts about that study you cited earlier, supported by actual documentation? Turns out things aren't exactly as NCI and Mayo or Sloan-Kettering claim. While Burzynski has had to cancel trials for lack of enrollment, their trial sure as hell wasn't terminated for "lack of enrollment", even though that's what they claim. That is a complete fabrication and your own source above verifies that. Didn't that bother you?
Further, when NCI altered the protocol and Burzynski feared for the health of the participants, he volunteered to treat the patients for free until the NCI could get its shit together. NCI refused.
"No randomized, controlled trials showing the effectiveness of antineoplastons have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals."
This may be true, but it is also disingenuous. I have already discussed the situation involving randomized trials, and why that doesn't apply at this stage of the research.
However, papers that do not involve randomized trials have been published in peer-reviewed journals. And I, too, spent only a few minutes finding some. Among them are Physiological Chemistry and Physics, (1977) 9(6):485-500, and Drugs under Experimental and Clinical Research. The latter is no longer in business; they ceased publication in 2005. But here is an abstract from one of the papers:
Drugs Exp Clin Res (1990) 16(7):361-9
Successful treatment of advanced cancer of the prostate which no longer responds to hormonal manipulation continues to be a difficult task. The present study describes the results of treatment of the first fourteen patients in Phase II clinical trials with Antineoplaston AS2-1 (AS) and low-dose diethylstilbestrol (DES). The study involved thirteen patients diagnosed with stage IV and one patient with stage II adenocarcinoma of the prostate. The ages of the patients were between 54 and 88. The previous therapy included prostatectomy, orchiectomy, radiation therapy and treatment with DES, LHRH agonist (LH), flutamide (FL), aminoglutethimide and immunotherapy. After initial response to such treatments, the disease continued to progress. The majority of patients showed progression of the disease after treatment with LH and FL. The current treatment program consisted of administration of AS and DES. The treatment was given orally daily. The majority of patients received from 97 to 130 mg/kg/24 h of AS and from 0.01 to 0.02 mg/kg/24 h of DES. The treatment was administered from 64 to 425 days and was free from significant side effects due to AS. The dose of DES was lower than usual, and only some patients experienced mild side effects typical for DES. Only two patients showed progression of the disease. Complete remission was obtained in two patients and partial remission in three patients. Stabilization of the disease with objective improvement was determined in seven patients. The first patient enrolled in the program has been in complete remission for 17 months and off the treatment for 16 months.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
I would also like to point out that it is disingenuous, too, to point at possible side-effects from Burzynski's treatments that are anything less than fatal, because context has to be kept in mind: the "standard" treatment for cancers of the aggressive and lethal kind that Burzynski is attempted to treat consists of very aggressive chemo and radiation therapy, and many patients actually die of the treatment rather than the disease, or end up with lifelong debilitating conditions from the treatment alone. This should be taken into account when making comparisons.
"But if you say you are not using SSDs on your desktop or laptop because you don't want to risk losing your data, all that means is you don't value your data enough to back it up, because if you were backing it up, that wouldn't be a concern.:p"
Here is my actual rationale, which is really more one of costs than risk:
If I put in an SSD now, I would convert my existing drive to a data-storage-only role. So I am figuring the amount of money it would require for me to shop for and purchase a new drive, then install an OS and all my development tools, and copy my data. That is at least a day, probably more like 2 (I have a very large number of apps installed, largely for development). Not just the money for the drive, but also the work time lost, which is also money. Plus the potential of the following scenario: having the drive fail, and so having to go to the store (with a failed drive I'm not going to wait for an online purchase), and purchase yet another drive, and install an OS and all my dev tools yet again, and copy my data onto the drive yet again...
So you are talking say 2 days worth of work and the cost of a drive, with a potential (however slight) of losing more than 4 days' work and the cost of 2 drives. And as much as I hate to say it, sometimes Murphy's Law does seem to apply so it is as likely as not that any failure would occur when something important was going on.
To me, the actual cost plus the potential cost is not worth the performance gain I would see. It might pay for itself in the long run by saving me time, but that benefit is amortized over a long time. Longer than I want to bet on right now.
No doubt I will switch to SSD eventually. Just not quite yet.
First, that patent application is Burzynski's patent application for one of his compounds. Not one of the dozens of later government patent applications. It is no great surprise to me that your foregone conclusion is supported, when you didn't seem to understand what to look for. Second:
"No randomized, controlled trials showing the effectiveness of antineoplastons have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals."
Well, no shit, Sherlock. Do you even know anything about how this works?
And by the way... if you are going to berate me for not following up on my sources, why did you not follow that same link and see that the actual article says that "No 'Phase III' randomized, double-blind studies" have been done? Ahem. First, Phase I and Phase II studies are still going on! Second, you might want to have a look at what Phase III studies actually entail. It should be noted that Phase III trials typically involve 300 to 3000 patients, and generally take many years. But recruiting that many patients who suffer from the kinds of cancer Burzynski is attempting to treat would be practically impossible, except over a very long period of time. Burzynski has (source: clinicaltrials.gov, search for "antineoplastons") had to cancel a number of trials already due to not finding enough patients to treat, much less 300 to 3000.
Further, if you compare his trials to others (look up "gene therapy" or some other treatment methodology on the same website), you will find that Burzynski's trials include 5-year survival rates, while most other such studies only follow up for one year. His trials take years to complete for those very reasons: the relatively low numbers of patients involved, and the fact that most of them are more than 5 years long.
When you have compounds that show promise for the treatment of deadly cancers, AND those compounds have been around a while (Burzynski did not "invent" them... phenylacetate for just one example has been known for 100 years ) AND they -- or some of them anyway -- are already in use in medicine for the treatment of other conditions, you don't spend 20 or 30 damn years doing double-blind studies to prove the effectiveness beyond doubt before doing other studies on effectiveness. You would likely as not be killing people.
Nobody does that. Not Big Pharma, not the American Medical Association, not the FDA, not hospitals.
They may never get around to doing "double-blind" studies. Or if somebody does, it may be many years from now. That's the way it works. So that fact (no Phase III double-blind studies having been done yet) is completely irrelevant to whether there is any merit to the treatment or ongoing studies.
"No scientific cancer institute, and especially not the National Cancer Institute, has said antineoplastons work."
Duh. That's what ongoing studies are for! And the National Cancer Institute is actually involved in them! Further yet, tests by others are necessarily limited because the compounds are patented. (The 1993 study you mentioned occurred before the patent issues were settled.)
If you are going to hold patents and exclusivity against Burzynski then you have to hold it against the entire United States medical industry, which does exactly the same thing. The only difference here is that a single person is doing it rather than some giant corporation.
Let's get this straight: I did not at any time claim that these things work. I wrote that there are legitimate, government-approved studies going on. Okay... a single study, involving only 9 people, 18 years ago, was unsuccessful. It happens. Big deal. It is probably reasonable to presume that a few things have been learned since then.
But to conclude that the guy is a phony -- which is what you imply -- before long-term studies are even completed, is not exactly a responsible positi
"I, too, still disagree, that everyone feels a need for that intellectual satisfaction, or benefits from a full knowledge set of all principles involved. I never did learn how to refine the junction doping materials from raw ore, or any of the problems that can arise if you get it wrong, locations on the planet where the ore is mined, etc. etc."
Look, I get your point, and this is a friendly discussion and all, but you rather moved the goalposts there. For example, many devices I rely on, on an everyday basis, would have been impossible to build without quantum physics. But quantum physics is not "less important", simply because I do not dwell on it in my thoughts every day.
By the way: that site links to other sites that contain information that can only be said to be a smear campaign. For example, one of them said that "3 experts" testified to the FDA in 1991 that the studies he was conducting were flawed.
Yet people time and again -- for some reason -- fail to mention that every time Burzynski had been taken to court over allegations like these (and this case in particular, in fact), he has won. Very interesting, that. Why does the paper say that "3 experts testified", yet fail to mention that Burzynski himself won the case? Or that Burzynski is right now engaging in, not "so-called" clinical trials (a claim I have seen several times), but actual, legitimate government approved clinical trials, with the help and cooperation of the National Cancer Institute?
Many of the statements in that article are incorrect -- or at the very least slanted and misleading -- which you can verify for yourself from the National Cancer Institute's own website and other easily available sources.
First off, it must be pointed out that Burzynski's theories about why it is supposed to work has absolutely no bearing on whether it works. A great many inventors have invented things without knowing what actually makes them tick. Tesla comes to mind, for just one example.
While phenylacetic acid (PA) might have, as the article states, been found to be harmful when ingested back in 1919, there is a lot of missing information there. What were the concentrations? What were the total amounts? Etc., etc. The fact is that PA has ben around a long time and has been in use for some time in medicine as a treatment for other conditions. You can verify that, too, in just a couple of minutes on the Web. Remember back when cyclamates were found to be toxic to animals... but it took amounts that were the equivalent of eating many pounds of the stuff per day? Very, very unrealistic. And that was a lot more recent thatn 1919. There has been talk of re-approving cyclamates for use in food products.
While Burzynski claims that some of the chemical compounds he uses were first isolated from blood and urine (a claim that is really pretty irrelevant to the issue at hand), the compounds he uses are actually synthesized in his plant from precursor chemicals (source: National Cancer Institute). His actual treatments involve neither blood or urine, and those are not the sources being used.
As for their effect on cancer, the statement that they "have no effect" is just plain false. One large drug company tried to patent one of the same chemicals, and certain U.S. government agencies actually were awarded patents on the same chemicals, specifically for the purposes of fighting cancer. Those patents were reversed when it was shown that Burzynski already owned patents on those compounds.
But here is the most important issue about that: in the process of obtaining those patents, the U.S. government itself claimed that those treatments were likely effective against cancer.
Further yet, the earlier studies done by the National Cancer Institute, which found no effect, were done using dosages that were far smaller than anything that was ever shown to be effective. If you want to do a bad study, that is the way to go about it. Those studies have since been invalidated, and Burzynski is now working with the NCI on 11 clinical trials.
So... don't take slanted and misleading smear pieces at face value. Look it up yourself. You might learn something.
"Calling bullshit on that. If your "database and web server" dataset is larger than, what, 32GB on a desktop machine, then you're doing it wrong. It wasn't advice. Durrrrrp."
Yes, it was. And in my particular situation -- which I do not care to explain to you further, considering your attitude -- it is bad advice.
I have heard lots of stories, some of them right here. And I mean bricking, not just "working badly". That's what I meant by catastrophic.
I'm not saying that's what they typically do. I'm only saying those are the majority of the failure stories I have heard / seen.
I have been an early adopter of many things. But I value my data (which is my bread and butter, after all), and so I will take a conservative approach to this. After more people have had them, for a little while longer, I will revisit the issue then.
And as for block, rather than cell: the reason I stated it that way is that statistically, a block will not have as many write-cycles as individual cells are rated for, simply because there are many cells per block. And statistically, therefore (at least, if over-provisioning has been used up), on the average a block will not last for the full write-cycle rating. So yeah... I want long lifetimes in terms of blocks, not just cells. For statistical, not design, reasons.
"If you really knew how SSD's worked, you wouldnt be talking about SSD's with millions of erase cycles per block. I mean what the fuck.."
Write cycles, not erase cycles. But never mind, I really don't want to split hairs.
See the article I linked to elsewhere in this thread. It says the life of SSDs is still limited mainly by the number of write cycles. So my concern is perfectly valid.
Further, in regard to how they work: when SSDs were a bit newer, I mentioned right here on/. how I could easily write a program to wear one out. I was told I was full of BS. Lo and behold, a program to do just that was made available on the web.
Of course they have improved since then, and so has the wear-leveling. But I know how they work, dude. And yeah, the # of write cycles they are rated for is important. (Also, as one other commenter pointed out -- and so does that article -- the latest generation of dense multi-level memory chips actually have LESS write endurance than their predecessors.)
"They will age in a more linear fashion. A 50 year MTBF of an SSD drive is actually a plausibly useful data point, whereas a 200 year MTBF of a hard disk is a BPOS."
Theoretically that may be true, but SSDs are still young enough that I give a lot of weight to "anectodal evidence", and the majority -- in fact almost all -- of what I have heard is that they actually tend to fail catastrophically.
As far as I am concerned, a "wait and see" approach is still feasible before I spend a bunch of money.
Okay, for everybody's information, I looked it up. According to this recent article, write-cycles are still the limiting factor for most SSDs, rather than MTBF. (Certain RAID configurations are an exception.)
However, the good news is that the article says write endurance has increased a lot in the last few years, with some manufacturers offering SSDs rated at more than 5 million write cycles.
So, the question in my case is not "Will a cheap SSD do the trick?" but "Do I want to spend the money on a high-end SSD?"
My normal work machine is very heavily used, acting as a database and web server along with its other duties. So yes, the hard drive is exercised A LOT more than your everyday home computer.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with the previous poster. A framework in nothing but a tool. You are free to use any framework you want, or build your own. If you want a web framework for Ruby, for example, you can use Rails, or Merb, or Sinatra, or any of a number of others... or make your own.
I think the whole point of the thread is that things like app stores are the opposite. They filter what choices you get, based on arbitrary criteria set by the store owner. This will, almost by definition, inhibit innovation in some areas.
So, frankly, I think your mention of frameworks is pretty much off-topic.
Hmmm.... even more interesting.
In the general case, I was right. Conspiracy does require an overt act. See the general law (as referenced by Shabani: U.S.C. Â 371.
It is only matters of conspiracy to distribute illegal drugs that this explicit exception (i.e., U.S.C. Â 846) applies to.
Why Congress saw fit to make this explicit exception, I do not know. But it does not apply to the general case, as the court itself said in Shabani, as you can see if you read just a bit more carefully.
"If that was the case there'd be no need for a specific offense of conspiracy, since you'd be committing the main offense."
Not even remotely. You haven't robbed any bank! You only engaged in an act that proved conspiracy to rob a bank. They are not even close to the same things.
"The Supreme Court appear to agree - see United States v. Shabani."
Perhaps they did, but they used completely circular reasoning in order to do so.
If one is not guilty of "conspiracy" unless one commits an overt act, then the statute is not violated. But if one need not commit an overt act in order to commit "conspiracy", then the statute would hold in the case of Shabani.
This is a matter of changing the definition of "conspiracy", not of interpreting the law. And frankly, it is a bad decision, because it runs smack up against the First Amendment.
"He's already violated several conditions of the Computer Fraud and Abuse act ..."
Probably not.
If I am not mistaken, actually being guilty of CFAA requires intent. He says he discovered the hack accidentally. Since I discovered a similar thing some years ago, I see how that can happen.
Also, chatting about something does not constitute "conspiracy". Contrary to popular belief, conspiracy requires you to commit actual physical acts intended to carry out your plan. You can talk with your poker buddies about robbing some bank for 10 years, draw up floor plans, and more... but until somebody saws off a shotgun or gets in a car to go do it, you haven't committed any crimes; you've only been playing a child's game.
By "other sources" I meant like Wikileaks, etc. But hey... if the "authorities" hassle him over something that is clearly an act that benefits society as a whole, then give the damned thing to Anonymous. Who cares?
Some years ago I was in a similar position, having discovered accidentally that there was a severe security hole in a bank's online banking system. I mean to the extent that I could get anybody's information, bank, personal, and otherwise off of any computer they had used to access it. Really bad.
The first thing I did was call the bank, and explain what the problem was, and that I would like to talk to their programmers about this. They connected me to the programmers, and I told them all about it. They agreed, "Yes, that is a pretty bad problem. We'll fix it right away."
Months go by, and nothing had changed. I contacted the bank again, and talked to one of the many "Vice Presidents", who assured me that it was being taken care of. Etc.
This went on and on. I finally threatened to go to the press with my story if they didn't get their act together. If I recall correctly, it was a year and a half before they actually fixed it. Totally unethical. I can think of about 3 or 4 ways, if I had been a dishonest person, that I could have cleaned out hundreds of people's accounts in the meantime. Not only that, but I would also have their names, addresses, telephone numbers, and more.
I disagree completely. Since presumably the hack itself is a process, not a piece of data, he can "leak" this information to other sources who will notify the authorities or make it public... I dare say based on the response that is received.
While I agree that he may have placed himself in jeopardy, there are ways he can get this information out without divulging his identity. And that would be the ethical thing to do, despite the laws.
Apologies for the long responses, but (at least in this case) there were quite a few documents to link to.
But I can summarize my overall point in few words:
For whatever reason, a lot of people have been going out of their way to characterize Dr. Burzynski as some kind of charlatan, and they point to a lot of vague, indirect evidence to support their claims.
But the actual, direct, hard evidence (which of course they never seem to reference) tells a far different story.
Do you know what "confirmation bias" is?
You link to some unnamed person's blog as evidence? And decide to stop there? Didn't you notice anything strange? I had more to say about the blog but I'm going to skip it. There are far more interesting things going on here than some bureaucratic warning about what amounts to a paperwork snafu, that wasn't even addressed to the clinic itself anyway.
"There were 61 protocols on www.clinicaltrials.gov, with only 5 publications."
And I have already pointed out why those studies take years to complete, and why some of those were either withdrawn or terminated early for lack of enrollment. You can hardly count those. Seriously. You are blaming him for the circumstances he is working under. I repeat: compare the studies he is involved in with others on the same site. Apparently you didn't bother.
"Incidentally, peer-review does not examine the possibility of fraud, it only examines the quality of the paper and method listed. He could have completely made it up, (people have) and it could still pass peer-review. "
Now you're just being an ass. YOU brought up the subject of no peer-reviewed papers, and now that you have been shown to be wrong, you say it doesn't matter. R-i-g-h-t. Sure.
At least tell me this: did you even notice that your earlier source, and this one, give two completely different reasons for the termination of that trial? I did. Somebody is lying. I followed that up. And as it turns out, the story is pretty interesting. And according to the evidence, the liar isn't Burzynski.
"Further, the writer mentions he has never, in 36 years of clinical science, seen a clinical trial that requires payment."
Really? How surprising. Tell me this as well: in his 36 years, has he also seen many doctors who are supporting their research on their own budget? Rather than grants from government or some Big Pharma company with a billion-dollar budget? Even one? Since when is it a crime to try to pay your bills?
Seriously, you need to look at real evidence. That study you linked to earlier? The one involving NCI, and Mayo, and Sloan-Kettering? I have linked to some actual documentation below. Not just some detractor's blog. I honestly don't know what it costs to synthesize the chemicals that Burzynski uses, but he mentions costs of over 2 million dollars related to that study (they were getting the medicines from him). Where the hell is that money supposed to come from? According to the documents, NCI hadn't paid Burzynski for the supplies, as it had agreed to.
I'm not defending the numbers. I don't know where they come from. But they are in a letter that was evidence in a court case, and openly published. That's more than I can say for the NCI and what it has seen fit to make public.
And just as an aside, HERE is that page I mentioned earlier, that lists the 11 current government-approved Phase II clinical trials that Burzynski has going on. On his own budget, not some big grant.
Anyway, how about some facts about that study you cited earlier, supported by actual documentation? Turns out things aren't exactly as NCI and Mayo or Sloan-Kettering claim. While Burzynski has had to cancel trials for lack of enrollment, their trial sure as hell wasn't terminated for "lack of enrollment", even though that's what they claim. That is a complete fabrication and your own source above verifies that. Didn't that bother you?
Further, when NCI altered the protocol and Burzynski feared for the health of the participants, he volunteered to treat the patients for free until the NCI could get its shit together. NCI refused.
By the way:
"No randomized, controlled trials showing the effectiveness of antineoplastons have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals."
This may be true, but it is also disingenuous. I have already discussed the situation involving randomized trials, and why that doesn't apply at this stage of the research.
However, papers that do not involve randomized trials have been published in peer-reviewed journals. And I, too, spent only a few minutes finding some. Among them are Physiological Chemistry and Physics, (1977) 9(6):485-500, and Drugs under Experimental and Clinical Research. The latter is no longer in business; they ceased publication in 2005. But here is an abstract from one of the papers:
Drugs Exp Clin Res (1990) 16(7):361-9
Successful treatment of advanced cancer of the prostate which no longer responds to hormonal manipulation continues to be a difficult task. The present study describes the results of treatment of the first fourteen patients in Phase II clinical trials with Antineoplaston AS2-1 (AS) and low-dose diethylstilbestrol (DES). The study involved thirteen patients diagnosed with stage IV and one patient with stage II adenocarcinoma of the prostate. The ages of the patients were between 54 and 88. The previous therapy included prostatectomy, orchiectomy, radiation therapy and treatment with DES, LHRH agonist (LH), flutamide (FL), aminoglutethimide and immunotherapy. After initial response to such treatments, the disease continued to progress. The majority of patients showed progression of the disease after treatment with LH and FL. The current treatment program consisted of administration of AS and DES. The treatment was given orally daily. The majority of patients received from 97 to 130 mg/kg/24 h of AS and from 0.01 to 0.02 mg/kg/24 h of DES. The treatment was administered from 64 to 425 days and was free from significant side effects due to AS. The dose of DES was lower than usual, and only some patients experienced mild side effects typical for DES. Only two patients showed progression of the disease. Complete remission was obtained in two patients and partial remission in three patients. Stabilization of the disease with objective improvement was determined in seven patients. The first patient enrolled in the program has been in complete remission for 17 months and off the treatment for 16 months.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
I would also like to point out that it is disingenuous, too, to point at possible side-effects from Burzynski's treatments that are anything less than fatal, because context has to be kept in mind: the "standard" treatment for cancers of the aggressive and lethal kind that Burzynski is attempted to treat consists of very aggressive chemo and radiation therapy, and many patients actually die of the treatment rather than the disease, or end up with lifelong debilitating conditions from the treatment alone. This should be taken into account when making comparisons.
"But if you say you are not using SSDs on your desktop or laptop because you don't want to risk losing your data, all that means is you don't value your data enough to back it up, because if you were backing it up, that wouldn't be a concern. :p"
Here is my actual rationale, which is really more one of costs than risk:
If I put in an SSD now, I would convert my existing drive to a data-storage-only role. So I am figuring the amount of money it would require for me to shop for and purchase a new drive, then install an OS and all my development tools, and copy my data. That is at least a day, probably more like 2 (I have a very large number of apps installed, largely for development). Not just the money for the drive, but also the work time lost, which is also money. Plus the potential of the following scenario: having the drive fail, and so having to go to the store (with a failed drive I'm not going to wait for an online purchase), and purchase yet another drive, and install an OS and all my dev tools yet again, and copy my data onto the drive yet again...
So you are talking say 2 days worth of work and the cost of a drive, with a potential (however slight) of losing more than 4 days' work and the cost of 2 drives. And as much as I hate to say it, sometimes Murphy's Law does seem to apply so it is as likely as not that any failure would occur when something important was going on.
To me, the actual cost plus the potential cost is not worth the performance gain I would see. It might pay for itself in the long run by saving me time, but that benefit is amortized over a long time. Longer than I want to bet on right now.
No doubt I will switch to SSD eventually. Just not quite yet.
"No randomized, controlled trials showing the effectiveness of antineoplastons have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals."
Well, no shit, Sherlock. Do you even know anything about how this works?
And by the way... if you are going to berate me for not following up on my sources, why did you not follow that same link and see that the actual article says that "No 'Phase III' randomized, double-blind studies" have been done? Ahem. First, Phase I and Phase II studies are still going on! Second, you might want to have a look at what Phase III studies actually entail. It should be noted that Phase III trials typically involve 300 to 3000 patients, and generally take many years. But recruiting that many patients who suffer from the kinds of cancer Burzynski is attempting to treat would be practically impossible, except over a very long period of time. Burzynski has (source: clinicaltrials.gov, search for "antineoplastons") had to cancel a number of trials already due to not finding enough patients to treat, much less 300 to 3000.
Further, if you compare his trials to others (look up "gene therapy" or some other treatment methodology on the same website), you will find that Burzynski's trials include 5-year survival rates, while most other such studies only follow up for one year. His trials take years to complete for those very reasons: the relatively low numbers of patients involved, and the fact that most of them are more than 5 years long.
When you have compounds that show promise for the treatment of deadly cancers, AND those compounds have been around a while (Burzynski did not "invent" them... phenylacetate for just one example has been known for 100 years ) AND they -- or some of them anyway -- are already in use in medicine for the treatment of other conditions, you don't spend 20 or 30 damn years doing double-blind studies to prove the effectiveness beyond doubt before doing other studies on effectiveness. You would likely as not be killing people.
Nobody does that. Not Big Pharma, not the American Medical Association, not the FDA, not hospitals.
They may never get around to doing "double-blind" studies. Or if somebody does, it may be many years from now. That's the way it works. So that fact (no Phase III double-blind studies having been done yet) is completely irrelevant to whether there is any merit to the treatment or ongoing studies.
"No scientific cancer institute, and especially not the National Cancer Institute, has said antineoplastons work."
Duh. That's what ongoing studies are for! And the National Cancer Institute is actually involved in them! Further yet, tests by others are necessarily limited because the compounds are patented. (The 1993 study you mentioned occurred before the patent issues were settled.)
If you are going to hold patents and exclusivity against Burzynski then you have to hold it against the entire United States medical industry, which does exactly the same thing. The only difference here is that a single person is doing it rather than some giant corporation.
Let's get this straight: I did not at any time claim that these things work. I wrote that there are legitimate, government-approved studies going on. Okay... a single study, involving only 9 people, 18 years ago, was unsuccessful. It happens. Big deal. It is probably reasonable to presume that a few things have been learned since then.
But to conclude that the guy is a phony -- which is what you imply -- before long-term studies are even completed, is not exactly a responsible positi
Correction: that was supposed to read 1997, not 1991.
"I, too, still disagree, that everyone feels a need for that intellectual satisfaction, or benefits from a full knowledge set of all principles involved. I never did learn how to refine the junction doping materials from raw ore, or any of the problems that can arise if you get it wrong, locations on the planet where the ore is mined, etc. etc."
Look, I get your point, and this is a friendly discussion and all, but you rather moved the goalposts there. For example, many devices I rely on, on an everyday basis, would have been impossible to build without quantum physics. But quantum physics is not "less important", simply because I do not dwell on it in my thoughts every day.
By the way: that site links to other sites that contain information that can only be said to be a smear campaign. For example, one of them said that "3 experts" testified to the FDA in 1991 that the studies he was conducting were flawed.
Yet people time and again -- for some reason -- fail to mention that every time Burzynski had been taken to court over allegations like these (and this case in particular, in fact), he has won. Very interesting, that. Why does the paper say that "3 experts testified", yet fail to mention that Burzynski himself won the case? Or that Burzynski is right now engaging in, not "so-called" clinical trials (a claim I have seen several times), but actual, legitimate government approved clinical trials, with the help and cooperation of the National Cancer Institute?
Slant. Yellow journalism. That's all it is.
Many of the statements in that article are incorrect -- or at the very least slanted and misleading -- which you can verify for yourself from the National Cancer Institute's own website and other easily available sources.
First off, it must be pointed out that Burzynski's theories about why it is supposed to work has absolutely no bearing on whether it works. A great many inventors have invented things without knowing what actually makes them tick. Tesla comes to mind, for just one example.
While phenylacetic acid (PA) might have, as the article states, been found to be harmful when ingested back in 1919, there is a lot of missing information there. What were the concentrations? What were the total amounts? Etc., etc. The fact is that PA has ben around a long time and has been in use for some time in medicine as a treatment for other conditions. You can verify that, too, in just a couple of minutes on the Web. Remember back when cyclamates were found to be toxic to animals... but it took amounts that were the equivalent of eating many pounds of the stuff per day? Very, very unrealistic. And that was a lot more recent thatn 1919. There has been talk of re-approving cyclamates for use in food products.
While Burzynski claims that some of the chemical compounds he uses were first isolated from blood and urine (a claim that is really pretty irrelevant to the issue at hand), the compounds he uses are actually synthesized in his plant from precursor chemicals (source: National Cancer Institute). His actual treatments involve neither blood or urine, and those are not the sources being used.
As for their effect on cancer, the statement that they "have no effect" is just plain false. One large drug company tried to patent one of the same chemicals, and certain U.S. government agencies actually were awarded patents on the same chemicals, specifically for the purposes of fighting cancer. Those patents were reversed when it was shown that Burzynski already owned patents on those compounds.
But here is the most important issue about that: in the process of obtaining those patents, the U.S. government itself claimed that those treatments were likely effective against cancer.
Further yet, the earlier studies done by the National Cancer Institute, which found no effect, were done using dosages that were far smaller than anything that was ever shown to be effective. If you want to do a bad study, that is the way to go about it. Those studies have since been invalidated, and Burzynski is now working with the NCI on 11 clinical trials.
So... don't take slanted and misleading smear pieces at face value. Look it up yourself. You might learn something.
"Calling bullshit on that. If your "database and web server" dataset is larger than, what, 32GB on a desktop machine, then you're doing it wrong. It wasn't advice. Durrrrrp."
Yes, it was. And in my particular situation -- which I do not care to explain to you further, considering your attitude -- it is bad advice.
Keep it to yourself. And your froggy noises, too.
I have heard lots of stories, some of them right here. And I mean bricking, not just "working badly". That's what I meant by catastrophic.
I'm not saying that's what they typically do. I'm only saying those are the majority of the failure stories I have heard / seen.
I have been an early adopter of many things. But I value my data (which is my bread and butter, after all), and so I will take a conservative approach to this. After more people have had them, for a little while longer, I will revisit the issue then.
"So get more RAM, hurp durp. If your hard disk is being "exercised" that much you're doing it wrong."
"Hurp durp" yourself. My RAM is maxed out. You know nothing about the situation, so thanks but I don't need your advice.
Pardon me. Haha. That was you. It's late and I am tired.
And as for block, rather than cell: the reason I stated it that way is that statistically, a block will not have as many write-cycles as individual cells are rated for, simply because there are many cells per block. And statistically, therefore (at least, if over-provisioning has been used up), on the average a block will not last for the full write-cycle rating. So yeah... I want long lifetimes in terms of blocks, not just cells. For statistical, not design, reasons.
"If you really knew how SSD's worked, you wouldnt be talking about SSD's with millions of erase cycles per block. I mean what the fuck.."
Write cycles, not erase cycles. But never mind, I really don't want to split hairs.
/. how I could easily write a program to wear one out. I was told I was full of BS. Lo and behold, a program to do just that was made available on the web.
See the article I linked to elsewhere in this thread. It says the life of SSDs is still limited mainly by the number of write cycles. So my concern is perfectly valid.
Further, in regard to how they work: when SSDs were a bit newer, I mentioned right here on
Of course they have improved since then, and so has the wear-leveling. But I know how they work, dude. And yeah, the # of write cycles they are rated for is important. (Also, as one other commenter pointed out -- and so does that article -- the latest generation of dense multi-level memory chips actually have LESS write endurance than their predecessors.)
"They will age in a more linear fashion. A 50 year MTBF of an SSD drive is actually a plausibly useful data point, whereas a 200 year MTBF of a hard disk is a BPOS."
Theoretically that may be true, but SSDs are still young enough that I give a lot of weight to "anectodal evidence", and the majority -- in fact almost all -- of what I have heard is that they actually tend to fail catastrophically.
As far as I am concerned, a "wait and see" approach is still feasible before I spend a bunch of money.
Okay, for everybody's information, I looked it up. According to this recent article, write-cycles are still the limiting factor for most SSDs, rather than MTBF. (Certain RAID configurations are an exception.)
However, the good news is that the article says write endurance has increased a lot in the last few years, with some manufacturers offering SSDs rated at more than 5 million write cycles.
So, the question in my case is not "Will a cheap SSD do the trick?" but "Do I want to spend the money on a high-end SSD?"
"Troll"? This comment? Really?
I mean come on, modder. Maybe you have it out for me, but at least you could save your mods for something that is even a little bit trollish.
My normal work machine is very heavily used, acting as a database and web server along with its other duties. So yes, the hard drive is exercised A LOT more than your everyday home computer.