Reminds me of something someone once quipped about AIDS. Finding an effective killer of HIV is easy, and in fact pretty much every average joe has it in his house. Its called bleach. Now finding a cure that won't kill the host organism...
And in other news, upon implementation of this idea, the entire air travel industry collapsed overnight. Who would want to fly so hellishly as this? I mean I suppose there wouldn't be anymore terrorist attacks on planes, largely because planes would stop flying, but really...
You know I had to scratch my head a moment when you brought up OJ, because I know and agree with Voltaire's famous statement, but didn't shed really any tears when OJ basically got shouted down by the US at large. I'm not sure the recent OJ debacle is something to stand up for, and I guess I'd use the southpark episode "The Deathcamp of Tolerance" to defend me (You can find it on youtube if you haven't seen it and its funny so go watch if you want). Anyhow, if the state shut OJ down, that would be bad. If the state enacted laws afterwards to "prevent another horrific incident" or some such, that would be bad. But if overwhelming bad publicity results in his corporate masters pulling the plug, I think that's ok. And only because it would seem more unamerican to me if everyone just sat around and acted like the idea was fine. Voltaire said he would defend to the death the right for one to say something he disagreed with, not that he would stand there mute and let the opinion carry the day.
I could be wrong, particularly because I'm to some extent rationalizing a previous decision, but either way I'd love to hear your thoughts.
This is actually a pretty interesting point. In my mind its similar to the "pro-life" antiabortion stance. Its not so much that they really identifies with and cares about the fetuses, but that they despise young women who can have sex with no consequences.
I think its a similar idea here. A group of people finds one thing morally abhorent (quote unqoute "playing god"), but tries to win over more people to their cause with the sanctity of life argument. Because if it were anything else, they would be gung ho on _saving life_ with the cells fertility clinics throw out.
I don't like MS either, but thats not really whats going on. If I have an unsecure windows machine, nothing happens until someone else (or some creation of theirs) attacks it. So even if in practice they're selling ticking time bombs, in theory they're not, and the theory is where the law works.
A better analogy would have been a chainsaw can be very easily rigged to kill the whole town. The chainsaw is vulnerable, and thats pretty reprehensible, but the manufacturer clearly isn't liable in the same way.
Sure but theres also the issue with providing an incentive for crappy service. At the very least, it should be obvious that the future consumers want, where latency issues are negligable and there is more than enough bandwith to go around, would no longer be in the telco's best interest. If there aren't any shortages, why would anyone pay for a "gold" status? Everyone already has it.
That, to me, is the biggest problem. Any ISP cutting off vonage.com or whatever would get murdered because that type of obvious censorship for profit doesn't fly even in the US. But running the internet like OPEC runs oil (artifically keep supply low so the price of our commodity stays high) is very feasible, particularly when you are the only one in your market so there aren't even any antitrust issues!
While other posters have tried to argue that such a case as you suggest does not exist, lets suppose - pretty reasonaby I think, particularly if they set the BAC limit low (like.05) - that it does. It seems like then this would be a perfect opportunity to employ something like they use with the M26 taser. Namely, that when you use it is sprays stickies with your registered serial on them all over the place. So unless you have a preponderance of time with which to clean them up, we have oversight!
A comparative system with cars would of course throw the plate number everywhere, and since no drunk is going to take an hour and a half to pick all these damn things up, it would mean that starting a car drunk in any place that wasn't the middle of nowhere was feasible, but you would need a hell of a good reason for it, and you'd need to explain that reason afterwards to the police.
But you'd have to admit, that even given a far more adult population, there would still be some failure rate. A major change that happened a few decades ago in health care was that people realized frequently its easier and better to pay to have a machine make the decision right every time, rather than tell people to do better. It came out of issues with good doctors making negligent mistakes simpy due to the number of decisions over time that they made. So designing machines that wouldn't allow some sorts of behaviour (giving a dose of a barbiturate faster than a certain rate during surgery for instance), was a huge improvement.
Similar reasoning applies here, I think. It's unfortunate that people can't act better (because of course they can), but at some point maybe its time to recognize that and mutually agree to take the decision out of our hands. Note the mutual and our, I hate police states as much as anyone else!
I'm always kind of surprised by these comments. Jerkish to who? The guy who answers his call? He was going to be there anyway (they work shifts), and assuming he was polite in his request I don't see any issues there. So I guess you must mean jerkish to the DELL itself. I have a hard time believing that the DELL is crying itself to sleep, seeing as it doesn't have any eyes (well in the literal sense... at least it definitely doesn't have tear ducts).
If you can't find a person he was a jerk to, rethink your complaint. Besides, as someone else pointed out, it is in the XP EULA.
The more money a drug company makes off a medicine, the more valuable it is. A drug company's profits are a function of how much people value that drug -- the drug's social utility (this is basic economics).
And this relationship explains the focus on treatments rather than cures, on insomnia rather than malaria, and on legal games* and marketing rather than research. I'll give you a fun fact, namely that only 15-20% of the average pharmaceutical's budget goes to research, far more goes to advertising (classy huh?).
There is value in some sort of protection for medical IP, but this story is a perfect example of where your argument doesn't apply, and isn't accurate. No profits, yet somehow the drug was developed anyway and will now have far greater utility. Profit as motive doesn't always work, particularly when the richest people tend to have the pettiest health concerns. Why make something for Javier dirt farmer (when he only has a few bucks to give you) when you can make something for joe gated community and he has insurance? And the answer is of course you wouldn't and so you make yet another well marketed ED med, instead of something for Typhoid.
* read (for example) about getting another few years by filing claims pretending to be consumers concerned about the effectiveness of generic replacements or getting another 20 simply by gel coating the drug
Why is this modded +5? Does comparing the US to North Korea (which I hope everyone here is smart enough to realize is completely nonsensical) really advance our argument? Treating its citizens like "criminals" isn't even North Korea's problem. Its problem is more stuff like torturing to death people that try to escape to China and starving those that stay so it can afford its large military. But that's basically what the US does too, when it looks through your credit history, right? Sheesh, get a grip.
And fwiw a more apt comparison might have been to the UK, which does have a similar problem to us, but I guess that would be too rational and not emotional enough of an appeal. Don't discredit us with nonsense.
Well sure, but essentially trolling through someone's harddrive when there is no real evidence to suggest he committed a crime is hardly synonymous with being able to look at the code that you are building your democracy on. The plaintiff may not have a particularly good case, but that doesn't make closed source voting code any less BAD, and slashdotters are justifiably uncomfortable when said code gives at least somewhat questionable results.
Well the FDA can't really do anything because what's being sold are "supplements" that are of course "not designed to treat, diagnose or cure any disease." But... for those who are selling actual products, I would like to see more authorities purchasing the products and then giving american express a call to find out where that money went and then seizing whatever they find there. I don't know how to deal with the pump and dump spam (maybe the FTC) but if someone is accepting credit cards, they should just get hammered. And if we can force them to only use paypal, which would severely impact their bottom line, I think that's a step forward too.
If the messages are the same (or very nearly), the amount of space used drops pretty quickly. In fact, it probably doesn't cost any extra space to the spammer because the only non unique part of the email is the name or the address, and he already had to store that list.
And unfortunately the tracking down idea I think wouldn't be too useful either, as spammers are just using zombie boxes anyway. Maybe a system could be built (with the help of ISPs) that would disconnect boxes that were spamming and in that sense making it easier to find them is a plus, but it will never catch the spammer.
Isn't the obvious solution to look at the affects anti-depressants have on general health? This should be easy, theres plenty of people on and off (so you don't have to worry about not having enough people to correct for various other variables like socioeconomic status). I think if people on mood elevators tended to be healthier, or could be shown to become healthier, we would have our answer. It would be a very interesting study, wouldn't it?
I have to agree with the above replier in that, without respect to whether the case itself was justified, overlawyered did not offer a particularly impressive argument. The writer's main points are basically that Starbucks also served hot coffee (the "but she did it too...." defense that kids use to exonerate themselves, not too good there) and that coffee is "supposed" to be served at the 180-190 degrees McDonalds did. He bases that second claim on a reccomendation by the National Coffee Association, which is not unreasonable, but I suspect that their reccomendation is made for instances where spilling should not be an issue (i.e. your home or a sit down cafe) and therefore is purely for taste and not any issue of safety. Those sort of ommissions that attempt to make his evidence come off as stronger than it is (occurring throughout the post), really lower the quality of the argument and point to some possible - my_beliefs > truth - issues.
It _is_ hard to gauge the actual merit of her case, because she won based on the jury's assertion that the warning on the coffee did not sufficiently convey the danger involved, and that's inherently maybe too much of a personal judgement call, but having said that, I was hoping for a more science or law oriented discussion, and getting one that basically said, people like hot coffee, starbucks does it too (although they are also on the receiving end of suits), doesn't really add a lot to the discussion. The debate is on safety and reasonable danger, not anything else.
I mean really, If I sued Sony over a Li-ion battery catching fire and burning my house down, "hey other people sell them too" is not a suitable defense there, and its not a suitable (nor interesting) defense here.
No that would actually still be tolerance, and I guess no one has a dictionary on hand even though we're all at computers but... having looked it up just to be sure, I get: "acceptance of the differing views of other people" in definition 1 off encarta (which could be a better source but who cares). People tend to believe their views are correct, which is why they have them... so if he is accepting that a differing view has the right to exist, sounds like tolerance to me.
Do people here really not know what tolerance means? What do you think it means? That you have no unreasonable beliefs?
And if I drink all the time I guess I don't care if my girlfriend looks like a moose. But seriously just like eventually I'll find myself sober, you'll run into a situation where you can notice quality, and then you'll realize you got screwed.
I can't of course speak for everyone, but everyone I know that is pro-gun (and I mean that in a lifestyle sense, not in an armchair opinion sense), actually has a quite good understanding of their rights and does not think erosion of things like the fourth ammendment is acceptable. You say, for instance:
How many times have you heard someone say "We need guns to protect our rights!" and then say "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear!"
I can't help but ask, how many times have you heard someone say that? And I mean in real life not in some dishonest TV setting. Is the answer none? I know 3 people with CCWs (not including myself) and not one of us would say that. Since thats annecdotal, let me also point out a basic flaw in your logic.
That's saying that you don't have to comply with the will over the democratically elected government. It's saying that if you don't like the law, yu're going to become a terrorist. That you would rather just become a terrorist than elect people who are going to protect your rights in the first place.
In fact, that's exactly what people are saying. If you don't think it is, I don't know what you think is going on when poeple talk about the dangers of tyranny represented by bad government decisions (mass wiretapping for instance). Just because someone or something was voted for does not mean it is for the benefit of liberty (think Hitler being voted for, etc). That said, ok, so according to you we have a group of people willing to plant IEDs to stop government encroachment on their rights. Yet you then say that these people are the first to trade in their rights. You can't dock them on both counts.
In fairness though, because I'm sure you mean well, here is your problem:
People who argue that they need guns to protect their rights from the government are just gun nuts.
You're equating a bunch of bush voting rednecks with the body of pro-gun citizens. Worse, you call them nuts, which is a great way to descredit someone without having to rely to heavily on an argument. Its a tactic better suited to Fox News, and you shouldn't use it. Plenty of people (it would be dishonest of me to pretend I know the actuall amount of course, but from my experience it seems like a majority) that believe in the original purpose of the second ammendment (aside from shooting indians) have a deep appreciation for the rest of the bill of rights.
And no, its not about an all out war against the choppers and tanks of the military, its about remembering that a declawed citizenry will tend to act like sheep over time as their mentality changes to one of assumed powerlessness.
I appreciate the idea of guns as a power equalizer. George Orwell described them as inherently democratic, as they give "claws to the weak." Comes from his essay You and the Atomic Bomb. A very interesting read fwiw, particularly (although this is somewhat OT) because you can see him developing the ideas that become 1984.
Cheers.
It was professional killers that created the country...
We were freed by the hessians? Or were they on a different team, I can't quite recall.
Please. Colonists were not professionals, they were angry people who had guns. Professional soldiers lined up to fight (like the Brits), which unfortunately for them did not prove advantageous.
And as long as we're talking... it would be "too" you're looking for, not "to."
Slashdot Mirror
As someone who graduated from HS recently, I have to ask: are you shitting me?
Reminds me of something someone once quipped about AIDS. Finding an effective killer of HIV is easy, and in fact pretty much every average joe has it in his house. Its called bleach. Now finding a cure that won't kill the host organism...
Maybe they wrote the wikipedia article themselves. How do you know they didn't? :D
And in other news, upon implementation of this idea, the entire air travel industry collapsed overnight. Who would want to fly so hellishly as this? I mean I suppose there wouldn't be anymore terrorist attacks on planes, largely because planes would stop flying, but really...
You know I had to scratch my head a moment when you brought up OJ, because I know and agree with Voltaire's famous statement, but didn't shed really any tears when OJ basically got shouted down by the US at large. I'm not sure the recent OJ debacle is something to stand up for, and I guess I'd use the southpark episode "The Deathcamp of Tolerance" to defend me (You can find it on youtube if you haven't seen it and its funny so go watch if you want). Anyhow, if the state shut OJ down, that would be bad. If the state enacted laws afterwards to "prevent another horrific incident" or some such, that would be bad. But if overwhelming bad publicity results in his corporate masters pulling the plug, I think that's ok. And only because it would seem more unamerican to me if everyone just sat around and acted like the idea was fine. Voltaire said he would defend to the death the right for one to say something he disagreed with, not that he would stand there mute and let the opinion carry the day.
I could be wrong, particularly because I'm to some extent rationalizing a previous decision, but either way I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Cheers.
This is actually a pretty interesting point. In my mind its similar to the "pro-life" antiabortion stance. Its not so much that they really identifies with and cares about the fetuses, but that they despise young women who can have sex with no consequences.
I think its a similar idea here. A group of people finds one thing morally abhorent (quote unqoute "playing god"), but tries to win over more people to their cause with the sanctity of life argument. Because if it were anything else, they would be gung ho on _saving life_ with the cells fertility clinics throw out.
I don't like MS either, but thats not really whats going on. If I have an unsecure windows machine, nothing happens until someone else (or some creation of theirs) attacks it. So even if in practice they're selling ticking time bombs, in theory they're not, and the theory is where the law works.
A better analogy would have been a chainsaw can be very easily rigged to kill the whole town. The chainsaw is vulnerable, and thats pretty reprehensible, but the manufacturer clearly isn't liable in the same way.
Sure but theres also the issue with providing an incentive for crappy service. At the very least, it should be obvious that the future consumers want, where latency issues are negligable and there is more than enough bandwith to go around, would no longer be in the telco's best interest. If there aren't any shortages, why would anyone pay for a "gold" status? Everyone already has it.
That, to me, is the biggest problem. Any ISP cutting off vonage.com or whatever would get murdered because that type of obvious censorship for profit doesn't fly even in the US. But running the internet like OPEC runs oil (artifically keep supply low so the price of our commodity stays high) is very feasible, particularly when you are the only one in your market so there aren't even any antitrust issues!
While other posters have tried to argue that such a case as you suggest does not exist, lets suppose - pretty reasonaby I think, particularly if they set the BAC limit low (like .05) - that it does. It seems like then this would be a perfect opportunity to employ something like they use with the M26 taser. Namely, that when you use it is sprays stickies with your registered serial on them all over the place. So unless you have a preponderance of time with which to clean them up, we have oversight!
A comparative system with cars would of course throw the plate number everywhere, and since no drunk is going to take an hour and a half to pick all these damn things up, it would mean that starting a car drunk in any place that wasn't the middle of nowhere was feasible, but you would need a hell of a good reason for it, and you'd need to explain that reason afterwards to the police.
Cheers
But you'd have to admit, that even given a far more adult population, there would still be some failure rate. A major change that happened a few decades ago in health care was that people realized frequently its easier and better to pay to have a machine make the decision right every time, rather than tell people to do better. It came out of issues with good doctors making negligent mistakes simpy due to the number of decisions over time that they made. So designing machines that wouldn't allow some sorts of behaviour (giving a dose of a barbiturate faster than a certain rate during surgery for instance), was a huge improvement.
Similar reasoning applies here, I think. It's unfortunate that people can't act better (because of course they can), but at some point maybe its time to recognize that and mutually agree to take the decision out of our hands. Note the mutual and our, I hate police states as much as anyone else!
Cheers.
Took me a moment, but that was hilarious. Thanks.
I'm always kind of surprised by these comments. Jerkish to who? The guy who answers his call? He was going to be there anyway (they work shifts), and assuming he was polite in his request I don't see any issues there. So I guess you must mean jerkish to the DELL itself. I have a hard time believing that the DELL is crying itself to sleep, seeing as it doesn't have any eyes (well in the literal sense... at least it definitely doesn't have tear ducts).
If you can't find a person he was a jerk to, rethink your complaint. Besides, as someone else pointed out, it is in the XP EULA.
And this relationship explains the focus on treatments rather than cures, on insomnia rather than malaria, and on legal games* and marketing rather than research. I'll give you a fun fact, namely that only 15-20% of the average pharmaceutical's budget goes to research, far more goes to advertising (classy huh?).
There is value in some sort of protection for medical IP, but this story is a perfect example of where your argument doesn't apply, and isn't accurate. No profits, yet somehow the drug was developed anyway and will now have far greater utility. Profit as motive doesn't always work, particularly when the richest people tend to have the pettiest health concerns. Why make something for Javier dirt farmer (when he only has a few bucks to give you) when you can make something for joe gated community and he has insurance? And the answer is of course you wouldn't and so you make yet another well marketed ED med, instead of something for Typhoid.
* read (for example) about getting another few years by filing claims pretending to be consumers concerned about the effectiveness of generic replacements or getting another 20 simply by gel coating the drug
Why is this modded +5? Does comparing the US to North Korea (which I hope everyone here is smart enough to realize is completely nonsensical) really advance our argument? Treating its citizens like "criminals" isn't even North Korea's problem. Its problem is more stuff like torturing to death people that try to escape to China and starving those that stay so it can afford its large military. But that's basically what the US does too, when it looks through your credit history, right? Sheesh, get a grip.
And fwiw a more apt comparison might have been to the UK, which does have a similar problem to us, but I guess that would be too rational and not emotional enough of an appeal. Don't discredit us with nonsense.
Well sure, but essentially trolling through someone's harddrive when there is no real evidence to suggest he committed a crime is hardly synonymous with being able to look at the code that you are building your democracy on. The plaintiff may not have a particularly good case, but that doesn't make closed source voting code any less BAD, and slashdotters are justifiably uncomfortable when said code gives at least somewhat questionable results.
Well the FDA can't really do anything because what's being sold are "supplements" that are of course "not designed to treat, diagnose or cure any disease." But... for those who are selling actual products, I would like to see more authorities purchasing the products and then giving american express a call to find out where that money went and then seizing whatever they find there. I don't know how to deal with the pump and dump spam (maybe the FTC) but if someone is accepting credit cards, they should just get hammered. And if we can force them to only use paypal, which would severely impact their bottom line, I think that's a step forward too.
If the messages are the same (or very nearly), the amount of space used drops pretty quickly. In fact, it probably doesn't cost any extra space to the spammer because the only non unique part of the email is the name or the address, and he already had to store that list.
And unfortunately the tracking down idea I think wouldn't be too useful either, as spammers are just using zombie boxes anyway. Maybe a system could be built (with the help of ISPs) that would disconnect boxes that were spamming and in that sense making it easier to find them is a plus, but it will never catch the spammer.
It's a tough game.
I think its your use of the pun "penis-cillin." Try cutting that out and see if the line works any better.
Godspeed, and good hunting.
Isn't the obvious solution to look at the affects anti-depressants have on general health? This should be easy, theres plenty of people on and off (so you don't have to worry about not having enough people to correct for various other variables like socioeconomic status). I think if people on mood elevators tended to be healthier, or could be shown to become healthier, we would have our answer. It would be a very interesting study, wouldn't it?
IANAL, but..
I have to agree with the above replier in that, without respect to whether the case itself was justified, overlawyered did not offer a particularly impressive argument. The writer's main points are basically that Starbucks also served hot coffee (the "but she did it too...." defense that kids use to exonerate themselves, not too good there) and that coffee is "supposed" to be served at the 180-190 degrees McDonalds did. He bases that second claim on a reccomendation by the National Coffee Association, which is not unreasonable, but I suspect that their reccomendation is made for instances where spilling should not be an issue (i.e. your home or a sit down cafe) and therefore is purely for taste and not any issue of safety. Those sort of ommissions that attempt to make his evidence come off as stronger than it is (occurring throughout the post), really lower the quality of the argument and point to some possible - my_beliefs > truth - issues.
It _is_ hard to gauge the actual merit of her case, because she won based on the jury's assertion that the warning on the coffee did not sufficiently convey the danger involved, and that's inherently maybe too much of a personal judgement call, but having said that, I was hoping for a more science or law oriented discussion, and getting one that basically said, people like hot coffee, starbucks does it too (although they are also on the receiving end of suits), doesn't really add a lot to the discussion. The debate is on safety and reasonable danger, not anything else.
I mean really, If I sued Sony over a Li-ion battery catching fire and burning my house down, "hey other people sell them too" is not a suitable defense there, and its not a suitable (nor interesting) defense here.
No that would actually still be tolerance, and I guess no one has a dictionary on hand even though we're all at computers but... having looked it up just to be sure, I get: "acceptance of the differing views of other people" in definition 1 off encarta (which could be a better source but who cares). People tend to believe their views are correct, which is why they have them... so if he is accepting that a differing view has the right to exist, sounds like tolerance to me.
Do people here really not know what tolerance means? What do you think it means? That you have no unreasonable beliefs?
And if I drink all the time I guess I don't care if my girlfriend looks like a moose. But seriously just like eventually I'll find myself sober, you'll run into a situation where you can notice quality, and then you'll realize you got screwed.
I can't help but ask, how many times have you heard someone say that? And I mean in real life not in some dishonest TV setting. Is the answer none? I know 3 people with CCWs (not including myself) and not one of us would say that. Since thats annecdotal, let me also point out a basic flaw in your logic.
In fact, that's exactly what people are saying. If you don't think it is, I don't know what you think is going on when poeple talk about the dangers of tyranny represented by bad government decisions (mass wiretapping for instance). Just because someone or something was voted for does not mean it is for the benefit of liberty (think Hitler being voted for, etc). That said, ok, so according to you we have a group of people willing to plant IEDs to stop government encroachment on their rights. Yet you then say that these people are the first to trade in their rights. You can't dock them on both counts.
In fairness though, because I'm sure you mean well, here is your problem:
You're equating a bunch of bush voting rednecks with the body of pro-gun citizens. Worse, you call them nuts, which is a great way to descredit someone without having to rely to heavily on an argument. Its a tactic better suited to Fox News, and you shouldn't use it. Plenty of people (it would be dishonest of me to pretend I know the actuall amount of course, but from my experience it seems like a majority) that believe in the original purpose of the second ammendment (aside from shooting indians) have a deep appreciation for the rest of the bill of rights.
And no, its not about an all out war against the choppers and tanks of the military, its about remembering that a declawed citizenry will tend to act like sheep over time as their mentality changes to one of assumed powerlessness.
Cheers.
I appreciate the idea of guns as a power equalizer. George Orwell described them as inherently democratic, as they give "claws to the weak." Comes from his essay You and the Atomic Bomb. A very interesting read fwiw, particularly (although this is somewhat OT) because you can see him developing the ideas that become 1984. Cheers.
We were freed by the hessians? Or were they on a different team, I can't quite recall.
Please. Colonists were not professionals, they were angry people who had guns. Professional soldiers lined up to fight (like the Brits), which unfortunately for them did not prove advantageous.
And as long as we're talking... it would be "too" you're looking for, not "to."
Heil mein Fuehrer!