If you are an Opfor arty commander and you find out your shell gets knocked out of the sky by one of these, you have about 2 minutes to call in fire before some MLRS counter-battery fire knocks your ass into next week.
With UAVs, counter-battery radar and mobile systems like Paladin and MLRS, it's suicide for Opfor with Soviet doctrine and Soviet arty to fire on US/NATO/IDF positions.
If you are lucky Opfor with South African guns, you can stand off from normal 105/155 NATO guns, but you are still in MLRS range.
There is a huge difference between using a UAV to fire a missile into a SUV full of Tangos and "terrorism".
1. The aircraft while possibly not USAF marked, is marked USA somewhere with a US tailcode somewhere on it.
2. The missile used will have serial numbers and other national identifiers on it's casing.
3. The primary target of said missile is an enemy combatant, operating outside of UMC regulations and in violation of every treaty concerning military combatants. Thus, any rights to a fair and speedy trial are right out the window.
Personally, I feel that every combatant captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan or wherever not in a uniform is subject to military justice, an uprising of prisoners in northern Afghanistan was rightly bombed and shelled.
If one wants the rights accorded to a combatant, then they need to operate within the framework the international community has established to govern warfare over the last 400 years.
When everything was made in the USA (1870s) there were still quality control issues. Ever use a John Deere plow from the 1870s and compare it to a good Turkish or Yugoslavian tractor from the 1970s.
Seriously, there have been quality control issues as long as things have been made. Why do you think that plate armor makers went to testing plate with a crossbow bolt? Because someone had made crappy armor that forced the industry into quality control testing.
When all car parts were made in the US, we had crappy cars. When all car parts for British cars were made in the UK, they had crappy cars as well.
By your point of view, I hope you are driving an early 70s Ford Galaxy or Chevy Corvair.
Cheaper parts are driven by the consumer that expects computers to cost less with each revision. A need for cheaper labor is also driven by this.
This problem has nothing to do with globalization and everything to do with quality control and undercutting production values to save money in a weak economic environment, which may end up costing the company more than it saved.
http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/p ap ers/jup_mag/
"It also has the largest magnetic moment (computed as the product of the equatorial surface field and the cube of the planetary radius). Consequently it also has the largest magnetosphere in the solar system, large enough to encompass easily the Sun and the visible corona. If the Jovian magnetosphere were visible from Earth, it would be bigger than the Moon in the night sky. Jupiter is also a powerful emitter of radio waves. Its giant magnetosphere acts both as a trap and an accelerator of energetic charged particles. The most energetic of the trapped electrons radiate at radio frequencies, and it was the radio frequency radiation that led in 1955 to the discovery that Jupiter had a magnetic field (Burke and Franklin,1955). Jupiter's magnetosphere differs importantly from the Earth's magnetosphere in that its energy is predominantly derived from sources internal to the magnetosphere rather than through its interaction with the solar wind."
Here is a real-world illustration of a radiation effect on machines, take an external power supply from a Deskwriter series HP printer, set it next to a CRT monitor and watch the fun happen.
"Exposure to Jupiter's intense radiation caused two effects -- an alarm received from Galileo's camera system, and a computer reset of the non-spinning portion of the spacecraft. The reset was a transient event that has happened during radiation exposures on several previous orbits. The computer reset was handled properly by onboard software responses, and mission engineers are investigating the out-of-the-ordinary measurement that triggered the camera alarm.
Other systems on Galileo were operating normally more than 12 hours after the closest approach to Jupiter.
"Adverse effects from the radiation close to Jupiter are not unexpected," said Jim Erickson, Galileo project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Galileo had already endured more than three times the cumulative radiation exposure it was designed to withstand, and has operated more than three years above and beyond its original two-year mission in orbit around Jupiter.
Galileo had flown within 2,337 kilometers (1,452 miles) of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, and taken images of it several hours before the camera began indicating a possible problem. The camera and other scientific instruments onboard the orbiter are continuing to record data about Jupiter and its moons."
Radiation can be very damaging to machines. It can degrade the strength of metals, plastics and ceramics used in the construction of the spacecraft. It will damage electronics and can effect the ability of the batteries to take a charge.
It's hostile out there in space, and not just because of the cold/hot and lack of atmosphere.
Had a Macintosh Performa 6200 which had a little square IR window in the front for use if one had the TV tuner card and IR remote, which I didn't have.
Sometimes, it would turn it's self off (bring up the Are You Sure You Want To Turn me Off) dialog window and sometimes it would turn it's self off.
That Mac Chime at 4 in the morning when it's not suposed to be on was spooky sometimes.
Turned out it was the building across the street would sometimes get an IR signal from thier Sony remotes and it'd trigger the Mac, and sometimes my Sony remotes would bounce off the window and turn it on/off.
"XM Satellite Radio ordered two Boeing 702 satellites in March 1998, and later ordered a third to serve as a ground spare. The spacecraft will provide state-of-the-art digital radio programming directly to cars, homes and portable radios coast-to-coast in the United States. The satellites will operate in S-band and have a Digital Audio Radio payload provided by Alcatel of France. The satellites were designed for an end-of-life power of more than 15 kW. Both satellites were launched in 2001 by Sea Launch."
Sirius used Loral birds
http://www.ssloral.com/html/products/prodserv.ht ml #1300
"t's one thing to deal with ads interrupting something free, but another thing to have ads interrupt something you're paying for."
Like those ads on SciFi channel or FX or the promos on HBO?
I have two XM decks, there are some mirrored ground stations on XM, the Nashville, LA Hits and the NY station that I know of, but on the other XM stations with some commercials it's at a much lower number per hour than standard FM.
Why I like my XM radio (two decks in two cars) as opposed to just doing it all with MP3s is the fact that I hear stuff I've never heard.
In a previous story about XM I covered this, so here we go again.
I usually listen to the Boneyard (XM-41) in the mornings, each morning as I roll out (7am PST) there is a different 30 minute show for each day of the week, on the old Bonehenge/Old School Metal show I'd heard classic rock I'd never heard of before that was good. Why'd I not heard it before? Because alot of good classic rock isn't played on FM nor is it out there as MP3s.
I live in Portland OR right now and I'll tell you the radio here sucks ass. I used to sit at a light and hit all six of my pre-sets and every station would be at commercial at the same time. If I get tired of Classic Rock, I can switch to Album rock, Metal/Death Metal/Light Rock/Progressive/90s rock, or I can get wild and listen to some 80s-90s Classic Rap or Honky Tonk.
And I drive across country, and it's nice to get some good stations on Highway 212 between Hardin and Sturgis.
I have land about 7 miles from Pierre SD, I'll put up grandstands and you'll see the smoke and hear the gunshots and the screams of the geeks/libertarians as the local ranchers/farmers have at em.
Admission will be 2 dollars or 20 rounds of FMJ.308
That was the Hare Krishnas, it was something much worse.
The Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his posse came to Antelope Oregon in the early 80s/late 70s.
They did a little arson, attempted murder, drug smuggling, and vote fraud i. They tried to pad the County Commission by busing in the homeless in 1984, then some of them did a little bio-warfare down at the Bonaza or the Sizzler in the Dalles
"The group contaminated salad bars in 10 restaurants in The Dalles, Ore., with Salmonella Typhimurium, causing several hundred people to become ill."
Say a bunch of like-minded whatevers try to move to BF South Dakota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming. If they keep thier business to themselves it's cool, but if they start to rouse rable, it'll get ugly.
In the Dakotas you have a strange Democrat/Republican/Populist fusion coupled with pickups, barbed wire and alot of 30-06 and 308s. In Montana you have Democrats outting Republicans that might have been gay in 1982 and Libertarians that are blue, really Smurf blue.
A largish group tried to move into South Dakota in the summer of '99 to start a Christian Community to survive the End Times that were coming on 1-1-00, the County said no to thier building permits.
In the 70s and 80s the Gov of South Dakota declared war water and electricity war on North Dakota and Nebraska. Many many moons ago, people from Fort Yates ND and those from Mobridge SD ran around stealing the bones of Crazy Horse and planting them.
Just because there are few people there, doesn't mean any of them will be easy to take over.
The Dakotas have some Reservations too, but no one is forcing them, well the Welfare System is, just because a check every month is easier than working.
If squalid means they have some cars, and DSS dishes, then you have Indian Reservations in the Dakotas.
North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming would never be allowed to be under anything but tight Federal supervision.
Why?
Rapid City, Cheyenne, Grand Forks and Minot.
The heart of the American ICBM and Nuclear Bomber forces.
"A new drug can cost as much as $800 million to develop and market."
Some of those HIV/AIDS drugs cost 2-5 times that much, and I know this is going to annoy people...
But AIDS isn't the only problem out there, and there is a good chance that without the ability to recoup R&D costs drug research will grind to a halt.
"So all those poor, stupid, evil people in the third world are just sitting idly by doing nothing while people die around them?" - I didn't say anything like that. I spoke about the governments in my earlier post. The people are not the governments down there.
Here is a question - Why did 5 Central African nations with horrible HIV/AIDS infection rates just fight a long war in the Congo? Why wasn't that money put towards buying drugs or treatments? Why is the President of Zim destroying the economy of that nation, thus making it harder to afford treatments?
I think the governments of some of those nations will use cheaper drugs as a way to fatten thier Swiss and Grand Cayman bank accounts.
You know, control the drug, get some money, or what if Zim gets some free patents and the Congo doesn't and the Congo can't afford them from anyone else and Zim hands over some drugs for 60% of a diamond mine?
There are bad policies in play that need to be corrected, which will help many people, before everyone just starts chucking drugs out for free.
I'm bored at work this morning so I'll respong to AC.
No, Third World people dying from AIDS is not OK.
People dying in the US from whatever is not OK.
There is no Black and White out there in the real world. My problem with the "cheap drugs" to the Third World is, the same leaders who rant and rave about "racism" because HIV and AIDS drugs are not cheap enough, are in some cases, the leaders who say HIV does not cause AIDS. Furthermore, I question the motives of these leaders when it comes to having the ability to produce massive quanities of these drugs when the drugs they already have access too are sometimes sold for profit or left on the dock to be ruined in the sun.
Anthrax drugs in the United States, or anywhere, are a totally different thing than HIV/AIDS. AIDS dosing isn't as time sensative, as I understand it, as getting Cipro or whatever to a population slammed by Anthrax or whatever. In the case of Cipro, it's produced in Germany, thus the supply line has a fragile link (air transport) which could be compromised. The Congress saw this issue as a Strategic Issue, and paved the way for a stockpile/quicker production system. Many other drugs, chemicals and metals have similar rules. Sulfa, Penicillian, Morphine and other drugs have been ordered Generic and stockpiled. Heck Bayer has a history with the US generic'in it's drugs. Asperin, Heroin and other chemicals were opened up following the First World War.
I might say things here that some will take as Flamebait, but I don't care.
I'd care a whole lot more about the Third-World vs. Drug Patents issue if a couple things were being done.
1. The countries bitching about the AIDS drugs actually worked to combat HIV, some of them don't think HIV causes AIDS, thus they don't try and combat the issues that are leading to the spread of HIV.
2. There is nothing in the US Constitution, Bible, Koran or Book of Scientology that says BMS, Pifzer, Bayer, or Wal-mat have to sell drugs at a price that is affordable in (Insert Country) just because thier government has crappy money policy.
Finally, the Anthrax issue and HIV/AIDS patents are two different things. Lets say there was an Anthrax attack on the US, in that case antibiotics like Cipro become a Strategic Drug. When it looked like Bayer was holding back on production to get the price up in fall of 2001, Congress acted because of that possible immediate requirement. How can one compare the possible need of 100,00-10,000,000 doses of a drug that is produced in Europe and must be had ASAP to a drug that is much less time sensitive? What happens if something happened to Bayer's production facilities? What if something happened to the transports bringing it in?
AIDS in the Third World was a completely controlable issue, but now it's out of the Box and still some Governments refuse to treat it like it should be treated, yet they want to unleash cheap AIDS drugs. Why produce HIV/AIDS drugs and hand them out when the government states publicly that HIV doesn't cause AIDS? To me it sounds like a Patent grab attempt, but a nation like Zimbabwe would never attempt a grab for the good of the ruling party would they?
My Windows 2000 SP2 Athlon doesn't understand HFS+. My OS 10.2 iMac needed alot of help understanding a.sid Saturday morning.
And niether of them know anything about the cordless phone, nor have they met my washer and dryer or the sexy new fridge just 3 meters away.
As for all the awareness coming to the desktop near you, I'll state here and for the record, each new CPU from Intel and AMD will be brought to thier knees by the new versions of Gnome, Windows, and Quake, leaving the desktop user with the same number of free cycles as before.
Now for this mythical AI thats coming surely by 2040, I say poppycock! My stance towards such "advanced thinking", and "futurists" is the same stance I have towards people telling me the World is ending right after the World Series.
I didn't buy this whole Strong AI nonsense a while back, but I did read one of his books. I was left with a sense of wasting my time then.
I popped over to Ray Kurzweil's site and poked around. This bit got my attention.
"If we can combine strong AI, nanotechnology and other exponential trends, technology will appear to tear the fabric of human understanding by around the mid 2040s by my estimation."
Those are alot of "Ifs". Strong AI, which is a buzz word. Nanotechnology, which is something that is built 1 or 3 or 10 at a time and photographed, but does nothing at this point. And my favorite "other exponential trends" In other words this whole idea of a Bowie-esque Savior Machine depends on crap he doesn't understand or can't put in words, but he is sure is coming.
The Palestinians also have Druze, and Bedouin and a good number of Christians.
The Israeli Defense Forces also have Muslims, Druze, Circassians, and Bedouins.
The founder of the Marxist Front for the Liberation of Palestine was Greek Orthodox.
Many complain about the US support for Israel, and it's uncommon to hear any complain about the Soviet support and training of Black September and Abu Nidal Faction at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow or the Stasi training ceters in East Germany.
The man that founded Islamic Jihad spent most of the Second World War as a guest of Hitler in Berlin, and helped the recruiting of Bosnia Muslems for the foreign units in the SS and Wermacht.
Don't forget that Christians have a serious interest in Israel/Jordan/Sinai as well.
Slashdot Mirror
If you are an Opfor arty commander and you find out your shell gets knocked out of the sky by one of these, you have about 2 minutes to call in fire before some MLRS counter-battery fire knocks your ass into next week.
With UAVs, counter-battery radar and mobile systems like Paladin and MLRS, it's suicide for Opfor with Soviet doctrine and Soviet arty to fire on US/NATO/IDF positions.
If you are lucky Opfor with South African guns, you can stand off from normal 105/155 NATO guns, but you are still in MLRS range.
Soviets and Russians have used lasers to dazzle American and Canadian pilots, including those involved in fishery patrols.
There is a huge difference between using a UAV to fire a missile into a SUV full of Tangos and "terrorism".
1. The aircraft while possibly not USAF marked, is marked USA somewhere with a US tailcode somewhere on it.
2. The missile used will have serial numbers and other national identifiers on it's casing.
3. The primary target of said missile is an enemy combatant, operating outside of UMC regulations and in violation of every treaty concerning military combatants. Thus, any rights to a fair and speedy trial are right out the window.
Personally, I feel that every combatant captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan or wherever not in a uniform is subject to military justice, an uprising of prisoners in northern Afghanistan was rightly bombed and shelled.
If one wants the rights accorded to a combatant, then they need to operate within the framework the international community has established to govern warfare over the last 400 years.
Yea I'm off topic.
Now that's BS.
When everything was made in the USA (1870s) there were still quality control issues. Ever use a John Deere plow from the 1870s and compare it to a good Turkish or Yugoslavian tractor from the 1970s.
Seriously, there have been quality control issues as long as things have been made. Why do you think that plate armor makers went to testing plate with a crossbow bolt? Because someone had made crappy armor that forced the industry into quality control testing.
When all car parts were made in the US, we had crappy cars. When all car parts for British cars were made in the UK, they had crappy cars as well.
By your point of view, I hope you are driving an early 70s Ford Galaxy or Chevy Corvair.
Cheaper parts are driven by the consumer that expects computers to cost less with each revision. A need for cheaper labor is also driven by this.
This problem has nothing to do with globalization and everything to do with quality control and undercutting production values to save money in a weak economic environment, which may end up costing the company more than it saved.
The magnetic field of Jupiter are very strong.
p ap ers/jup_mag/
a d/
http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/russell/
"It also has the largest magnetic moment (computed as the product of the equatorial surface field and the cube of the planetary radius). Consequently it also has the largest magnetosphere in the solar system, large enough to encompass easily the Sun and the visible corona. If the Jovian magnetosphere were visible from Earth, it would be bigger than the Moon in the night sky. Jupiter is also a powerful emitter of radio waves. Its giant magnetosphere acts both as a trap and an accelerator of energetic charged particles. The most energetic of the trapped electrons radiate at radio frequencies, and it was the radio frequency radiation that led in 1955 to the discovery that Jupiter had a magnetic field (Burke and Franklin,1955). Jupiter's magnetosphere differs importantly from the Earth's magnetosphere in that its energy is predominantly derived from sources internal to the magnetosphere rather than through its interaction with the solar wind."
Here is a real-world illustration of a radiation effect on machines, take an external power supply from a Deskwriter series HP printer, set it next to a CRT monitor and watch the fun happen.
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0012/30galileor
"Exposure to Jupiter's intense radiation caused two effects -- an alarm received from Galileo's camera system, and a computer reset of the non-spinning portion of the spacecraft. The reset was a transient event that has happened during radiation exposures on several previous orbits. The computer reset was handled properly by onboard software responses, and mission engineers are investigating the out-of-the-ordinary measurement that triggered the camera alarm.
Other systems on Galileo were operating normally more than 12 hours after the closest approach to Jupiter.
"Adverse effects from the radiation close to Jupiter are not unexpected," said Jim Erickson, Galileo project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Galileo had already endured more than three times the cumulative radiation exposure it was designed to withstand, and has operated more than three years above and beyond its original two-year mission in orbit around Jupiter.
Galileo had flown within 2,337 kilometers (1,452 miles) of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, and taken images of it several hours before the camera began indicating a possible problem. The camera and other scientific instruments onboard the orbiter are continuing to record data about Jupiter and its moons."
Radiation can be very damaging to machines. It can degrade the strength of metals, plastics and ceramics used in the construction of the spacecraft. It will damage electronics and can effect the ability of the batteries to take a charge.
It's hostile out there in space, and not just because of the cold/hot and lack of atmosphere.
Had a Macintosh Performa 6200 which had a little square IR window in the front for use if one had the TV tuner card and IR remote, which I didn't have.
Sometimes, it would turn it's self off (bring up the Are You Sure You Want To Turn me Off) dialog window and sometimes it would turn it's self off.
That Mac Chime at 4 in the morning when it's not suposed to be on was spooky sometimes.
Turned out it was the building across the street would sometimes get an IR signal from thier Sony remotes and it'd trigger the Mac, and sometimes my Sony remotes would bounce off the window and turn it on/off.
Sometimes those subtitles are needed.
When I was on a Kibbutz in Israel with alot of English, it was damned hard getting through some of those accents.
Subtitles are sometimes needed with American regional accents.
"The US has a history (hundreds of years) of indentured servatude. That's how my family got here from Europe."
The United States didn't have indentured servatude, the nations colonizing North America did.
Indentured Servatude ended before the United States won the Revolutionary War, but slavery continued.
XM and Sirus use Communication Sats.
a ct sheets/702/702fleet.html
t ml #1300
XM's are Boeing 702s
http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/bss/f
"XM Satellite Radio ordered two Boeing 702 satellites in March 1998, and later ordered a third to serve as a ground spare. The spacecraft will provide state-of-the-art digital radio programming directly to cars, homes and portable radios coast-to-coast in the United States. The satellites will operate in S-band and have a Digital Audio Radio payload provided by Alcatel of France. The satellites were designed for an end-of-life power of more than 15 kW. Both satellites were launched in 2001 by Sea Launch."
Sirius used Loral birds
http://www.ssloral.com/html/products/prodserv.h
"t's one thing to deal with ads interrupting something free, but another thing to have ads interrupt something you're paying for."
Like those ads on SciFi channel or FX or the promos on HBO?
I have two XM decks, there are some mirrored ground stations on XM, the Nashville, LA Hits and the NY station that I know of, but on the other XM stations with some commercials it's at a much lower number per hour than standard FM.
Why I like my XM radio (two decks in two cars) as opposed to just doing it all with MP3s is the fact that I hear stuff I've never heard.
In a previous story about XM I covered this, so here we go again.
I usually listen to the Boneyard (XM-41) in the mornings, each morning as I roll out (7am PST) there is a different 30 minute show for each day of the week, on the old Bonehenge/Old School Metal show I'd heard classic rock I'd never heard of before that was good. Why'd I not heard it before? Because alot of good classic rock isn't played on FM nor is it out there as MP3s.
I live in Portland OR right now and I'll tell you the radio here sucks ass. I used to sit at a light and hit all six of my pre-sets and every station would be at commercial at the same time. If I get tired of Classic Rock, I can switch to Album rock, Metal/Death Metal/Light Rock/Progressive/90s rock, or I can get wild and listen to some 80s-90s Classic Rap or Honky Tonk.
And I drive across country, and it's nice to get some good stations on Highway 212 between Hardin and Sturgis.
Wyoming isn't that flat.
If by flat you mean bottom of the ocean rolling hills for miles and miles and mountains here and there, then maybe Wyoming is flat.
Compared to East-central South Dakota or Minnesota, Wyoming is anything but flat.
Wyoming and the Dakotas have alot of partly and mostly couldy days than one might expect too.
Wyoming produces power and exports it, from all that coal that is mined. There is oil up north too.
The locals would get upset if you shut down the coal mines. The locals will get upset if you change anything.
The Air Force won't like a nuclear missile site being taken away either.
I have land about 7 miles from Pierre SD, I'll put up grandstands and you'll see the smoke and hear the gunshots and the screams of the geeks/libertarians as the local ranchers/farmers have at em.
.308
Admission will be 2 dollars or 20 rounds of FMJ
That was the Hare Krishnas, it was something much worse.
The Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his posse came to Antelope Oregon in the early 80s/late 70s.
They did a little arson, attempted murder, drug smuggling, and vote fraud i.
They tried to pad the County Commission by busing in the homeless in 1984, then some of them did a little bio-warfare down at the Bonaza or the Sizzler in the Dalles
"The group contaminated salad bars in 10 restaurants in The Dalles, Ore., with Salmonella Typhimurium, causing several hundred people to become ill."
There are other issues.
Say a bunch of like-minded whatevers try to move to BF South Dakota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming. If they keep thier business to themselves it's cool, but if they start to rouse rable, it'll get ugly.
In the Dakotas you have a strange Democrat/Republican/Populist fusion coupled with pickups, barbed wire and alot of 30-06 and 308s. In Montana you have Democrats outting Republicans that might have been gay in 1982 and Libertarians that are blue, really Smurf blue.
A largish group tried to move into South Dakota in the summer of '99 to start a Christian Community to survive the End Times that were coming on 1-1-00, the County said no to thier building permits.
In the 70s and 80s the Gov of South Dakota declared war water and electricity war on North Dakota and Nebraska. Many many moons ago, people from Fort Yates ND and those from Mobridge SD ran around stealing the bones of Crazy Horse and planting them.
Just because there are few people there, doesn't mean any of them will be easy to take over.
The Dakotas and Minnesota aren't that cold.
The Dakotas have some Reservations too, but no one is forcing them, well the Welfare System is, just because a check every month is easier than working.
If squalid means they have some cars, and DSS dishes, then you have Indian Reservations in the Dakotas.
North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming would never be allowed to be under anything but tight Federal supervision.
Why?
Rapid City, Cheyenne, Grand Forks and Minot.
The heart of the American ICBM and Nuclear Bomber forces.
Sounds too much like when the Comic Book Guy and Frink and Lisa and others took over Springfield.
"We will end the collaboration between state and federal law enforcement officials in enforcing unconstitutional laws."
Let me understand this, they will decide what is unconstitutional, not the Supreme Court which makes those decisions?
The bottom line is the cost.
From CNN.com today
"A new drug can cost as much as $800 million to develop and market."
Some of those HIV/AIDS drugs cost 2-5 times that much, and I know this is going to annoy people...
But AIDS isn't the only problem out there, and there is a good chance that without the ability to recoup R&D costs drug research will grind to a halt.
"So all those poor, stupid, evil people in the third world are just sitting idly by doing nothing while people die around them?" - I didn't say anything like that. I spoke about the governments in my earlier post. The people are not the governments down there.
Here is a question - Why did 5 Central African nations with horrible HIV/AIDS infection rates just fight a long war in the Congo? Why wasn't that money put towards buying drugs or treatments? Why is the President of Zim destroying the economy of that nation, thus making it harder to afford treatments?
I think the governments of some of those nations will use cheaper drugs as a way to fatten thier Swiss and Grand Cayman bank accounts.
You know, control the drug, get some money, or what if Zim gets some free patents and the Congo doesn't and the Congo can't afford them from anyone else and Zim hands over some drugs for 60% of a diamond mine?
There are bad policies in play that need to be corrected, which will help many people, before everyone just starts chucking drugs out for free.
I'm bored at work this morning so I'll respong to AC.
No, Third World people dying from AIDS is not OK.
People dying in the US from whatever is not OK.
There is no Black and White out there in the real world. My problem with the "cheap drugs" to the Third World is, the same leaders who rant and rave about "racism" because HIV and AIDS drugs are not cheap enough, are in some cases, the leaders who say HIV does not cause AIDS. Furthermore, I question the motives of these leaders when it comes to having the ability to produce massive quanities of these drugs when the drugs they already have access too are sometimes sold for profit or left on the dock to be ruined in the sun.
Anthrax drugs in the United States, or anywhere, are a totally different thing than HIV/AIDS. AIDS dosing isn't as time sensative, as I understand it, as getting Cipro or whatever to a population slammed by Anthrax or whatever. In the case of Cipro, it's produced in Germany, thus the supply line has a fragile link (air transport) which could be compromised. The Congress saw this issue as a Strategic Issue, and paved the way for a stockpile/quicker production system. Many other drugs, chemicals and metals have similar rules. Sulfa, Penicillian, Morphine and other drugs have been ordered Generic and stockpiled. Heck Bayer has a history with the US generic'in it's drugs. Asperin, Heroin and other chemicals were opened up following the First World War.
You can bet that if Breast Cancer screening becomes covered, it will only be covered for women.
I might say things here that some will take as Flamebait, but I don't care.
I'd care a whole lot more about the Third-World vs. Drug Patents issue if a couple things were being done.
1. The countries bitching about the AIDS drugs actually worked to combat HIV, some of them don't think HIV causes AIDS, thus they don't try and combat the issues that are leading to the spread of HIV.
2. There is nothing in the US Constitution, Bible, Koran or Book of Scientology that says BMS, Pifzer, Bayer, or Wal-mat have to sell drugs at a price that is affordable in (Insert Country) just because thier government has crappy money policy.
Finally, the Anthrax issue and HIV/AIDS patents are two different things. Lets say there was an Anthrax attack on the US, in that case antibiotics like Cipro become a Strategic Drug. When it looked like Bayer was holding back on production to get the price up in fall of 2001, Congress acted because of that possible immediate requirement. How can one compare the possible need of 100,00-10,000,000 doses of a drug that is produced in Europe and must be had ASAP to a drug that is much less time sensitive? What happens if something happened to Bayer's production facilities? What if something happened to the transports bringing it in?
AIDS in the Third World was a completely controlable issue, but now it's out of the Box and still some Governments refuse to treat it like it should be treated, yet they want to unleash cheap AIDS drugs. Why produce HIV/AIDS drugs and hand them out when the government states publicly that HIV doesn't cause AIDS? To me it sounds like a Patent grab attempt, but a nation like Zimbabwe would never attempt a grab for the good of the ruling party would they?
Understand anything?
.sid Saturday morning.
My Windows 2000 SP2 Athlon doesn't understand HFS+. My OS 10.2 iMac needed alot of help understanding a
And niether of them know anything about the cordless phone, nor have they met my washer and dryer or the sexy new fridge just 3 meters away.
As for all the awareness coming to the desktop near you, I'll state here and for the record, each new CPU from Intel and AMD will be brought to thier knees by the new versions of Gnome, Windows, and Quake, leaving the desktop user with the same number of free cycles as before.
Now for this mythical AI thats coming surely by 2040, I say poppycock! My stance towards such "advanced thinking", and "futurists" is the same stance I have towards people telling me the World is ending right after the World Series.
I didn't buy this whole Strong AI nonsense a while back, but I did read one of his books. I was left with a sense of wasting my time then.
I popped over to Ray Kurzweil's site and poked around. This bit got my attention.
"If we can combine strong AI, nanotechnology and other exponential trends, technology will appear to tear the fabric of human understanding by around the mid 2040s by my estimation."
Those are alot of "Ifs". Strong AI, which is a buzz word. Nanotechnology, which is something that is built 1 or 3 or 10 at a time and photographed, but does nothing at this point. And my favorite "other exponential trends" In other words this whole idea of a Bowie-esque Savior Machine depends on crap he doesn't understand or can't put in words, but he is sure is coming.
Poppycock.
Protestant 56%, Roman Catholic 28%, Jewish 2%, other 4%, none 10%
o s/ us.html#People
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ge
According to CIA World Fact Book -
Protestant 56%, Roman Catholic 28%, Jewish 2%, other 4%, none 10%
The Palestinians also have Druze, and Bedouin and a good number of Christians.
The Israeli Defense Forces also have Muslims, Druze, Circassians, and Bedouins.
The founder of the Marxist Front for the Liberation of Palestine was Greek Orthodox.
Many complain about the US support for Israel, and it's uncommon to hear any complain about the Soviet support and training of Black September and Abu Nidal Faction at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow or the Stasi training ceters in East Germany.
The man that founded Islamic Jihad spent most of the Second World War as a guest of Hitler in Berlin, and helped the recruiting of Bosnia Muslems for the foreign units in the SS and Wermacht.
Don't forget that Christians have a serious interest in Israel/Jordan/Sinai as well.
It's not a black and white situation over there.